Write Faster Using This One Trick
No, the trick is not drinking more wine
--
A writer’s biggest struggle is starting to put down the words. Yes, it’s not the idea of completion that scares the daylights out of us, but actually sitting down, getting our hands dirty, and writing that first paragraph.
Recently, I tweeted out this writer’s journey (based on my personal experience) that depicts that a writer has different levels of motivation throughout the writing cycle.
Please don’t judge me on the mathematics of this graph. There’s a reason why I write and not build rockets.
- First, there are some existential questions: who’s going to read it? who am I to write on this topic anyway? why does it matter?
- Then, you are in complete disbelief. You wonder, scratch your head, all this while feeling like an imposter. This is a scary time because you have been in your head for too long.
Look, I am all up for thinking hard before you write a piece. But if you spend too much time in your head, you’ll call it quits and tweet that you have a writer’s block.
The Trick
Put a structure to your piece.
Yep. That’s the trick or rule or guideline — whatever you want to call it.
When you provide a structure to a piece, you start writing like you are sharing your opinions, your thoughts, your musings, your ideas, with someone in the world.
When you provide a structure to a piece — especially if you put them in the form of questions — you are more tempted to answer them.
A writing structure helps you become biased towards action. You can now visually put down what you are going to write about.
And this makes all the difference simply because you have a complete piece at the end.
For example, here’s how I put down a basic structure for this article that helped me complete it:
- Introduction
- What’s the writer’s journey?
- What’s the trick?
- What are the benefits of doing this?
- Final thoughts
Another example: suppose you want to write the “about us page” on your website.
Here’s a structure that you can go for:
- Describe why you do what you do
- Share what you exactly do
- Discuss a little bit about how you do it
- Share proof points to support your claims
Following writing structures like these will allow you to write things faster and in a more efficient manner.
So what should you do when you have a new idea or an old one just lying in your drafts?
Define a structure. Give them a form of a question that you are compelled to answer. And then immediately put down the first 100 words.
Go write.
