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How To Improve Your Writing for Speed and Quality

Updated on November 2, 2013
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Writing Faster While Maintaining Content Integrity

Many people would like to know how to write faster to produce more content without degrading the quality of the articles and copy that they write. Various writers have different methods of achieving this for for me, through a linguistic and educational stance, it all begins in infancy.

Additional methods can be added little by little throughout the lifespan as well. Further, it is possible for some people to learn to write substantial amounts of content of good quality later in life. This can apply to other skills as well. This all is what I have seen among clients, students, and friends.

A young computer engineer that did not write began to produce beautiful poetry. An older CPA began to produce fine charcoal drawings. The list goes on.

All things being equal, some people will not enjoy writing as much as others do, because their interests and skills lie more fully elsewhere. There is no shame in this. Multiple Intelligences Theory explains that most people have a high-scoring cluster of 3 intelligences - say, writing, arts, and mathematics - and this may not include writing at all.

Those that score lower in writing can still write well and even profusely, if they want to do so and know how to make it happen.

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CalligraphyThe 2-handed manual alphabet used in British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language. (photos this page public domain)
Calligraphy
Calligraphy | Source
The 2-handed manual alphabet used in British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language. (photos this page public domain)
The 2-handed manual alphabet used in British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language. (photos this page public domain)

You may well ask, "How did Helen Keller, blind and deaf, learn to speak and write?" Her language was a language and culture all its own, taught her by her teacher Annie Sullivan. Further, American Sign Language (AMS) and that of other countries is its own culture and to see poetry done in Sign is to feel music rather than to hear it.

It is wise to be attuned to all sorts of languages - ASL, Native American Sign Language, military sign, the new infant sign, the vocalizations of elephants and humpback whales. All of these have helped me - I no longer falter at a keyboard. I do, however, begin to speak in multiple languages at once, combining the mental images made of two more languages, because I think in pictures -- Some pictures occur only in some languages. I actually speak only two languages, though, but can read French and understand a portion of some others.It all helps my writing.

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Source
Cab Calloway in 1947.
Cab Calloway in 1947. | Source
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Basic Language Skills

From worldwide observations and educational research, it seems generally true that native language is enmeshed with personality. By the same observations, a human can learn several languages, and it may be easier for younger children to learn them most quickly and fully; although, 21st century learning systems are helping adults to do so.

For adequate writing skills, language input and output processing must be given a boost by talking to a baby. Not baby talk, but standard English or whatever other language is spoken; although, baby talk will at least produce sounds in the child and that is a start.

A good example is the group of children with shrunken brains in Eastern Europe discovered in the 1980s, who were helped by language and touch interaction as well as better nutrition. In addition, the British foundlings study of the mid-20th century discovered that babies that were fed and had diapers changed, but had no other interaction, died. The list goes on and on.

Listening to spoken language as a baby is the first natural step to becoming a good writer.

Next, the child must be encouraged to talk, because the language must go into and come out of a brain to train the neurological circuitry. In Ohio school systems, the education years have been extended down through Pre-K age 4 and Pre-K age 3 in order to ensure that these children experience people speaking to them, encouraging language, and developing their spoken languages.

This program arose from the long-term circumstance of a portion of Welfare to Work teen and adult parents sitting their children in cribs alone all day and ignoring them out of lack of parenting skills or motivation. Pre-K 3 & 4 are being linked to higher rates of high school graduation for the former infants, with higher reading levels.

So, if you do not talk much, join the Toastmasters Club or sing aloud with your favorite musical numbers. Join a glee club. Attend a concert. It all helps.

In order to write, read.
In order to write, read.

A Method for Writing Good Content Faster

If you want to write more, then read more.

It is a matter of language and thought processing and others things for different people. Analogy: Water flows more freely through an open, often used pipe than through a rarely used lime-encrusted pipe.

Reading a variety of genres at various reading levels will increase your writing output. Reading produces many effects in the reader-writer and these may vary individually. However, reading exposes one to more new vocabulary, different ways of combining words and sentences, other world views, new concepts and images, concepts present in only certain foreign languages and not English, etc.

I am in the habit of reading at least 250 pages a day, whether it be nonfiction, good fiction, electronics manuals, foreign language articles, a Russian newspaper, or many others.

My advantage is that I learned to speed read in college. A positive to this experience was the fact that it overcame poor reading habits instilled by teachers that wanted to slow down my reading in the first grade. By first year in college, my reading speed was raised from the dead.

How to Write Good
How to Write Good
Writer Jon Vorhaus offers his tips in a humorous, tongue-in-cheek style.
 

Organization - Thoughts and Things

Organization in Thinking and Writing

Organization is one key to writing good work faster. In fact, organization and thought may likely take longer than the writing. for example, Frank Lloyd Write produced the blueprints of the home Falling Water start to finish in one morning, after having spent 3 months studying and visualizing the property. Other architects that would have drawn the blueprints little by little would have taken several months to finish their work in that era. Preparation and organization is the longest part of many successful projects.

I worked with visualization, even hypnosis, with many patients for several years, so thinking organization has become automatic for me in a way. As I read, I detect patterns in the material that overlay other patterns in my and create new ones for future use. Recognizing pattern, relationships, and flow are all important parts through organization for increasing writing skills and quantities. There are self-help manuals and workbooks at the local book stores for developing all of these talents.

  • Organize: Dedicate Time to Read - an hour a day to start. One famous author has her main character state from time to thime that his English teacher taught her classes to be able to write 1000 words about anything. That is good practice.
  • Organize: Dedicate Time to Write - an hour a day to start.
  • Organize: Use relaxation in the form of deep breathing, visual imagery, brain-stimulating music such as baroque styles.
  • Organize: Knowledge - Write what you know or study something well in order to write about it well. Interview people, make phone calls, travel.
  • Organize: Exercise. Physical exercise helps the brain to think and produce writing.
  • Organize: Brain Exercise - In American culture, language resides largely on the right side of the brain (in Japan, it's both sides), so exercise your left hand that is connected to your right brain. Look for right-brain workbooks in your libraries and book shops.
  • Organize: Equipment. Use a computer that works well; broken, slow equipment are not conducive to writing. Lilian Jackson Braun in her 90s still uses yellow legal pads for her novel writing, but it's slower going. When you write, having everything you need with you. This includes computer programs (word processing, statistical packages, PhotoShop, etc.), lists of web sites that provide free photos, online dictionaries and thesauruses, etc.) Decide what you need to produce good writing, if you have not done so already, and put it into consistent place.
  • Organize; Skills. 1) If you're not a good typist, or not proficient with word processing features, then take a course and/or practice until you are. I never had a course and it took me quite a while to become a faster typist. 2) Increase your vocabulary with new words every week. The more you have with which to work, the easier it will be to write and to produce writing versatility.3) Outlining is important, unless you can ponder a topic for a while and the write the article start to finish.
  • Organize: Fuel - Get enough food, water, and rest so that your brain can do it's best work. Occasionally, you may find that you will do your best work while fasting -- This may depend on many factors, individual to only yourself. Fasting can be a spiritual and mental experience in which skills are heightened.

(This photo is from Gastonmag on sxc.hu)
(This photo is from Gastonmag on sxc.hu)

Writing Manuals and Books

My Methods

I did not start out as a writer, but developed some writing skills more highly while I was teaching adult education and high school/college classes in grammar, vocabulary, and creative writing. When I began using the Internet, my writing skills increased tenfold, because of all the information I could access without having to climb into the university library stacks until midnight every night. I still like to look at hardcopy books, but I've learned what to trust on the Internet and what to question and how.

ORGANIZATION

1) Many times, I will choose 5 topics for Hub Pages and set them all up in my account with the capsules and the tags I will use. This gives me skeletons to flesh out, so to speak.

2) Next, I fill in the pictures and graphs I will use. This is because that is how we learned to do our Masters Theses in Preventive Medicine - gather the vital graphs and charts and then write the article to showcase them and tie them together. In Hub Pages, I have found the text to be more important than the graphics in many cases.

3) Next, I begin filling in all the capsules, sometimes working on three Hubs at once, moving back and forth during the day between my other work. That way, I do not get bogged down by one topic. By the second day, the Hubs seem to complete themselves.

Other times, I will have thought about a topic, arise in the morning and write it from start to finish. If you want to accomplish something more quickly or solve a problem, think about it before you go to sleep. The brain works at night.

I write at home, but upload the text and photos at the university or community computer labs, because they are equipped with T1 and T9 Internet access lines - very fast and faster than anything I could get at home.

4) I choose topics that I know well or with which I have some familiarity and can research more in-depth. Fortunately, university and other databases worldwide are available to me for that task. Public libraries have research features in the sidebars of their home pages and you can access them with your library card. for photos, several Hubs have been written with free photo and clip art sites.

5) Flash drives - I carry a flash drive in my pocket and whenever I see photos are ideas on the web, I download information for later use. I also carry a laptop and spiral notebooks with me for notes.

6) Writing - I write regularly about various interesting topics and I can use this material for book reviews, Hub Pages, and other venues. I just pull it up when I need it. For recipes and food related Hubs, I have 1000s of recipes collected over just a few years, really, of practice. Making new recipes is fun and that makes it easy for me.

7) There are some other things that I am sure I do, but which have become automatic for me, so I no longer notice them. The more you read and write about more varied topics, the more this is likely to happen for you as well.

working

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