10X Writer #110
10xWriter is a newsletter for freelance writers and copywriters who want to build a writing practice that actually pays.
Writing faster usually comes with a trade-off.
You rush the draft, sentences get sloppier, ideas don’t get developed properly, and you spend even more time fixing the piece later.
So you slow down again.
But fast writing and good writing aren’t actually in conflict.
The problem is what you’re trying to do while you’re writing.
If you’re figuring out the argument, deciding what comes next, researching facts, rewriting sentences, and editing as you go, you’re asking the draft to do too much work.
That’s why writing feels slow.
The writers who produce clean, usable drafts quickly aren’t necessarily typing faster. They’ve already made many of the decisions that slow other writers down.
To write faster without sacrificing quality, move the thinking earlier.
1. Separate thinking from writing
One of the biggest causes of slow writing is trying to figure out the piece while drafting it.
When you sit down and still have to decide what you’re arguing, who you’re writing for, and the order the ideas should arrive in, every paragraph becomes a new decision.
Do the thinking first.
For a 1,000-word client article, spend 15 minutes answering three questions in rough notes:
What is the single argument this piece is making?
What are the three to five points that support it?
What does the reader need to believe by the end?
Now you’re turning decisions into sentences instead of making the decisions while you write.
2. Build an outline one level deeper than the headings
Most writers outline to the heading level, like Research process
That’s a topic, not an outline.
Go one level deeper and write the specific point that section will make, like
Writers who skip the research call produce copy that the client rewrites, which costs more time than the call would have.
Now the paragraph has somewhere to go. The same applies to every section.
Don’t just write down what the section is about. Write down what you want the reader to understand from it.
A deeper outline removes decisions from the drafting session.
3. Do your research before the draft
Research that happens inside the draft interrupts writing.
If you open a browser every time you need to verify a fact, find a statistic, or check a product detail, you’re interrupting writing..
Block research separately.
Put the findings in a separate document.
When the research block ends, close the browser and start drafting from the material you’ve already gathered.
4. Reuse structures for formats you write repeatedly
If you write a format regularly, you probably don’t need to rebuild its structure every time.
A case study might consistently need:
Client situation
Problem
Approach
Result
Pull quote
A thought leadership article might need:
Counterintuitive claim
Why the conventional wisdom is wrong
Better framework
What the reader should do differently
Turn these into reusable prompts.
The template needs to remind you what each section needs to accomplish and roughly how much space it gets.
5. Write the first draft without editing
Editing while drafting is another common source of slow output.
A sentence goes down. It doesn’t feel quite right. You adjust it, adjust it again, and move on to the next sentence carrying the friction from the last one.
Instead, finish the draft.
If a sentence needs work, write [fix this] and keep moving.
Can’t find the right word? Write [word].
Don’t know the exact example yet? Write [example].
The first draft is where you create the material. The editing pass is where you improve it.
6. Measure your actual drafting time
Most writers have no accurate sense of how long their drafts take.
They know a piece “took all afternoon,” but not how much of that was drafting, research, distraction, or rereading sentences they had already written.
For your next five pieces, time only the drafting.
Start the timer with the first sentence and stop it when the draft is complete.
Record the word count and the time.
If a writer producing 1,200-word articles discovers that the actual drafting takes 55 minutes, they may not have a drafting problem at all.
That’s where the useful diagnosis begins.
7. Find your personal slowdown pattern
Every writer has a point in the process where the work tends to stall.
For some, it’s the opening. They can’t move forward until the first sentence feels right.
For others, it’s the middle, where the argument has to do the most work.
For others, it’s the edit, which expands to fill whatever time is available.
Look at the last three pieces you found slow.
Where did the work actually stall?
If it is always the opening, draft the body first and come back to the opening once the argument is on the page.
If it is the middle, your outline probably isn’t deep enough.
If it is the edit, give yourself a fixed editing window and stop when the time is up.
Don’t try to become faster everywhere. Find the part of your process that is slowing you down and fix that.
Fast writing is about moving the decisions that slow you down earlier in the process.