How Fast Do You Write?

How fast do you write?

There is a belief amongst some authors that writers should take time to pore over their work and keep editing it until it s word perfect. I ve seen some authors forums become quite heated when people start comparing how much they each write in a day.

First off, everyone is different and has their own approach to writing, either fretting over every word to ensure each sentence is as well constructed as possible before moving on or letting the ideas fall out of their heads onto the blank screen without thinking any further ahead than the next word. So, I don t think we re fair to ourselves or to others if we compare our own creativity with those around us.

Some people write fast and produce excellent work that doesn t need editing. I remember reading about an author who would sit at his typewriter and write complete books in front of an audience, tearing out the sheets as he finished them so his fans could read his latest epic page by page, as he produced them. I don t think there are many out there who could match such feats, but there s nothing wrong in writing quickly. It s only recently, in the last hundred years or so, that the notion that time means quality has been the norm. Many of the classics were written quickly, most of Charles Dickens masterpieces were released in monthly or even weekly instalments, so he had to write quickly.

Until recently I could regularly write over ten thousand words a day and sometimes if I stayed up into the early hours I could churn out over twelve thousand. When I was on that type of roll, I would break Word on my computer as the system wouldn t be able to cope with the number of mistakes and all the red underlining would disappear.

But this level of output depended very much on what I was writing, how I felt and what was going on around me. It also took over my life, and left very little room for anything else.

Last year my approach changed and my level of output decreased as a result. I suddenly became fastidious about the mistakes on the page and wouldn t move on to the next paragraph unless I was happy with the one, I d been working on. I even started editing the chapters as soon as I d finished, which was very unlike me.

There is no set rule about how quickly you or anyone else should write. Some prefer to polish each word, while others let the words flood out and edit them later. The same goes for editing, there are no hard or fast rules, simply do what you feel like and what works for you and try not to be frustrated or concerned if your style changes.

For me writing is a personal thing, if something doesn t quite gel then the words won t flow.