Your questions answered
How to Write Faster and Find Your Voice
You need to figure out if you’re a poet or a ghost
This story is behind Medium’s membership paywall, which means the writer earns through our Partner Program. To become a Medium member, click here.
A two part question from a reader:
Q : I’ve really wanted to ask you: how do you get better at writing faster? How do you write faster?
A: Online chat rooms made me a fast typist. But I don’t know any single way to write faster, though for many of us it involves removing impediments to thought and the expression of thoughts. Sometimes that is about setting and enforcing boundaries — I am currently trying to imitate my late mentor, Kit Reed, who wrote for three hours every morning, and would not let anyone interrupt her.
Meals are probably the biggest challenge for me. I love elaborate breakfasts. And so anytime I have gone to a writers colony where meals are provided, for example, my productivity has escalated dramatically. This is because cooking for yourself takes time, cleaning it up takes time, and shopping for the food also takes time. I arrived with a novel that was 90 or so pages long, written over several years, and left with 110 more pages written over five weeks. A very kind…
