Just Write

The Problem

You may find writing to be slow-going, and as you strive for higher daily word counts, it may take longer than you have time available.

The Forces Involved

Everyone has an inner Critic. Imagine a tiny, dumpy little man, balding, in horn-rimmed glasses and dark suspenders, sitting on your shoulder. As you write, he likes to direct the process. He points out every flaw, every typo, and urges you to correct them before you continue.

When revision time comes, you’ll need your critic. That’s when he’s in his element. Your critic is a problem-solver, taking your raw recruited words and making them sing together in perfect creative harmony.

While editing and revision is more of a problem-solving process, writing is an inventive process. When you combine these two divergent processes, you can’t give either one the attention it deserves, and you lose even more time by forcing your mind to switch modes back and forth.

If we consider how authors produced their works up until the 1980s and ’90s, the tools they used required distinct phases. Whether with quill and ink or typewriter, an author wrote a draft, then edited it, then rewrote a new draft.

With modern technology, we’ve achieved greater efficiencies. We no longer need to re-type a draft, but in turn the writing and editing phases have lost their distinct character. It’s possible to write a word, then go back and change it five times before continuing on. This might produce a cleaner first draft, but at the expense of slowing the writer down considerably.

Therefore:

The Solution

Editing as you write will produce cleaner copy, but it will slow you down immensely and stifle your creativity. When you’re trying to write, just write. Do not edit. Do not revise.

To do this you need to silence your inner critic and make him wait his turn. In a modern word processing environment, this takes discipline. You may need to take time to train yourself.

Timed writes may help. Set a timer for five or ten minutes and challenge yourself to just write. Do not use the arrow keys, do not use Backspace. Turning off any visual spell-checking features will help you: there’s nothing like a red squiggle under a word to send your critic into paroxysm.

When you just write, you will be able to write faster. Especially at first you will make more mistakes, which will require more time editing. With practice, however, you may be able to write relatively clean copy on the first go.

No matter what, you will be receiving more focused practice in your time available and your writing will improve faster overall.

What’s more, your editing time will become more focused and efficient as you won’t be distracted by the need to invent further expression as you write.

Next Steps

• Use the Write-only tool.
• Revise Later
• Learn to Touch Type
• Learn to Dictate