My Disability Makes Me Type Like a Turtle, and It’s Frustrating
What I’ve learned from being a full-time writer with a disability.
I’ve read writing advice that says the key to producing a lot of content is to pump out that first draft quickly. Get it done in under 30 minutes. Then come back to it later, and spend another 30–45 minutes on editing. You’ll have a quality article ready to publish within an hour. You can even do this a few times a day!
I don’t want to dismiss this type of advice. It makes sense, and I would follow it if I could. But because I have cerebral palsy, my fingers have a hard time keeping up with my writing ambitions.
Today I was curious about how fast I type, so I took a test. I scored a 15 WPM average. The test literally told me, “You’re a Turtle.” Ouch. (To be fair, I don’t think they would mock me if they knew I had a disability. So no hard feelings.)
15 WPM is under average, but it’s not terrible. At that speed, I should be able to bang out a 1000-word article in about an hour. But that’s not the case. The 15 WPM rate is putting the pedal to the medal, and I can’t sustain it very long. I take frequent pauses throughout my writing sessions to give my hands a break.
