3 steps to Writing Better, Easier & Faster
While we talk a lot about what to write — More stories! Fewer words! Shorter sentences! — we don’t focus so much on how.
Most of us were never taught to write. We were taught instead to rewrite: how to spell, punctuate and use the right grammar. As a result, we try to do three things at once: Figure out what to write, write it and get it right. No wonder writing is so hard!
But if you’ll break your work up into three stages of the writing process and write step by step, you’ll write better, easier and faster. This process has saved me thousands of hours of writing time over the course of my career.
Are you ready to write better, easier and faster? Here are the three writing process steps:
1. Prewriting
Prewriting is where you get ready to write, or develop a plan for your story. This step includes everything you do to prepare to put the first word onto the page, including research, developing your story angle and organizing your message.
Put your effort up top. Most writers invest little time in the prewriting process, focusing instead on fixing a lame draft during the rewriting phase.
Turn that investment upside down: Spend the bulk of your time getting ready to write, and you’ll spend less time fixing what you wrote. As a result, you’ll write better, easier and faster.
2. Freewriting
There comes a point in any writing project where you have to follow Ernest Hemingway’s first rule for writers and apply the seat of your pants to the seat of a chair. You have to write.
And that’s the second stage of the writing process: freewriting, or getting your rough draft on paper or the screen. It’s much easier to revise your work when you have a piece of writing to revise.
3. Rewriting
Here’s where you fine-tune your message: revising and editing and nailing grammar, spelling and punctuation.
This is what we used to call writing!
Spend enough time prewriting and freewriting, and rewriting should be a breeze. Instead of heavy lifting — cutting and pasting and moving and fixing — rewriting becomes tweaking and polishing.
Why 3 steps of the writing process?
Writers who divide their writing into these steps are:
- Less likely to suffer from writer’s block
- More likely to meet their deadlines
- Unlikely to get stressed out in the process
Want to write better, easier and faster? Why not try prewriting, freewriting and rewriting today?
Work with — not against — your brain
While we talk a lot about what to write — More stories! Fewer words! Shorter sentences! — we don’t focus so much on how.
Writing is hard because we weren’t taught how to write. Instead, we were taught how to edit: how to spell, punctuate and use the right grammar.
But there is a how to writing. Learn a few simple steps that will make your writing time more effective and efficient at How to write Better, Easier & Faster — our writing-process workshop starting Sept. 18.
You’ll learn to invest your time where it’ll do you the most good … stop committing creative incest … even save time by editing before writing.
Save up to $100 with our group discounts.
