Write a How-To Book - What is Speed Writing?

If you've been hanging around the internet marketing world for very long, you've run into people selling writing systems based on speed writing. They often make fantastic claims like Write Your How-To Book in 24 Hours or Less. Oops that's the name of my book. Sorry. Actually, the big difference is that they claim their system works no matter what type of book you are writing. So the titles are usually along the lines of Write Any Book in 24 Hours or Less.

But what is speed writing and where does it come from? What are its advantages and disadvantages?

Speed writing began from a journalistic trick. Journalists write short pieces which follow a very specific template or pattern. They need to write quickly and produce a great deal of writing in a very short period of time. There is no room for writer's block. Speed writing is a technique which focuses on those issues.

I apologize to my speed writing competitors but here's a ten second speed course in speed writing. Start by writing three words that describe your article. Two of them should be descriptive. For example, for this article I might have written "speed writing good bad". Which are four words, I know. This is your title and theme. Now as quickly as you can, begin to write. Don't edit. Don't fix errors. Don't stop. Just write. In five minutes, you'll have written a page or two. Write as much as you can on that subject until the five minutes runs out. Then stop. That's speed writing. The number of words in the phrase will vary from three to five. And the time will vary from two minutes to fifteen minutes. But you are always writing as quickly as you can and you do not edit -- even spelling errors are left.

Give it a try. If you occasionally suffer from writer's block when you try to write your how-to book, you'll find it a very useful tool. It's a great way to start your writing day off and get over writer's block.

That's probably Speed Writing's biggest advantage. It will help you to get over writer's block which is really just the fear of starting to write. By beginning your day with a writing exercise, you get the craftsman's juices flowing. The writing itself doesn't matter so if it's good or bad doesn't matter. The point is just to start writing.

The second advantage that Speed Writing has is that it helps us to focus on one good habit for your writing. When writing a how-to book, it is a good practice to focus only on the writing initially. Just get the words down on paper. The next day, before you start writing, reread what you wrote the day before. At that time, you can edit for spelling, grammar and any rough edges. The result is that you get to finish much more quickly since you won't have the temptation to overwork the writing.

However, speed writing does have a number of disadvantages when writing a how-to book. How-to books must have a very strong structure. And writing any long work requires you to pre-structure the work in order to succeed. Unfortunately, speed writing is based on writing without a net. Structure is not part of the technique. That causes several major disadvantages when writing how-to books and other long format writing.

Because speed writing is a technique that is focuses on writing without thought or structure it can result in going off into uncharted wilds. When writing a how-to book, you can't afford writing for the sake of writing. Everything on the page should focus on promoting the purpose of the book. That means speed writing will often produce pages and pages of writing that is unsuitable and unusable when writing a how-to book.

That also means that structural editing is required for a how-to book written using speed writing. Structural editing is the most expensive editing you can do since the editor is faced with rewriting whole sections of your book in order to improve understanding and/or style. The cost of structural editing is often three times that of simple stylistic or copy editing.

Finally, because speed writing is not structured it doesn't really help you to write. Yes, it is focused on producing quickly. Yes, it does help focus your writing on the topic represented by the three word phrase. However, on a paragraph by paragraph basis it doesn't help you to know what you want to say for each paragraph, on each page and in each chapter.

Glen Ford is an accomplished consultant, trainer and writer. He has far too many years experience as a trainer and facilitator to willingly admit.
By Glen Ford  |  Source