Tag Archives: #HAHD challenge

How to Write Fast

How to write fast? My students want to know. I find it kind of funny that I’m now able to write about as fast as my typing speed will allow. Because way back when I was in academia full-time, it took me WEEKS, or even MONTHS to write an article.

I mean, if I look at my first few EZA articles, I wrote maybe one a month, and then a few more… But it was a chore. I think I have to thank Jason Fladlien for teaching me how to write faster — and eventually even really fast. If you want to find out more, just click here for Jason’s Instant Content Creation.

Some people have other ways to write faster, but my ibook can’t handle Dragon Naturally Speaking, not even the Mac version of it.

But that might not be such a bad thing. Here’s why.

I understand that Dragon isn’t all that perfect. So there might be typos and punctuation snafus and so on. And I would have to fix them all before I can post my articles.

Here’s why I have realized just how big of a hassle that might turn out to be…

I have experimented with another way to speed up my writing. I did a series of teleseminars, and when I needed to get some articles written up in a hurry, I decided to extract a bunch of articles form my teleseminars.

That was a good idea — in theory. And I did get a few really good ones from my teleseminar.

BUT…

Guess what! I don’t exactly speak in articles. Not when I’m on a teleseminar, though maybe I could learn…

And the transcriptions (outsources) were, uhm, in major need of editing. In a few places I couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be, short of going back to the audio. That was really embarrassing.

And all that editing took a lot of time. More time, it turns out, than it would have taken me to simply whip out those articles from scratch.

I’m really a visual-llinguistic person. I am best at processing written down information, and as I write and watch the words appear on the page, I get a pretty good sense of where it’s going and can take it there. When I’m talking, I don’t have that same feedback loop.

So how to write fast? For me, it’s to write about something I know, on a keyboard that lets me type quickly, which my ibook keypad does.

More on that next time. Also more on writing for different self-help purposes, not all in the same post, obviously. Right now though, I want a cup of tea.

Happy writing!

Elisabeth

P.S.: Curious about all those articles I wrote in the last few days of the #HAHD “Challenge”? Just go to http://www.articlesbyelisabeth.com and work your way down the list 😉 Or even better — pick out the articles on the topics that interest you.

Click HERE for More Info on How to Write REALLY FAST!

The Challenge of Meeting Challenges

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for Connie Ragen Green’s new blogging challenge — and then, after posting a bunch of posts, promptly forgot all about it.

Well, not really forgot about it so much but becoming preoccuppied with other deadlines — work for clients, papers to grade, etc., that seemed more important.

So what to do? Well… a bit perspective is in order.

It reminds me of Roger Mellott’s “Nose on the Screen” image — when we get too wrapped up in our stuff, we are like flies that sit on the TV screen — unable to see the big picture, just running from one dot to the next etc.

And that’s how I realized a few things…

1) Doing a few things for my own blog and other stuff is important.
2) It doesn’t take away all that much time, actually.
3) That’s where perspective comes in… just how long DOES it take me to write a blog post?
(I’m not going to say, but depending on what I’m writing about, it’s not terribly long).

Now this gets me to another challenge… the Ezinearticles.com HAHD challenge. Writing a hundred articles in 100 days!

I made it to the end of the last one — kind of. A few articles ended up not being quite long enough, but I made it to 100. The short ones? The previous challenge, which overlapped with this one, didn’t require the articles to be more than 400 words, and so I skimped a bit for the last few that I turned in for THAT challenge — and those were also part of this set of 100.

But I learned a few cool things about myself and my writing ability — boy can I write fast if I’m under deadline pressure and I’m not trying to please anyone than myself, other than making sure that the articles meet the length requirements. That and pass muster with Ezinearticles’ editorial team, which they usually do anyway since my articles are generally good ones 😉

Anyway, challenge number 5 is coming up, starting on May 1, and THIS time, I’m going to approach it more the way it was supposed to be done — writing an article or two every day or two, so I keep building up my count week after week and won’t be forced into a mad wrist-pain inducing dash during hte last few days.

My counter is ready to go, sitting in my author’s area. Only 7 days till the starting date…

So what’s the leson about the challenge of meeting challenges?

1) Don’t underestimate what you can do.
2) Don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
3) Slow and steady gets you there. But sometimes, when needed, so will a mad dash!

What do you think?

Let me know! Just post a comment. I’ll incorporate the best comments in a follow-up post! And there will be one or several since I have to post a whole lotta posts to meet Connie’s challenge!

Happy Weekend!