Writing Speed: Why You Should Slow Down Your Prose

As a serious writer for several years, I have finished many a work of fiction and non-fiction.

I used to write 500 words a day, then spent the rest of the time I had editing what I had written. I wrote about three short stories this way, stopped writing for a while, came back to the craft with a renewed interest, and began to write exponentially more.

I upped the ante to about 2,500 words. At first it was just write as much as I could, but I, like many writers, needed a goal to achieve to feel good about a day's work.

I knew I couldn't get 2,500 words a day unless I had no other requirements, whether they were work or school, so anytime I could achieve that goal was a plus. On weekends it was easy for me to reach my goal, on weekdays it was a different matter - time became a factor.

I wrote countless fiction pieces, the occasional essay, all thinking I was brilliant, that, since I was writing fantasy, I would be the next Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks.

I joined some writing groups, with varying success on my stories. Most people had long critiques of my fiction; non-fiction was, as with other writers, easier for me to write decent work. I found fiction is an incredibly hard craft to write fast on.

The writing I had done slower had far less damning critiques; people seemed to like them more.

I learned to slow down my writing goals.

It was hard to give up the goal of 2,500 words of fiction a day; I was having a blast with it. Yet I could see I would not be rewarded for my effort.

I needed to slow down, to let the ideas sit, to edit more, to bring in more realistic story and dialogue elements.

Fiction is to hard to race through, a writer needs to take time to enliven the sentences.

This isn't to say that writing slow will help all works of writing. Some writers make a decent living racing from page to page - Isaac Asimov comes to mind as he would write fast and only use two drafts before sending it in. Stephen King writes like a madman, but he is also a good editor; he understands what fiction needs to be interesting better than any other living American writer.