Daphne Gray-Grant teaches business owners, academics, corporate communicators, book writers, and others how to banish writer’s block so they can boost their writing speed with happiness and ease.
She started her career in the writing world in a family business, then started in a large metropolitan daily company as a senior editor. She became a director of communications and then did something big — she had TRIPLETS!
WOW! (don’t mind my little tangent about my labor and delivery nursing)
– shout out to my twin @jackie!
She decided to try to work from home. Found out quickly that working at home with three infants was not for her…at first.
We talked about our big differences, she hated writing and I hate editing, and she provided tips on how to cope with both!
Daphne shared her tips to boost your writing speed
With her skills, she doubled her writing speed AND enjoys writing now (as well as enjoys editing!) I also found out that I am part of that 20% of people who like writing hate editing. Most people hate the writing part!
She hated writing but loved editing. Every time she writes she got so stressful, painful, and slow. To find a solution to her problem, she went to every book she could find about writing, she talked to a lot of people, she did a lot of experimenting and in the end, she was able to double her writing speed. She turned writing into something she enjoyed doing.
Basic principles that’ll make a difference to most of the people who find writing slow and painful:
- Try to write too soon. So, it’s essentially forcing yourself to write before you’re ready to write.
- Active thinking planning is such an important part of writing.
- You can’t write until you’ve done the research, but you might do a lot of research and haven’t figured out what your point is in the paper. And if you haven’t figured out what your point is, then you’re not ready to write.
The best pieces of advice she can give to somebody who just started to freelance writing business or any business at home.
- Teach yourself to learn how to mind map. Mind mapping is incredibly valuable to all. There’s a lot of books written about mind mapping, Tony Buzan is a worldwide expert on it. Tony suggests that the topic on the center of the page and Daphne did a little tweak to that because she finds what works better is to write a question in the center of the page. The thing about the question is it’s more effective and provocative.
- A typical mistake she found many beginners make is that they tend to write too much information in their mind maps. Remember, it’s just about just having a couple of words to represent the ideas you want to remember. You don’t need to spell out the whole story or the whole period of your journal article.
Tips to start writing faster:
- Some people generally develop the editing while they write and that’s so toxic. It’s bad because it will make you uncomfortable and slow. Remember all you need is a crappy or happy first draft. Just keep writing and don’t worry about the quality.
- Edit after the writing and also take what Daphne calls an “incubation period”. So for someone writing for a long term project like a book, she suggests you edit it after 6 weeks. And for blog posts, try to allow a day before editing because you’re going to be a much better editor at that point.
- Getting away from the computer is a really good thing to do like forcing yourself to go on a walk, particularly before you start writing because you’re going to breathe more deeply and you’re going to be oxygenating your brain. So go for a walk before you write, that’ll help you improve your writing a lot.
Take a look at her website and go get some accountability if you need it!
Some plugs for Daphne are her amazing book:
https://www.publicationcoach.com/happy-first-draft/
Her accountability program:
https://www.publicationcoach.com/get-it-done/
Her website:
https://www.publicationcoach.com/
Be sure to sign up for her newsletter!
Mindmapping deep dive:
https://www.publicationcoach.com/all-about-mindmapping/
Mentioned on the show:
https://www.tonybuzan.com/
Need more tips to write faster? Check out more tips on Episode 49 of The Savvy Scribe Podcast.
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