Boost Your Writing Output Tenfold in Two Steps

Have you ever tried hopping on both feet?

It’s slow, awkward, and frequently painful. It can move you forward, but it won’t be the most pleasant or profitable experience.

If you want to charge forward as quickly as possible, you must use both legs independently. Left then right, one after the other. It’s a simple change. But it’s necessary to sprint.

Many frustrated writers are hopping their way forward, depressed at how slowly they’re progressing. Yes, they’re getting some pages out, but the finish line seems eternally far away. If only they could sprint.

Look left and right

All writing comes down to two phases: Composing and Editing. First you compose, getting words on the page. Then you Edit, making those words look pretty.

To sprint-write, the rule is simple: keep Composing and Editing separate from each other.

Begin by Composing. In this phase, you switch Editing off entirely. You don't let yourself edit anything. You only write — you get words on the page. Don't agonize over whether they're the right words. That comes later.

Compose several pages. Write the scene, getting the dialogue and action out on the page. Get the argument of your article out on paper. It can be rough. The prose can be plain. The dialogue can be lame. It doesn’t matter — as long as it’s on the page.

After you have several pages down, and you’re feeling a bit tired, you can switch to Editing. Go back to the stack of pages you churned out and make them pretty. Tighten up your dialogue. Trim off redundant points from your article. Rephrase boring prose into fresh new words. Drop in a few hints of foreshadowing, now that you know what’s coming.

Then rest.

Tomorrow, start back with Composing. Churn out a few more raw pages. Then switch again to Editing and make those new pages pretty.

Compose and Edit, Left and Right. One step before the next. Keep this pattern going and you’ll find yourself sprinting.

Stop hopping

Many writers try to hop-write, Composing and Editing simultaneously. They’ll write a sentence or paragraph, not like how it looks, and work on it. Maybe they delete and re-write; maybe they pull out a thesaurus; maybe switch the words around.

If you hop-write, you will end up with words on the page. But it will be far fewer words than if you kept your Composing and Editing as separate steps.

Every time you stop Composing to go back and Editing, you lose all momentum. You lose your flow of thought. The emotion of the scene disappears from your mind as you agonize over forcing those troublesome words to obey you. If you're constantly switching, you're constantly losing your momentum. You're tripping your own feet.

To sprint forward as quickly as possible, change direction as few times as possible. Start Composing and don’t stop until you’ve got several pages out. When you go back and Edit those pages, you’ll feel good, because you’ll see pages of progress shining before your eyes.

Look at the numbers

If you keep this pace going, you can write several books every year. That’s no exaggeration.

Suppose you Compose four pages each day. Let’s call that 1,000 words.

If you do this six days a week (taking one day to rest), you can produce over 300,000 words each year. Since you edit the same day that you compose, you skip the step of a bloated rough draft in desperate need of editing. Your first complete draft will already feel polished.

The average book contains roughly 50,000 to 100,000 words. If you keep this pace going, you could publish three to six books every year at a sustainable pace.

All you need to do is learn to sprint.