Writing Fast: To Go Where Few Of Today’s Writers Have Gone Before

If you are a writer, I’m going to save you at least a buck today. A buck might not be much, but save enough of them and you can retire.

The other day I ran across a podcast interviewing Rachel Aaron, “Miss 10K Words A Day”. After reading through the transcript of the interview I decided to check out her blog. I found the original post from 2011 in which she outlined her system for writing 10,000 words a day. After reading it, I came away singularly unimpressed. There was nothing new there. Which is so often the case with writing advice. As the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun”.

Now my intention is not to put down Ms Aaron. After all she’s radically increased her word count per day — and tossed onto the rubbish heap the myth that fast writing is bad writing. And I say, Good for her! But what’s apparent to me is that she’s young and has little knowledge of the fact high word counts for writers used to be very much the norm. They had to be. Those writers of the pulp era wrote for a living. Every word they wrote was money in their pocket. No words on the page, no money. It was that simple.

Ms Aaron also writes for a living and she too has discovered fast writing is one of the keys to making a livable wage from the writing of fiction. But fast writing is nothing new, although I get the impression she seems to think so.

Nevertheless, she’s come up with a system, a good system by the way, and is willing to sell it to you for 99¢. Which is very generous on her part. Some writing gurus charge a whole lot more for a whole lot less.

But everything she has to say can be gotten for FREE on the Internet. Starting with her own blog post in 2011.

Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock, that prodigious writer of science fiction and fantasy, used to write novels in three days. Karen Woodward outlines how he did it in a blog post from 2014. And you can find another article at wetasphalt.com.

The Guardian, in 2010, presented Moorcock’s “Ten Rules For Writers”. Wonderful advice from a master.

The articles above are all free, just click on the links, and if you follow the advice you will increase your daily word count substantially.

Lester Dent

But Moorcock didn’t come up with his method all by himself. He got it from Lester Dent, a pulp era writer with a fantastic output. Dent was the creator of Doc Savage. If you’ve never read Doc Savage, you are missing out on a classic.

Karen Woodward has a fabulous series of blog posts on Lester Dent’s method of fast writing. The first one is “Lester Dent’s Short Story Master Formula”. The links to the other four articles are at the bottom of the initial post. And note, the formula works equally well for novels. A shorter version of Dent’s formula can be found at Dirty 30s! on paper-dragon.com. And once again, this information is all free!

Anthony Trollope

But fast writing didn’t originate during the pulp fiction era either. It began much earlier. Alexandre Dumas (1802 - 1870) made frequent use of assistants and collaborators to increase his production. Which is, of course, a time honored method of doing so. James Patterson does it today.

One of my favorite authors, Anthony Trollope (1815 - 1882), in a writing career that spanned 37 years, produced 35 standalone novels, two 6-novel series, 42 short stories, 2 plays, 18 works of non-fiction, and 3 articles, as well as keeping up a voluminous correspondence. Without the help of assistants or collaborators. How did he do it? Quite simple, really.

For most of his writing career, Trollope worked a full-time job at the post office. Which meant he had to make the most of his time. He’d get up 2 1/2 hours before he had to leave for his day job in order to have time to write. The first half-hour he reviewed what he wrote the previous day. For the next two hours, he wrote.

He wrote by the clock. Literally. There was a clock on his desk. He wrote, by hand, with a dip pen, 250 words every 15 minutes. Or 2000 words in those two hours. He did that every day.

If during the two hours he completed the novel he was working on, he took out a fresh sheet of paper and began the next one. What that tells me is he had the story idea already in his head or written down somewhere. The key is he didn’t have to think about it. It was already there.

Trollope also kept a journal in which he recorded his daily word count. The purpose was to catch himself if he started slacking off.

Let’s summarize Trollope’s method:

1. Have the storyline in your head, at the very least. Jot a few notes, if you need to. Moorcock and Dent did the same thing by writing in fictional universes they’d already created in detail. They didn’t have to figure out stuff on the fly.
2. Set aside a regular time and place to write EVERY DAY. This is one of the secrets Rachel Aaron discovered and used to increase her word count.
3. Review the previous day’s work to prime the pump and get the juices flowing. This is akin to warming up exercises before a person goes jogging.
4. Don’t dawdle. Write quickly and get the words down. If you need notes or an outline in order to do so, then take a few minutes to jot them down. Writers often get bogged down when they have to spend time thinking about what they are going to write instead of writing it. Another secret Ms Aaron discovered.
5. Record your progress. That way, if you find you are falling behind, you can easily pinpoint why and correct the problem. This is another one of the secrets Ms Aaron discovered, which I am passing along to you.

There you have it, Anthony Trollope’s secret to speedy writing. The granddaddy of speedy writers. You also now know Michael Moorcock’s method, Lester Dent’s method, and Rachel Aaron’s method of speedy writing. And all for FREE! You’ve just saved yourself a buck.

The secret to fast writing is no secret. Writers have been writing quickly for many, many decades. As Dean Wesley Smith has pointed out, it is the traditional publishing world and academia that has made us think fast writing equals hack writing. I am very glad Rachel Aaron has discovered the secret to fast writing and is popularizing it. But it has never been a secret. It’s just been demonized by those who didn’t and don’t write for a living.

So get out your pencil, pen, or keyboard and start writing. You’ve nothing to lose but those doggone low word counts.

As always, comments are welcome. Until next time, happy reading! And happy fast writing!