![]() When you’re close to done, follow some of the strategies I wrote about in “ How To Read, Edit, and Evaluate Your Writing With Fresh Eyes” and clear your brain. If you’re on a computer, remember to saveĪutosave sometimes works, but sometimes doesn’t. There’s no right or wrong here, just what will get you to the finish line fastest, with writing you’ll be proud of. If you prefer to shoot out a very quick, very rough first draft - and then go back and spend the majority of your limited time sculpting and revising - go with it. That said, perfecting up front might not work for you. This often means more of an investment of time on the initial draft, but it works to ultimately cut the time down to go from zero to finished product. In other words, I spend as much time on a sentence or paragraph as I need to get it right and then move on then, when I go back to revise, my writing is usually ninety-five percent where it has to be. When it comes to writing on assignment, I like to follow the advice of an old friend, editor, and mentor: make your writing ready for publication right away. Cut it out, paste it in a document to save for something else, and move on. Don’t get sentimentalĭid you write something beautiful, but can’t make it work in context? there’s no time to fret and finagle. Crunch time is not the time for flowery language, complex word games, or other intricate literary devices. When you’re writing on deadline, make your sentences as clean, direct, and communicative as possible. Even if it’s three groupings of two words each, the more you have on paper, the less you have cluttering your consciousness and getting in the way of quick, effective, and efficient writing. I recommend trying at least a basic roadmap before you begin in earnest. Outlineįor some writers, jotting down a quick outline can be a huge help. This way, I can access any information I need in seconds. When I’m writing an article that involves interviews, I make sure all of my notes and transcriptions are open and accessible on my laptop I also keep any webpages containing pertinent background articles open in different tabs in the same browser. ![]() If you’re working on fiction, do you have pictures, poems, objects, journals, or anything else that directly speaks to what you’re working on? Keep it close and easily accessible. If your work involves research, gather all your source material and put it within arm’s reach. Close unnecessary programs and turn off distracting alerts, along with anything else that will break you out of your flow. ![]() If time is of the essence, email, social media, and texts are not. Whether you’re jotting bits and pieces down on your phone or scribbling in a journal, the more you record your best ideas and chunks of text ahead of time, the more efficient you’ll be when you next sit at your work station. Test out various opening sentences in your head, imagine different structures, daydream on the topic - it all helps you get to a point where, when you sit down to write, the words flow quickly. Once you know what you will be writing about, use whatever moments you can find to start working. Read on for tips on how to quickly get from first word to a final written work that you can be proud of - in record time. I’ve had to write under time pressure on many occasions, in different contexts and for different purposes. Whether you’re on deadline for a client or your laptop battery is clinging to its final dribs of power mid-writing session, when you’re an active writer, chances are, at some point, you will have to write under tight time pressure.
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