How to write faster (and land more writing clients) as a freelancer

Improving your structural writing speed

1. Set a daily practice

The first step in improving the speed of your writing is practice. You can learn about techniques and styles all day long, but until you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you will not be able to improve and build on the skill. This is because writing involves muscle memory - both physically and mentally.

Think of your daily practice like writing sprints, racing each day to see how many words you can write in 10 minutes. This can be related to a specific project - like a blog post or a book - or you can write about your day, turning the writing session into a journalling moment of reflection.

The more you practice, the more efficient you become at thinking of ideas, and the quicker your hands will be at typing or writing them down. It doesn’t matter if all you write in a day is an email. It is essential to make a habit of writing something—anything—once a day, so when it comes time to write a piece for a client, you are warmed up and ready to go.

With daily practice, make sure you set a timer and respect it, even if that means stopping mid sentence.

2. Complete typing challenges

While it’s necessary to improve the thought processes that lead to faster writing, it’s equally as important to improve the physical processes—mainly, typing. No matter how quickly you can think of ideas to write, if you type slowly, the writing process will still be too long.

Typing challenges will help you not only become more comfortable using a keyboard, but they also help speed up your muscle memory on certain words—especially harder to spell words, or words using letters on the edges of the keyboard, like those that contain ‘z’. Here are some resources you can use to help you go from slow typer to never needing to look at the keyboard while typing again:

For the working professional: TypingCat

Not only does TypingCat have regular typing lessons for basic-advanced levels, but it also has courses geared towards professionals in various industries - business jargon, legal terminology, medicine/infectious diseases, and even coding.

For the nostalgic typer: ZType

Based on the popular 70s arcade game Space Invaders, ZType has you type out words to protect your ship from alien missiles. The faster you type, the safer your ship is, and the words get longer and more complex as you progress.

For the beginner typer: Typing Trainer

If you’re new to typing, or just feel like you never properly learned how, Typing Trainer is perfect for you. This program offers step-by-step tutorials on how to type, and uses a methodical approach when introducing new keys, so you can learn gradually.

For the music and literature buff: Speed Typing Online

Similar to other typing programs, Speed Typing online starts at your required level, and increases in complexity as you improve. Unlike other programs however, this one gives you the option of typing out famous song lyrics, poems, fables, books, etc. Now you can nail typing, and your next sing-along.

3. Try to write in a stream of consciousness

If you stick with tip #1 and practice writing on a daily basis, on some days you might find yourself struggling to come up with ideas to write about to keep up the habit. This is where consciousness writing comes in handy. Rather than wasting time trying to think of a topic or something ‘useful’, just start writing about whatever is on your mind. It could be anything—‘I wonder what we’re having for dinner’. ‘I want pizza’. Literally anything.

This type of writing is beneficial because it takes the pressure out of writing, both the story and the word count. Instead, you get to focus purely on your writing flow. As a freelancer, your main focus is to maximize your time, and that can result in a lot of pressure to immediately perform any time you sit down to work. Unfortunately, our brains don’t always work that way, and it’s important to acknowledge that and lean into it a bit.

Consciousness writing allows you to still be ‘productive’—you’re still practicing your writing after all—but it’s more lighthearted and gives your mind a bit of a break. Whatever it is that’s on your mind, write it down, see where the thought takes you, and when you’re done with that thought, you can go back to the real task you have to accomplish for the day.

Consciousness writing can be especially productive if you're trying to write a book. There are so many small adventures or conversations that characters in your book need to have in order to make the story flow. And if you write with a stream of consciousness, you can let those moments flow more easily. They will likely need editing, but you can get the raw information down on paper.

4. Read more

Another easy and effective way to improve your ability to write is to simply read more. When you read, you are implicitly learning by absorbing the language, styles, and techniques used by other writers. Chances are you’ve read a book, article, etc. and struggled to get through it because it was poorly written, but there are also probably countless that you loved reading because the writing was so great.

As you read, pay attention to every element you can: Did you like the tone and style? The vocabulary the author used? Was the formatting easy to follow? Use reading as an opportunity to consider what works and what doesn’t for various types of writing, and apply this to your own work.

Not only will it improve your writing from a technical perspective, but your writing will also improve because you inherently know what sounds better for the reader, because you yourself are one.

5. Remove distractions

Similar to other tasks requiring real thought, writing is best accomplished with no distractions, something many writers and authors know to be true. If you’re distracted by social media, other tasks you have on the go, or even the sound of your neighbours talking, you won’t be able to work efficiently. Not only do distractions prevent you from getting started on a task, but they make it nearly impossible to generate and stay on a train of thought.

Further, writing while distracted generally leads to choppy work that lacks coherence and clarity, and that isn’t reader friendly. So if you want to write faster, remove all distractions, both in your physical environment and on your computer. Write in full screen with only the necessary tabs open, silence your phone, wear earplugs or headphones - whatever you need to keep your eyes and mind focused on the writing task in front of you.

You can also design an ideal environment for yourself, for example using a standing desk, to set yourself up for success.

6. Find your best writing time

Building a daily habit and removing distractions are all excellent steps to take to write faster, but they will be limited in their utility unless you are writing at the time best suited for you. Everybody is different, and what works for one person may be the complete opposite of what someone else needs. There’s no sense in waking up at 5am to try and be inspired by the excitement of the new day, if you’re the type of person who wakes up feeling like you’ve been hit by a train. Schedule your writing sessions at times that work for you.

Rather than taking advice from friends or internet influencers on the best time to write, engage in a bit of self reflection, and before you tackle any project, think about when you’re good at writing or when you want to write. Morning? Lunch? Evening? Late? Whatever time it is, write then. If you write at the time best suited for you, when you’re feeling most productive and ready to go, not only will ideas flow more easily, but your work will inherently be better.

As a freelancer, you have the ability to choose when you work, so take advantage of it! As long as you meet deadlines, it really doesn’t matter to clients.

7. Talk it out

When thinking quietly in your own head doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, a great next step to improve your writing is to talk it out before returning to your writing session. Similar to discussing something with another person, talking out loud can help you be more creative when hashing out ideas.

In many cases, just the process of hearing words read aloud helps bring clarity to ideas, allows you to elaborate on concepts, think from different perspectives, and determine whether or not what you’re trying to say actually makes logical sense. Tools like Yac or other voice notes can help you talk out your idea, and even give you a transcript so you can go through it later—no second person required.

8. Email yourself to eliminate distracting thoughts

As soon as you sit down to complete a task, that’s when your mind starts racing with all the other items on your to-do list, and random ideas you haven’t thought about in months. If you let them, these distracting thoughts can consume you, and before you know it, an hour has passed and you’ve only written two sentences.

In order to prevent these thoughts from taking over, if you have a distracting thought, email it to yourself. In doing so, you’re giving your brain the satisfaction of not fighting or dismissing the thought, while still enabling yourself to be productive with the work directly in front of you. As a result, you will be able to refocus your mind and energy knowing it’s not lost. You can focus back on the task at hand, and revisit the thought when you have the time.

9. Outsource your self control

Eliminating distractions by closing unnecessary tabs and silencing your phone only goes so far if you still lack the discipline to not open a new window, or pick up your phone to see what you’ve missed. When you sit down to write, especially if no ideas are coming easily, it’s natural to become fidgety and start to actively seek distractions to help quell the frustration of not being able to think of anything to write. This usually results in mindless scrolling.

If you have a nasty habit of going on social media, use Self Control (Mac) or Self Restraint (Windows) to block the sites for a specific period of time. Not only will it prevent you from wasting time scrolling your feeds, it will also prevent you from constantly reaching for your phone out of habit, since even if you opened it, you couldn’t look at anything anyways.

10. State your guiding principle up front

The final thing that will help improve your writing is to figure out what your guiding principle is, right from the get-go. In your research document, write a sentence that is the main prompt of the article, then make sure all research is vetted against that.

There is an abundance of information available in the world, and even for a specific industry or topic, the amount of information is overwhelming. Having a strong guiding principle will help you narrow your focus, better determine the scope of your project, and in turn, you will be able to search more effectively and yield fewer, but more relevant results. Moreover, if you come across a source that seems interesting but isn’t talking about the topic included in your guiding principle, you know to move on to the next source.

Improving your article production speed

Once you’ve set yourself up for success, it’s time to get to the brass tacks of article writing: research, outlining, drafting, and editing.

Conducting faster research

Research can easily take hours if you let it. Here’s how to speed up the process without sacrificing quality:

1. Break up research into distinct chunks

Conducting research can be a lengthy process that eats up a lot of your time before you even get to the actual writing stage. A good way to contain this process is to break up your research into distinct chunks. The first chunk is discovery. At this stage you have a bit of a guiding topic, but not much else, so all you need to do is see what sort of topics, themes, opinions, etc. are out there.

Step two is theme identification. In this step you start to analyze what you found in the discovery phase and begin to identify what’s going on. The third and final step is prioritization. This is where you begin to order your findings in order of importance based on the topic you’re writing about.

This method is effective for a couple reasons:

Easier to set goals: It gives you clear and concise goals for each part of the process. Rather than jumping in and just ‘researching’, by breaking up the process into distinct steps, you are able to narrow your focus and tailor your mindset to achieving each goal. This is a lot more effective and efficient than trying to do everything all at once, which can be extremely time consuming, not to mention confusing and overwhelming.

Easier to track: The second reason you should break up your research into distinct chunks is because it helps you track your work. Sometimes it’s not possible to sit down for an entire day and do all the research you need to do for a project in one go.

More likely than not, you will do some research, move on to something else, then return to your research later on when you have more time and renewed focus. For example, if you spend all morning completing step one and discovering what information is available on your guiding topic, if you take a break to eat lunch, when you return you will easily be able to pick up where you left off, and jump right into step two.

By breaking up the process into steps, it saves you having to waste time going over what you’ve already done since you will know exactly where you left off and what you need to do next.

2. Time-box your research

Time-boxing is another great method to speed up your research process—especially if you’re someone who tends to get lost in rabbit holes of information. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of resources, trying to find exactly what you need for your assignment.

To help with this, break up your research into increments of 25 minutes per 1,000 words max, up to a maximum of 1.5 hours. If you can’t find what you need within 1.5 hours, chances are you’re on the wrong path and you need to try something else.

If you repeat these time increments over and over with various search attempts and still can’t find anything, this could be a sign that the scope of the article needs to be different, and that you need to have a conversation with your client. And if this ends up being the case, at least using the time-boxing method for your research prevents you from wasting too much time before realizing something needed to be changed.

3. Use your calendar app wisely with interviews

If you have to schedule interviews as part of your research, schedule them for 25 minutes instead of 30. While this seems like a negligent difference, it can make a big difference in speeding up your conversation.

The reason for this is actually psychological. When you have 30 minutes, it’s easy to get chatting and fall into long conversations about what’s going on in the world, because half an hour seems like a long time. However, only having 25 minutes to complete an interview helps you work more quickly and get to the point faster, since by the time you say hello, you already only have 20 minutes left. As a result, you avoid getting lost in conversation or stumbling on topics that are not pertinent to the interview and your research.

Outlining faster

Outlining is a great middle ground between research and drafting. Done well, this step takes a few minutes but could save you hours in the drafting and editing process.

1. Don’t use segues in outlines

When you’re writing an outline, the point is to build a framework that will facilitate your drafting later on. To save time, don’t worry about adding segues or trying to make your outline flow nicely—that isn’t what it’s for. Instead, use bullet points that contain only the key words required to jog your memory once you get to the writing phase. Bullets are meant to be choppy, so don’t worry about making it sound ‘good’.

2. Use a “key point” sentence in your outlines

Nothing is worse than spending time creating an outline, only to sit down to write your first draft and think ‘what on earth was I talking about?' A good way to avoid this issue is to use a ‘key point’ sentence in your outline. For each section, write a sentence outlining what the section is supposed to say, points it needs to include, what it should educate the reader on, etc. This step is particularly helpful because again, it is unlikely you will be creating your outline then drafting immediately after.

By writing down the key points required, you are doing future-you a favour by clarifying what needs to be included where. This will not only make your life easier when it comes time to write the draft, but it will also improve the quality of your work since you know you won’t be forgetting any important pieces of information.

3. Use descriptive titles and subheadings in outlines

Similar to ‘key point’ sentences, descriptive titles and headings are essential when creating an outline. Using these in your outlines will help keep all your thoughts organized and in order, so you can have an article that follows a clear, logical progression, is easy to follow, and is therefore reader-friendly.

Similar to key point sentences, having descriptive titles and subheadings helps jog your memory during the drafting process, so you know exactly what to include in each section. This helps you write faster, and helps you stay on topic for each section and avoid going off on tangents.

Drafting faster

This is it: writing your article. Here’s how to speed up the process as much as possible.

1. Don’t edit yourself as you go

One way to drastically slow down your writing process is to edit as you go. Instead of getting caught up trying to fix little issues as you’re writing, thinking it will save you time later, instead focus on one thing at a time and just write, write, write! The main goal of your first draft is to put words on paper - just get through it, and you can go back and fix/change as much as you like during the editing process.

2. Lean into your bad habits (if they help with speed)

Sometimes our bad habits can actually work to our advantage, and this is definitely the case when it comes to writing a first draft. For example, if you’re a talkative writer, run with it! You can always edit later. The same thing goes for other bad habits, like if you have bad grammar or don’t like using stats. Again, the point of a first draft is just to write. You can always go back and fix/add/change words (or even full sentences) as necessary.

3. Aim for B-Minus quality

At risk of sounding like a broken record - your first draft needs to be complete, not beautiful. This is why you should aim for B-Minus quality at first. Aiming for this level gives you enough information and quality to work with that you don’t need to completely redo the content in the editing process, while still acknowledging the fact that the first draft is only a small step in a multistep process. Your editing rounds and subsequent drafts are what bring that B-Minus up to an A or A+.

4. Write your intro last

A common misconception is that writing needs to be done in a certain order—introduction, then body, then conclusion. However, this can slow down your writing process, since it’s easy to get stuck on trying to write the perfect hook to begin your piece.

The introduction is supposed to be a quick snapshot of the entire article, and if you force yourself to write the intro before completing the piece, you run the risk of it being choppy, random, or having it run off on a mini tangent that doesn’t fall in line with what you’ve written in the article itself.

If you have an idea in mind or if you really won’t be able to focus until you have at least some semblance of an intro, then go ahead and write a quick little blurb. But otherwise, wait until you’re done the piece, then go back and write the intro. In doing so, you’re not only making your job easier, since you’re already in a good writing mindset and a hook will probably come more easily to you, but you also have the narrative fresh in your mind, and it will take far less time to write a relevant and poignant introduction.

5. Use placeholders when drafting

If you’re writing and you realize you need to look up a stat, instead of stopping your train of thought, just write a placeholder instead. For example: “When this happened, X% of people left.” So long as you’ve made it clear exactly what type of stat you need to include later, using a placeholder will significantly reduce your drafting time since it eliminates the need to interrupt your current flow and sift through pages of research trying to locate the exact figure required.

Not only will this help you stay on track with your writing and not get distracted, it will also give you story flow, which you can then spot edit later with data.

6. Conduct spot research after drafting

After you’re done writing your draft, it is always a good idea to go back and conduct spot research. This is done by going through your draft, pinpointing all the areas you’ve included stats or data, and adding/verifying the information. In addition to giving you the opportunity to find additional stats to support any claims you’ve made, spot research also helps you to check yourself and make sure the data you’re presenting is relevant and accurate.

Nothing is worse than making a bold, thought-provoking statement, and having nothing to back it up. Strong evidence bolsters your writing, and conducting spot research is a quick and effective way to improve your writing without actually jumping into the full editing process. The key with drafting is to get something on paper. Once this is done, spot research can help round it out and complete it before editing.

Editing faster

From complete to perfect—here’s how to speed up the editing phase of your writing sprint.

1. Start by editing for key point alignment

The first step in making your editing process quick and effective is to check for key point alignment. Does the text in each section actually talk about the key points of the section? If your answer is anything other than ‘absolutely’ you know right away that you need to fix it and make sure the text in the paragraph(s) match the main idea of the section.

It’s important to tke this step first in the editing process because if you go for smaller editing tasks first, such as checking for grammar and syntax, then check for key point alignment and article flow, you run a high risk of needing to do a second round of editing for grammar after you’ve corrected these higher-level issues.

Making sure you complete your editing process starting with big issues like key point alignment is an easy way to avoid having to re-do any steps, and in turn, saves a lot of time.

2. Notice your bad habits

In the draft writing section, you were encouraged to lean into your bad habits if they helped you write faster—now it’s time to edit out those bad habits. Are you too talkative? Not descriptive enough? Not data-driven? Figure out where your bad habits are coming through in your writing, and edit those first. This will help get rid of any error patterns so you can then move forward with editing the more nitty-gritty details.

3. Use CTRL-F for filler words

We tend to write how we speak, which often results in the use of filler words such as ‘that’, ‘so’, ‘well’, etc. Most of the time we don’t even realize we’re using them, but an overuse of filler words can have a big impact on the quality and ease-of-reading of an otherwise well-written article. A quick and easy way to correct this during the editing process is to use CTRL-F to search for those words, read the sentence, and decide whether they’re necessary for proper syntax, or if they’re superfluous and can be removed. After thinking about it, you’ll be surprised how rarely you actually need to use the word ‘that’.

4. Look out for double verbs

Another easy thing to look out for when editing to help speed up your process is double verbs, or in other words, the use of a passive voice—for example, “is doing” or “do want”. Replacing these verbs with a more active voice will give your writing more strength and clarity.

5. Read the content aloud

Reading in your head to edit is great, until your brain starts getting used to the writing and starts automatically correcting mistakes as you read, without you even realizing it. Reading the content aloud helps with this problem. When you read out loud, you’ll catch the weird grammar things you auto-corrected in your mind when you read silently.

Be conscious to really read each word, pause for each comma, and stop for each period, and you will notice very quickly which parts flow with ease, and which areas are choppy and need improvement.

6. Use technology to help you edit

Humans are capable of a lot, but despite our best efforts, we are always prone to error. Using technology to help you edit is an effective way to catch problems before they become a big issue.

Not only are editing programs faster at skimming an entire piece of writing, but they are also an excellent tool to uncover mistakes you may not have even realized you were making. Some good programs to check out if you want to incorporate tech into your editing process are Grammarly, Hemingway, and SEO edits on services like Surfer or Postpace.

7. Edit on a different day than drafting (if possible)

The final step in improving your editing process and making it more efficient is to do your best to edit on a different day from drafting. Allowing yourself to have time and a good night’s sleep in between drafting and editing gives you a clear mindset and helps you see things differently, which will make your editing way better.

If it’s not possible to draft and edit on different days, at least try to give yourself time in between these two processes. Take a nap, go for a walk, go to the grocery store—anything to help switch your mindset from when you finish your draft to when you start editing.

Ways writing faster can help you land more clients

1. Speed as a value proposition

Clients like it when you do good work and submit it by their deadline—but clients like it even more if you can submit good work as quickly as possible. The faster you can get completed work in the hands of your clients, the quicker they get what they want, and the quicker their business can reap the benefits of your work.

If you’ve mastered the art of writing quickly while still producing the same high quality content, use that to your advantage by including it in your cold pitch as something you bring to the table. The ability to produce deliverables in a shorter time frame increases your value to a prospective client, and can set you apart from otherwise comparable freelancers.

2. Speed as a moment of delight

Nothing makes people happier than realizing they’ll get something they want sooner than expected. You can elicit this feeling by telling your clients a project is going to take a “normal” amount of time, then submitting it earlier than expected. The ability to do this not only allows you to meet their needs, but it also gives you the opportunity to wow them.

Under-promising and over-delivering is a sure-fire way to impress your clients.

3. Speed as a way to increase your capacity

Simply put, the faster you work, the more work you can do. If you improve the speed of your writing, you can accept higher volumes of work. For freelancers, this is a great thing not only because more work equals more money, but also because having an increased capacity allows you to accept larger projects that may have previously been too much when you wrote more slowly.

This opens up your potential client base to all sorts of people and projects which can help scale your business.

Writing is an ongoing practice

Learning to be a good writer doesn’t just happen in some stroke of magic where you wake up one day and boom you’re a good writer, or a fast writer. It’s a lot more structural than people think, and the process of becoming a good writer is a bunch of incremental wins. Sometimes the wins will be little, but other times they will be big, breakthrough wins and you will notice that your writing speed has increased significantly.

Writing is a lifelong learning process, and there’s always room for improvement, which means even if you’re not good now, you can be soon. And once you are, you have the opportunity to increase revenue, and create a more profitable freelance business.