Would you write 2,000 words when you could write 1,000?

If you could double your speed, would you?

Do you believe that writing fiction twice your speed would compromise your quality?

Here are my reasons why I believe that writing your fantasy faster won’t decrease the quality of your work. In fact, I’m about to support why I think the opposite is true!

(note—I’m not talking about typos. Those kind of errors are easy to fix later.)

Speed leads to flow of thought.

Do you believe in stream of thought writing? I do. What comes into the mind of the author is logically the next thing to say. This is entirely freeing. You don’t have to decide what comes next—you know.

Speed leads to more practice.

So, by now, you’ve picked up on the fact that I don’t think writing faster is bad for my writing. But what I’ve not said is that writing faster makes my writing better. How do I know? Because I know that practice is the number one way to get better at writing and the faster you write your fiction, the more practice you can fit into each day. Look at how it works like that.

Speed leads to voice.

Writing quickly often means being more transparent. You say what you think and what you feel, but to the tune of a fantasy story. It’s like journaling—through a pair of sunglasses. It’s not gimmicky to base a character off yourself—it’s art. I could write an entire booklet about how writing can be treated like journaling and actually should be. It’s not advanced journaling (sorry for saying that in a post)—it’s just like journaling with gloves on.

A lot of people who don’t base characters off themselves still believe that the reader wants to know what’s going on inside of the protagonist. What irony. Why ever think that readers would want to know about the inside of a character, but not the author? If your characters aren’t grounded through you, they may seem fake (because they are!).

We write because what we’re feeling needs recapping. When I’m sad, I turn and rehash bad memories for my characters (everyone needs a work-in-progress fantasy series to putter around in). When I’m happy, I can tell and spell hope for my characters as they look to the future. When… well, the list goes on and on.

But the point is, voice is power. Voice is transparency. Voice comes out when you’re forced to write faster.

Writing slowly gives you time to fabricate a mask and hide yourself—gives you time to seem fake. Voice is good.

I’ve done it.

The primary reason I believe that you can write faster is because seen my writing become faster because I chose to focus on writing faster.

So, how do you focus on writing faster? Also, what do I mean by faster? How many words per minute? Words per hour? I’ll be giving you some practical numbers in an upcoming post so

Finally, tell me, did I change your mind? Flow of thought, more time to practice, better voice—so many benefits from writing your fiction faster. What do you plan to do? Stick around to learn how I think you can learn to write faster.