I write slowly when I care too much

Prolific writers don't fret

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

I have a confession to make.

I’m jealous of writers like Alex Mathers. He has two biweekly newsletters, a less frequent fiction newsletter, very active X and Instagram profiles. He also dabbles in video and audio and creates exclusive content for his subscribers. While regularly self-publishing ebooks, of course.

Not every one of his posts is a masterpiece. But they often have at least a small nugget of wisdom or a practical tip.

I’m a fairly productive creator. Every week I ship at least two Medium articles (around 1500 words), two short newsletters (300-500 words), a 20-40-minute video, and some tweets. Then I work with clients, study, and so on.

But I’m not at Alex’s level. And I know why.

I take my content too seriously.

What?!?

Wait, I’m not saying I should spew out shallow non-sense just to flood the socials and snatch my slice of visibility.

I’m saying I should fret less over the details and the outcomes. There’s a kind of lightness, of looseness, in Alex’s content. It feels like he’s in his environment, like his wisdom and knowledge flow uninterrupted from his mind to the screen.

It’s not just a feeling. It’s a recurring invitation in his writing.

Is there a solution?

Quantity is crucial. Not only to train yourself. Not only for the algorithms.

For me it’s important because I have a lot of things to say, and I want people to notice. It’s impossible without a high volume of content.

I’m improving my process in three ways to become faster.

Choose smaller ideas

I recently published two monster guides on Medium. They took more than 10 hours each.

One has earned $150 in less than 4 days and received lots of views. The other got views but not earnings.

After trying several long articles, I’m more and more convinced I should aim for a shorter word count.

It happens at the idea and at the outline stage. I can see in advance when an article is going to be huge.

In the near future, I’m focusing on ideas leading to shorter articles.

Minimize editing

I love editing. It’s like sculpting words. I remove, rearrange, replace, until the ugly first draft shines like Michelangelo’s David (or at least I hope so).

But it doesn’t matter how much editing you’ve done. Every time you look at an article, you find something to change.

There’s no definitive version of an article. Often, there are multiple great revisions for every sentence. But perfectionism always prefers the next one.

I’m counteracting this temptation in two ways:

• committing to a tighter no-excuse publishing schedule, to set a hard deadline on every article,

• being aware of my editing idiosyncrasies to prevent them in real-time.

Writing when inspiration strikes

I’m a systems guy. But sometimes I’m a prisoner of my systems. A sort of Stockholm Syndrome.

At least once a day, an article idea sparks my enthusiasm. But I follow the process: save it in my inbox, think about it later, don’t get distracted.

This way, though, ideas can lose steam and get forgotten. So, when I can, I’m trying to at least dictate the core of an idea when it’s hot.

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I’m excited to see where this can lead. Last month, I already felt looser in my writing.

I hope my tactics can help you too. Let’s have fun together!