How To Write Faster: 13 Proven Tips To Boost Your Writing Speed

You can write faster without sacrificing quality. To improve your writing speed, create an optimal writing environment, develop efficient writing habits, use the right tools, learn from successful authors, and work on your skills by taking a course or two. 

By writing faster, you can be more productive, meet your deadlines, and publish more content. 

Luckily, you can master writing faster with 13 easy steps. These steps will help you fine-tune your writing and elevate your writing speed practically and effectively. Here’s how.

What you will learn

• Practical steps to enhance your writing speed without compromising quality, enabling you to meet deadlines and boost productivity. 
• How to set up your writing environment and develop efficient writing habits, such as setting deadlines and using the Pomodoro Technique, to manage your time better and maintain writing momentum. 
• How voice-to-text tools, AI writing assistants, and grammar-checking apps can speed up your writing process, save time, and improve content accuracy and quality. 

The benefits of writing faster

There are many benefits to writing faster. Here are the main ones:

Higher organic traffic

The more you publish, the more keywords and topics you can cover on your site, and the more chances your audience will find you.

When you write faster, you can create, update, and publish more articles, boosting your SEO relevance and ranking.

Not to mention, Google loves fresh content.

For example, by increasing its publishing frequency, Aquarium Store Depot's organic traffic grew by 7% between December 2022 and September 2023. They gained over 330,000 monthly visitors.

Better productiveness 

Learning how to write faster can make you more efficient at work.

This way, you can manage multiple projects, meet deadlines, or allocate time to other business aspects, such as client relationships and marketing. 

And if you are a freelance writer, the more productive you are, the higher your income will be.

Increased competitiveness

In industries where trends and consumer interests change quickly, the ability to create high-quality content quickly gives you a significant competitive edge.

Fast content production ensures your content is timely and relevant, allowing you to respond swiftly to market changes and audience demands. 

13 tips to write faster

There are various ways to learn how to write faster. After all, practice makes perfect. Start with these 13 tips to write quicker and then tailor them to suit your needs. 

1. Do your research

To write faster, you must remove all impediments that slow your writing flow. Start with thorough research before putting your finger on the keyboard or pen to paper. 

Researching helps you understand your topic well and familiarize yourself with the fundamental concepts, terminology, authoritative sources, and latest developments.

You can paste relevant ideas, notes, facts, anecdotes, statistics, and quotes into a blank document, which you can use as a reference once you start writing. 

Your reference document helps prevent you from staring at the blinking cursor and blank page while figuring out what to write or how to phrase an idea. It also enables you to align your article’s direction with what your audience seeks to know and solve.

2. Clarify the user intent

Next, you have to understand in which direction to take the article so it meets user intent. This will give you a structure and help avoid unnecessary revisions.  

The user intent behind your content can fall into one of four categories: 

1. Informational: Users want to learn about something or get an answer to a question. 
2. Navigational: Users want to navigate somewhere, such as visiting a specific brand page. 
3. Transactional: Users are looking to make a purchase or complete a specific transaction, such as buying a product or subscribing to a service. 
4. Commercial: Users are unsure what the right product or service is, so they want help to narrow down their choices. 

You can find the user intent of a keyword by looking into the search results for that article.

For example, if you look up "how to hike", you'll see that the top-performing pages are informative listicles. This shows that the keyword has an information intent. Users are interested in being educated on the topic.

To rank for such a keyword, you should also create an educational articles that fulfills the information intent of this topic.

Alternatively, you can easily identify the search intent of a keyword using a keyword research tool.

For instance, in Surfer you can immediately see that the keyword "guide to hiking" has an informational intent.

3. Create an outline

An outline helps you organize your ideas, visualize the structure, and develop the main points and supporting arguments. 

With a well-structured content outline, you’re less likely to wander off-topic and are more likely to maintain a consistent and cohesive narrative.

Plus, it helps eliminate writer’s block by streamlining the process. 

Start by noting the main points you want to include in your article. This will be your H2 and H3 headings.

Then, you can include the main points you want to cover under each heading in the form of bullet points. There, you can add statistics, resources, and important keywords you want to include in the article.

Here's an example of an outline on the topic of "cold brew in French press".

4. Write without editing

Many writers fall into the perfection trap: They want to create the perfect article that meets the brief 100% and doesn’t require editing in the first draft.

That's not the best way to go about it, especially if you want to speed up your writing process.

The purpose of the first draft is to get your ideas onto the page. Accept that the draft is a creative space without the pressure to be perfect. It’s where you can freely express your thoughts since you’ll have time for revisions in the editing process later.

Using techniques like freewriting, where you write without looking at the screen, can help you overcome self-critique and increase your writing speed. 

Don’t edit anything in the drafting stage.

Ignore the typos, red underlines from the spell-checker, and grammatical mistakes. 

Instead, keep writing to maintain your train of thought because editing as you write slows your writing pace and distracts you from actually writing.

5. Set up writing sprints

Writing sprints are short, timed bursts solely dedicated to writing. They can help you maximize your focus and output. 

The Pomodoro Technique can be a great way to organize your writing sprints. Write as fast and as much as possible for 25 minutes, stopping when the time is up. Take a 5-minute break to recharge your brain before starting the next sprint. 

You can keep track of the 25-minute on, 5-minute off writing sessions with a Pomodoro timer or kitchen timer.

Remember to set realistic sprint durations and don’t overdo it. Start small and increase the pace and writing sprints as you get more comfortable.

Taking regular breaks where you focus on something other than your article is just as important as the time you spend writing. 

See the breaks as a reward for meeting your writing goal - writing for 25 minutes straight or writing a certain number of words in the allotted time. The reward can also be a short walk to get fresh air, a snack, or playing your favorite game for 5 minutes.

6. Set deadlines

Another way to write faster is to break down the writing process into manageable parts and set deadlines for each part.

Deadlines can help you stay focused and add a sense of urgency, which can help you avoid procrastination.

Use these personal benchmarks to track your progress and monitor writing speed improvements over time. You can also adjust the goals as you write faster and finish more in a shorter time. 

7. Set up the environment 

Creating an optimal environment is a crucial step to boosting your writing speed.

Your environment sets the stage for your writing process and impacts your productivity.

Your space should help minimize distractions and provide and foster comfort, concentration, creativity, and a smooth writing flow. 

Here are some tips and tools for creating a focused writing environment: 

• Keep your desk clean and organized to reduce mental clutter. 
• Ensure you have sufficient lighting to avoid eye strain so you don’t get tired as quickly. 
• Add personal touches like a picture frame and motivational quotes to inspire creativity. 
• Find a comfortable position and use good posture when you sit and write so your body doesn't take strain.
• Minimize distractions by wearing noise-canceling headphones.
• Use focus apps like FocusWriter and Forest to block websites and avoid doom scrolling.
• Set your smart devices on Do Not Disturb or airplane mode so you aren’t distracted by the constant pings of social media notifications and email alerts. 
• Experiment with ambient noise, like brown noise, to help you focus during each writing session.

Use my recommended tips and tools as a starting point, and then tailor your writing space according to what works best for you.  

8. Practice typing faster

An obvious solution for writing faster is typing faster.

With some practice, you can learn to write faster.

Engaging in typing practice helps enhance muscle memory and reduce the time you spend formulating words on the screen. 

Practicing how fast you type daily can help you increase your speed and how many words you type per minute.

First, check your typing speed with tools like TypingTest and MonkeyType. 

You can also play typing games and do exercises to increase your typing speed. These are fun and engaging, which is the best way to learn and improve.

Use Keybr or AgileFingers to learn touch typing, improve your speed and accuracy with TypeLit.io, or practice with the many games on TypingGames.Zone. 

9. Use speech-to-text tools

Technology can be a writer’s best friend. A speech-to-text dictation tool can greatly enhance how fast you write.

If you aren’t a fast typist, speech-to-text software can help capture your thoughts as the tool converts your spoken words into text.

It can also help you maintain your flow of thought, especially if your fast fingers can’t keep up with your ideas.

Popular speech-to-text dictation tools you can use are: 

• The speech-to-text feature in Microsoft Word 
• Google Docs Voice Typing
• Dragon Professional 
• Apple Dictation 
• Speechnotes.co

While these tools are beneficial, there are pitfalls to using them.

Don’t solely rely on voice-to-text software without editing your article since the text may not be 100% accurate.

You’ll find many filler words, awkward phrasing, and strange transitions between sentences and paragraphs. 

Speech-to-text tools may also not correctly capture homonyms, uncommon or technical words, and names, which can affect the quality of the text.

So, you may lose time when you have to edit the text later and untangle it carefully, and you may not remember what you said in the first place.

10. Use placeholders

Using placeholders is a smart strategy for bypassing words or sections that elude you or are tricky to write. Stopping to research something wastes time and slows down your writing pace. 

Instead of getting stuck and frustrated trying to find the perfect word or way to phrase your idea or argument, add a placeholder to keep your momentum going.

You can always return later to complete, revise, and refine the placeholders.

An easy placeholder is to write TK for the areas that need more research, such as statistics, citations, or quotes. It’s ideal if you want to flesh out a section more but don’t have an inkling of how to do that yet. 

TK is a strategy journalists use, meaning “to come.” While it would make better sense to write “TC,” few letter combinations in the English language use “tk.” 

So TK, as a placeholder, stands out from a visual perspective, ensuring you won’t simply glance over it and forget to fill that section when you edit your article.

To make the “TK” even more striking, use a different font color, bold it, or highlight it in bright yellow or green. As a final step, use the Find function to search for the TKs to ensure your article is complete.

Similarly, you may highlight a word or a sentence and add a comment to remind yourself what you wish to return to.

You can add comments in Word, Google Docs, and even right on Surfer's Editor.

11. Leverage AI writing tools

Another way you can be a faster writer is by leveraging AI writing tools.

AI tools can help generate ideas, conduct research and draft articles.

This helps you create and publish more content, increasing your competitive advantage and ranking on the search engine results pages. 

Several AI content writing tools exist in the market, such as ChatGPT and Surfer AI.

It's important to use the right tool for your needs.

For instance, while you can write content with ChatGPT, it's not the best solution for long-form SEO content.

To achieve your desired result, you will need to go back and forth with the chatbot, which will not help you write faster.

So, such a tool might be better suited for writing short-form copy.

Meanwhile, a tool like Surfer AI can prepare an article draft in less than 20 minutes. The article will also be keyword-optimized and fulfill the user search intent.

This way, you'll only need to focus on humanizing the AI article by infusing it with your tone of voice and insights.

12. Refine during editing

Whether you're writing the content yourself or with an AI tool, you shouldn't skip the editing phase.

During the editing phase, you refine the language, correct grammatical errors, and ensure the content meets user intent while improving overall readability and quality.

There are various techniques you can employ to edit your content effectively: 

• Take a break between writing and editing to approach your work with fresh eyes.
• Read the text out loud, from start to finish, to catch awkward phrasing and rhythm issues.
• Edit sequentially and in stages, starting with the bigger picture and moving to the language mechanics.
• Use editing tools like Grammarly and the Hemingway Editor to detect and correct common spelling and grammatical errors, enhance readability, and improve the overall quality of text.

And if you're using Surfer AI, you can leverage Surfy during the editing phase.

13. Work on your skills

Writing is like a muscle: you need to exercise and train it to get better and faster at it.

Consider taking courses to improve specific aspects of your writing.

For instance, writing courses can teach you how to structure your articles more effectively, ensuring a coherent and logical flow.

Additionally, SEO courses like the SEO Writing Masterclass can provide you with the knowledge to optimize your content for search engines, increasing its visibility and reach.

You can significantly enhance your writing efficiency and quality by honing these specific skills.

Key takeaways

• Writing faster can significantly boost your productivity, allowing you to publish more content and meet deadlines effectively.
• Creating an optimal writing environment minimizes distractions and enhances focus, leading to a smoother writing process.
• Thorough research and understanding user intent are crucial for structuring your content and avoiding unnecessary revisions.
• Using tools like AI writing assistants, speech-to-text software, and grammar checkers can streamline your writing process and improve content accuracy.
• Practicing typing skills and using writing techniques like the Pomodoro Technique and writing sprints can help maintain writing momentum and increase speed.
• Setting deadlines and using placeholders can help you stay on track and keep your writing flow uninterrupted.
• Regularly refining your writing skills through courses and continuous practice can lead to long-term improvements in writing speed and quality.

Conclusion

Writing faster is an invaluable skill that can significantly enhance your productivity and efficiency.

By implementing these 13 tips, you can streamline your writing process, minimize distractions, and produce high-quality content in less time.

From setting up an optimal writing environment to leveraging technology and refining your skills, each step is designed to help you write more quickly without compromising on quality.

Embrace these strategies to meet deadlines, boost your organic traffic, and stay ahead in the competitive world of content creation.

What are your favorite techniques for writing faster? Share your tips and join the conversation!

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