Daily newspaper reporters are masters of writing fast out of necessity. The presses roll at certain times of the day for certain sections and they don’t stop because you couldn’t think of a lead in time to make your 4:30 deadline. Most freelance writers aren’t under that kind of time pressure – so we have to manufacture it for ourselves instead. Also, sticking to deadlines is one of the best ways to ingratiate yourselves to editors of publications you want to write for on a regular basis – because if you’re an editor, who do you want to work with more often, the writer who always makes deadline, or the one who’s always making excuses why they can’t?

A couple other tips for writing fast:

Forget taping notes and then transcribing them. Learn shorthand and write directly from your notes. Or learn to type fast enough to take notes while you do phone interviews.

Don’t print out notes from phone interviews. Use Windows’ split screen feature or two monitors so you can have a notes file and a story file up at the same time. If it helps, go through your notes file and highlight important data and quotes so they’re easier to find.

Learn how to outline stories in your head instead of taking the extra time to plot out an outline on paper. This works well for me for stories of up to 2,000 or 2,500 words. Anything longer and I will do an outline.

Write through the entire story from start to finish in one fell swoop. Let your momentum carry you through from start to finish. In this initial draft forget plugging in details and facts – you can fill them in later. The key is to get the essence of the piece down while it’s fresh in your head.

Michelle Rafter

I can definitely relate to that. After I retired from the military, I went from running two miles a day, to two miles every two weeks. What a difference!

I just wanted to chime in on the inspiration that exercise brings. Many famous writers have developed their own form of inspirational methods such as golfing, fishing, bike riding and even just sitting near a stream with a pen and notebook.

I truly believe that anything that gets you away from the humdrum daily life, can serve as food for the mind when writing about any subject.

Just before I need to sit down and write, I take a short run or swim. If you’re not the active type, then a short walk down a few blocks and back may awaken the mental giant in you.

Give this a try the next time around, it works wonders!