The faster you can write, the greater the results you’ll see as a blogger.
Let’s say you have six hours a week, and in those six hours, you
normally manage to write three posts – averaging two hours per post.
You publish two of them on your blog and use one as a guest post.
That’s not bad, but what if you could double your output and write six posts instead of three?
You might choose to publish slightly more on your blog (e.g. three
posts not two), and you’d also be able to produce three guest posts
every week.
So how can you double your writing speed? Just follow this step by step plan.
Step #1: Come Up With Lots of Ideas at Once
One of the biggest time-wasters for many bloggers is struggling to come up with an idea.
You
might find yourself sitting staring at the screen, doodling on a
bit of paper, or starting off a post only to decide the idea wasn’t
great after all.
When you have a good idea, though, it’s often really easy to race through your post – it almost seems to write itself.
There’s a really simple solution here, and it’s to come up with your
ideas ahead of time. Set aside 30 minutes to come up with at least ten
ideas, preferably more. You’ll find that once you start jotting down
your ideas, they come faster and faster.
Step #2: Give One Day a Theme
If you’re posting more than once a week, choose a special theme for a particular day. E.g. some bloggers have Friday as a “roundup” day where they write about great posts from within their industry.
This makes it easier for me to plan content – and
though you might think it’d make it harder to come up with ideas, the
truth is that when you give yourself constraints (like a specific topic
to stick to), you’ll find that you’re more creative.
Your themes could be temporary and run for a few weeks, or they could
be permanent and run consistently throughout the lifespan of your blog.
Step #3: Find the Right Time and Place to Write
Writing is a high-energy activity, and one that it’s very easy to procrastinate over.
It really helps to find out when in the day you’re at your best. For
me, it’s generally mornings – you might be a night owl or an afternoon
person, though.
As well as finding the right time, experiment with using different
places to write. Perhaps you normally sit on the sofa to blog on your
laptop – but you’re often distracted by the TV, or by family members
wanting to chat to you. Maybe getting out to a coffee shop, or writing
in a bedroom with the door shut, could make all the difference.
Step #4: Stay Focused When You’re Writing
One tempting but dangerous mistake is to get distracted while writing a blog post.
I completely understand why this happens (it happens to me too!) – you
might get stuck, or feel tired, and it’s all too easy to flick open a
browser and check Facebook or see what’s new on BuzzFeed.
Alternatively, you might have Skype and your inbox open as you write
your post, so you’re distracted with messages from friends that you want
to reply to quickly.
This can dramatically slow down your writing. Not just
because you’re spending time doing something else – but also because
every time you switch your focus away from your writing, you make it
hard to get back into the flow.
Most people can’t focus for long periods of time, so try writing in short bursts of 20 – 45 minutes.
Step #5: Don’t Edit and Write at the Same Time
As much as you can, avoid trying to edit while you’re writing. Sure,
you might need to backspace once in a while to fix a typo – but if you
find yourself deleting and reworking whole sentences, you’re slowing
down your writing a lot.
Also, it’s tough to see the big picture when you’re still adding in
all the details: once your post is finished, you’ll have a much better
sense of whether that sentence should stay or go. If you can, try to
edit a day after drafting your post – you’ll come to it fresh, you’ll be
more likely to spot mistakes, and you may well find that the post as a
whole is better than you initially thought.
Step #6: Create a Personal Pre-Publication Checklist
There are often a bunch of little tasks to do when you’re getting your post ready for publication, and if you find yourself struggling to remember these (or going back after publishing it to fix them), it can bog you down.
The easiest solution here is to create a personal checklist that
includes anything you need to do once your post is written and edited.
For instance, these are a few things you might include:
- Add a “more” link so only the first few paragraphs show on the front page.
- Put subheadings into the correct format.
- Add bold text to pull out key points.
- Include at least one link to a relevant post in the archives.
- Check that there’s a call to action at the end.
You don’t have to master all these six steps at once – even if you
can manage just two or three of them, you should see a clear improvement
in your writing speed. If one of these worked especially well for you,
or if you have a different step to add, just drop a comment below.
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