Below is an interesting infographic that may be of help with this question.
Provided by K.M. Weiland at www.HelpingWritersBecomeAuthors.com.
Add your thoughts in the comments below.
Should You Be Writing Faster?
The Steve Laube Agency
Helping to Change the World…Word by Word
The Steve Laube Agency
Helping to Change the World Word by Word
Should I be writing faster?
Well, since that bad fall
I greet this thought with laughter
for I can barely write at all.
Words, the get away from me
like meth-addicted squirrels,
flashing quick from ground to tree
and dancing in mad whirls
that I cannot follow now,
since cracking of my skull,
and I don’t remember how
my writing once was full
of imagery that now is lost
at carelessness’ most fearful cost.
This is interesting. But I don’t agree with writing faster equating with publishing more books. Unless you self-publish, I guess.
For me, writing faster means a weak story that needs time to simmer in my brain. I can whip out a story quickly, but to make it full and rich and delicious, it needs time. I’m always glad when I don’t rush through something, because every time, I get ideas for revisions that make the story so much better.
Productive writers have a productive book creation process; unproductive writers don’t. That’s why productive writers generate more books of higher quality.
Throwing time at an unproductive process will get more books out; but fewer of lesser quality than might have been accomplished.
The steps in a productive process for creating a book–planning, research, writing, editing, and other steps–holistically work together.
Unfortunately, most westerners habitually use Frederick W. Taylor’s ideas for (micro)managing processes. Most view the book creation process as a series of isolated steps to check off a todo list. We change one step at a time without knowing how that affects the quality and efficiency of the entire process.
All writers would benefit from using W. Edwards Deming’s ideas on holistic processes and quality–his real ideas, not the bastardized versions promulgated in the west for profit. Increased efficiency and quality come from continuous improvement of different steps while accounting for how they affect other steps and the entire process.
Applying Deming’s ideas would lead to finishing more books of higher quality for a given effort. It’s not just a matter of trying to write faster.