essay writing words per hour

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

How many words/hour should you aim for when writing your first draft?

A couple of axioms here. Firstly, most people agree that you should write your first draft quickly, without too much care on quality, and get something down on paper first. The real writing begins with the second draft. This is the approach that most writing books try to teach, and I'm taking this as a given for this question.

Secondly writing is more than just typing (no matter what Truman Capote says), so there has to be some level of thought into the first draft. I'm no professional typist, but I can at least manage 40wpm when copy-typing. Clearly though I'm not going to reach 2400 words per hour on the first draft.

So what sort of figure should I be aiming for? At the minute I'm around 250 words/hour which I'm worried is veering into 2nd draft territories for slowness. Are there any de facto guidelines here from the professionals?

• time-management

• Vote to close as subjective. Everyone writes at their own speed. –  Ralph Gallagher Commented Mar 29, 2011 at 12:03
• 1 @Ralph I think the question is not subjective. Craig Sefton's answer would be the perfect answer for this question, and I think writing speed is something a lot of people worry about, even if everyone writes at their own speed. This question stands well. –  Dan Hanly Commented Mar 29, 2011 at 12:21
• 1 Enough words to convey your message- unfortunately this question does not meet that criteria. You want a number? 500,000. Now since you probably don't like that number pick one of your own that you can meet. BTW, 500,000 bad words is not as good as three good words. If you are an accountant setting an objective goal might work, Are you.? –  Joshin Commented Nov 14, 2011 at 23:38
• at least 10000 words per hour. –  user3294 Commented Feb 22, 2012 at 16:11
• 1 The problem isn't that the question is subjective - it is, clearly - but that's okay. What's missing is "...to achieve [goal]" but that's explained well in Craig's answer. –  Goodbye Stack Exchange Commented Feb 22, 2012 at 17:00

7 Answers 7

Slow and steady wins the race.

Cliché's out the way (although I do think it's true), one of the things I find with writing is that you should always stick to what you're comfortable with, unless you're finding it detrimental to your writing.

So, if you're doing 250 words/hour, and feel that's too slow, then I would suggest you set yourself an easy target. Double it to 500wph, or increase it to 1000wph, and try achieve that.

If you can sustain it, and feel that it's easy, then up the ante again. If you find yourself struggling, then lower it.

The best thing really is to experiment, and find the level that you feel most comfortable with.

Edit: I also wanted to add that, according to this article , author Dean Wesley Smith says:

“Most professional writers can average about one thousand words an hour, when going on a novel. Not in the struggle of the beginnings, but once the novel is underway. So, simple math says that to write a 90,000 word novel, you have about 90 hours of work.”

That would suggest that you should set your own expectations based on where you are in the process of writing your novel, but I still recommend sticking with what you feel comfortable with. With practise, your wph will likely start to increase naturally by itself.

• 2 This answer is quite excellent. The issue isn't how many words per hour you should write, but how many weeks/months it'll take for you to write the book. –  Goodbye Stack Exchange Commented Feb 22, 2012 at 16:58
• 2 I don't know about that. I'm not a professional typist (or writer) but I used to write many fanfiction's; I usually wrote around 6,000 words every 2.5 hours. I wrote each episode of my ff's around that number; and as I hated sloppy plots, said-bookisms, plastic dialogs, etc (you get the gist), I'd say I wrote some very good pieces back then. Then came the day I decided to write something worthy of submitting to a publisher, I fell to ~500wpm with tens of drafts... It all depends on how confident, comfortable, and stressed you are. –  Mussri Commented Feb 23, 2012 at 18:53

I really wouldn't worry too much about words per hour. I agree with Craig (and Dean Wesley Smith) that 1000 words an hour is a good, sustainable rate, at least for some genres, but I don't think professional writers got there by trying consciously to write faster - I think that the faster writing comes naturally as you get more comfortable with your craft.

In my experience, there are always parts that go smoothly and quickly, and parts that drag a little. Sometimes it's because I've thought things through so much ahead of time that I'm essentially just typing what I've already written in my head, but I think there are other reasons, too. I write romance, and the big dramatic conversations flow out of me as fast as I can type, but sex scenes take me forever. I think it's because there are millions of ways to make dialogue sound fresh and original, but sex -- well, unless I get kinky to the extreme , there are only so many ways to write it. So I have to slow down and really think it through in order to make it original and avoid the cliches.

So, really - I'd pay attention to writing speed as one tool to get feedback about what you're comfortable writing and what you aren't, but I'm wary of making a conscious effort to increase your speed. It takes as long as it takes. Focus on the content, not the extraneous details.

I write about 350 words an hour and judging from what i've read about famous writers (like Hemingway or Jack london) who typically only write 1,000 words a day while working around 4 hours a day or more, their words rate must be quite slow. fiction is an inefficent business.

I write around 1k an hour. But have wrote 3, or 4k on word-wars for NaNoWriMo. It depends on how fast you can type, if you are hyper etc and also if you can concentrate. I'm a pro writer but I find myself at low word counts.

I'm late to answering this question, however I'm going to answer it anyway in case anybody else comes across this question and reads my answer.

Like everybody on this post says, generally I'd go with 1000 words, or whatever you're comfortable with. I'm just beginning a first draft, and I go at 1200 words per hour, generally.

However, I disagree with some people on this question. Writing faster doesn't come naturally. If you want to write faster than you're writing now, or you feel you're writing too slow, I recommend these methods which have basically doubled my writing speed:

Music: Not the songs most people generally listen to, but instrumental and classic. It's been scientifically proven that if you listen to this while writing, you're writing speed and productivity will vastly improve.

Outline: Always outline before you work. Even if you're a pantser, you should still try to have some idea of where your scene is going.

Time: Don't write for two hours straight. What works for me is writing in 25 minute increments, with a 5 minute break in between where you can get a snack or whatnot. (Do as many of these 25 minute sessions as you want. Generally I do two, and then if I have time I'll do another one, or another couple.)

I hope you found my answer helpful.

• While some of the points may not work for everyone (I know many writers who find music annoying, for instance), they are definetly worth trying. –  Liquid Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 10:51

I would recommend you to start with noting down whatever you think caring less about quality while it satisfies you.

I don't think number of words per hour really matters. Coz a paragraph of excellent text might be more appreciated than whole 700 page book. Devote more time on thought, once its clear rest will flow by itself.

I know this is an old post, but I just wanted to share from my own experience. I was actually trying to see if I'm a slow writer, having just finished a craze(wrote for 9 hours with only a few 2-3 minute breaks) which I usually don't do and didn't intend on before I sat down.

I definitely agree with Olivia about the music, I have a "creative" music folder I listen to whenever I write or paint, if I want to be creative but need a push I just need to put the right music on and ideas a streaming through like someone just broke down the dam.

Don't push yourself, but try and get into a rythm, write 20 minutes a few days a week if you're new to writing. If you're midway through a novel and feel good about it, set yourself a goal, like 2000 words per day or 2 hours per day. That's how I, despite a full time job, did a decent first draft in just under 3 months.

Train yourself in not reading back constantly, only look at what you've already got down if you forgot someones eye colour or what not, do NOT correct before you're done with the draft. This is what slows people down the most, even if they think they don't do it, they usually do. I've gotten more and more aware of myself doing this and have finally reached a point where I realise straight away and stop myself. Basically it's a very subjective thing.

Sometimes I write 500 wph, other times like today, I was at a whopping 1400 wph, it really depends on your mood as well.

Your Answer

Reminder: Answers generated by artificial intelligence tools are not allowed on Writing Stack Exchange. Learn more

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest.

Required, but never shown

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy .

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged wordcount money time-management or ask your own question .

• Featured on Meta
• Upcoming sign-up experiments related to tags

Hot Network Questions

• Translation of the official title 王府率 (Tang dynasty)
• How to see image size in Firefox?
• How to temporarily disable a primary IP without losing other IPs on the same interface
• What might cause an inner tube to "behave" flat in a tire?
• How to use SSReflect to prove commutativity and associativity of addition idiomatically?
• What was the first modern chess piece?
• Would an industrial level society be able to visually identify orbital debris from a destroyed mega structure?
• Why do we need unit vectors in a differential bit of area?
• Convention of parameter naming - undocumented options
• Why is the Newcomb problem confusing?
• Can the laser light, in principle, take any wavelength in the EM spectrum?
• Find 10 float64s that give the least accurate sum
• View doesn't recognise a change to an underlying table when an existing column is dropped and replaced with one with the same name but as computed
• In APEX, is it possible to add content inside a BLOB?
• Total/sum multiple fields and group by in QGIS
• Creating a property list. I'm new to expl3
• Recommendations Modifying/increasing a bicycles Max Weight limits
• Can we study scientifically the set of facts and behaviors if we have no scientific explanation for the source, origin or underlying mechanism of it?
• Am I wasting my time self-studying program pre-requisites?
• Is it possible for Mathematica to output the name of a matrix as opposed to its matrix form?
• what does this phrase mean "placed on her end"?
• Why is "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" considered meaningless?
• Tikz renders different in standalone and scrartcl
• What happens after electrons get ejected in the photoelectric effect?

How Long Does It Take to Write a 1000 Word Essay?

How long does it take to research an essay?

If you’re writing an opinion piece on something you already have some knowledge about, you may not have to do any research at all. It may just be a matter of organizing your existing thoughts into a coherent essay. If you need to find out about a topic before you begin to write, you can easily get information on certain topics, whilst others will be more obscure and therefore more difficult to research. Clearly, the easier it is to find information, the faster you can write.

How good are your reading comprehension skills?

Some of us can just skim a piece and pick up all the salient points. Others will have to read with more attention, and even re-read a piece several times to extract the information we need. Having good reading and comprehension skills makes writing much faster since you’re able to “get” the facts faster and organize them better. Now you know why you had to do so many reading comprehension tests at school.

How well did you plan?

Throwing yourself headlong at a 1,000-word essay and writing till you reach the word count may seem like the easy option, but it isn’t. Planning your essay so that it begins with an introduction, highlights the most important points you want to make and then wraps everything up into a conclusion actually saves you time. Sometimes, essay instructions will tell you how to structure the piece, so read them carefully and extract any information you can use to guide your essay’s structure.

How fast do you type?

Have you ever gotten lost halfway through a sentence? You know what you wanted to say, but halfway through, the thought slips away from you. The faster you can type , the more easily you can capture thoughts before your mind moves onto the next thing and you forget what you were trying to say. Typing skills are essential in the modern world. Consider using typing games to improve your speed.

How long does it take me to write a 1,000-word essay?

Faster isn’t always better. The more in-depth your report is meant to be, the longer you should spend on it. I can usually research and write a fairly technical magazine article of 1,000 words in three hours, but do remember that I’m a professional writer. I’m fast because I write all day, every day.

The longest I’ve ever spent on a 1,000-word article was 12 hours. It was absolutely brutal! The information I needed to gather was very technical, hard to find, and even more difficult to understand, and you can’t write something until you really understand the subject matter. I also had to contact experts for their opinions, but I couldn’t even ask about their opinions until I could target them with the right questions. As a result, I actually had to write most of the article before slotting in the expert comment.

The quickest I’ve ever written a 1,000-word article is one hour. In this case, I already knew the subject matter well and didn’t have to back up every fact in the essay with references.

Reviewing your work also matters

If you’re writing for grades and want a good one, you need a really good essay. Don’t start writing it the day before you have to hand it in. Try and get your first draft down at least a day or two before you have to submit your work. Then return to it and do your editing. Read your essay aloud to yourself, since this will help you pick up any careless errors you wouldn’t otherwise spot. Check to see if your information flows logically from one point to the next and make sure that you’ve presented your information clearly.

Remember, teachers get tired. They have to read the same kind of essay over and over again when they grade. If they struggle to understand what you’re saying, you might not get as good a grade as you would if you stuck to using short sentences and relatively simple language.

Your reviewing process shouldn’t take all that long. If you don’t have to make a lot of changes, you should be able to do your final edit in under half an hour.

Take your time. Whatever you do, don’t rush. You might want your essay to be written quickly, but if it’s an important essay, taking your time will give you a better finished product. Budget your time conservatively. It’s better to find that you’ve still got time left over than to run out of time and end up dashing things off with a looming deadline.

Below are some basic guidelines if you need a rough estimate on how long it will take to write an essay. It’s important to remember that there are a plethora of mitigating factors that can increase or decrease the time it takes to write. The below numbers are using an estimate that it takes about 3 hours 20 minutes to write a 1000 word essay:

How long does it take to write a 100 word essay? It takes about 20 minutes to write a 100 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 200 word essay? It takes about 40 minutes to write a 200 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 250 word essay? It takes about 50 minutes to write a 250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 300 word essay? It takes about 1 hour to write a 300 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 400 word essay? It takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to write a 400 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 500 word essay? It takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to write a 500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 600 word essay? It takes about 2 hours to write a 600 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 700 word essay? It takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes to write a 700 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 800 word essay? It takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes to write a 800 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 900 word essay? It takes about 3 hours to write a 900 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,000 word essay? It takes about 3 hours and 20 minutes to write a 1,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,250 word essay? It takes about 4 hours and 10 minutes to write a 1,250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,500 word essay? It takes about 5 hours to write a 1,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,750 word essay? It takes about 5 hours and 50 minutes to write a 1,750 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,000 word essay? It takes about 6 hours and 40 minutes to write a 2,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,500 word essay? It takes about 8 hours and 20 minutes to write a 2,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,000 word essay? It takes about 10 hours to write a 3,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,500 word essay? It takes about 11 hours and 40 minutes to write a 3,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,000 word essay? It takes about 13 hours and 20 minutes to write a 4,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,500 word essay? It takes about 15 hours to write a 4,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 5,000 word essay? It takes about 16 hours and 40 minutes to write a 5,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 6,000 word essay? It takes about 20 hours to write a 6,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,000 word essay? It takes about 23 hours and 20 minutes to write a 7,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,500 word essay? It takes about 25 hours to write a 7,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write an 8,000 word essay? It takes about 26 hours and 40 minutes to write an 8,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 9,000 word essay? It takes about 30 hours to write a 9,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 10,000 word essay? It takes about 33 hours and 20 minutes to write a 10,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 12,500 word essay? It takes about 41 hours and 40 minutes to write a 12,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 15,000 word essay? It takes about 50 hours to write a 15,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 20,000 word essay? It takes about 66 hours and 40 minutes to write a 20,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 25,000 word essay? It takes about 83 hours and 20 minutes to write a 25,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 50,000 word essay? It takes about 166 hours and 40 minutes to write a 50,000 word essay.

(Image courtesy of Miguel )

This isn’t accurate. I wrote my 1000 word essay in an hour, not three hours. You should change the times you have listed to reflect how long it actually takes to write. Obviously you don’t know since the mes you listed are not the same as what I can do!

Did you even read the article? The writer says that it’s based on what she writes and is just a general approximation. How long it takes you or anybody else to write an essay will obviously be different because you’re not the same as everybody else. Nobody writes at the same speed so how long it takes you to write an essay will be different for every person.

Someone doesn’t understand the meaning of “rough estimate”

Well then you must be superhuman or some shit I don’t care, I came here for a question not your butthurt comments. Also, if your so good at writing I wouldn’t have found 2 typos in 2 sentences 🙂

*you’re

If you already have all the research done and know what you want to say, then a 1000 word essay shouldn’t take more than an hour to write. In fact, it probably can be done in 30 minutes or less. The time-consuming part of an essay is the research and how long that takes depends on how much you have to do. But the actual writing of the essay shouldn’t take too long at all.

But research is part of the writing process. If a person writes a book, they don’t only count the time it took them at the typewriter writing. They count all the time it took to research the book as well. Trying to separate the two doesn’t make sense.

I think an important thing to point out here is that there’s a huge difference between writing a 1000 word essay and writing a good 1000 word essay. You can write an essay in hardly any time at all if you don’t do the proper research and don’t spend time editing what you wrote. If you’re going to write a good essay, it’s going to take more time. You should always give yourself more time than you think you’re going to need to get it done.

This applies to all writing. Writing and writing something something well will have a huge time discrepancy even if both writings are the same length. Just because you are able to finish something quickly doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do it.

Exactly! Actually, it can take hours or days to come up with the right line – or it can come in seconds. There’s no real counting in terms of the creative process.

Days to come up with the right line? 😀

It does. Sometimes, no matter how hard you look at something, you won’t be satisfied with it. It may take you days to figure it out. And then, one fine day, you suddenly stand up right in the middle of breakfast and then run upstairs and then type out the right line. Source: personal experience

I just spent 8 hours on a 500-word monologue… This comment made me feel better.

Wow, your advice is excellent it motivated me to do a lot better in my essay.

In my opinion, hours that are presented here a partially true. It may take about an hor to write 300 word essay but editing also takes some time. So on averege, I count the time to write the piece itself + time edit everything.

Research, first draft writing, editing, and rewriting are all part of the writing process. I think the time it takes to do all of them should be counted in the time it takes.

It takes way too long! Teachers should not be allowed to assign essays more than 250 words. They always complain they don’t have enough time and work too hard. It’s only because they make their students do too much work!!

This comment just makes you look lazy. 250 words is nothing. Any topic that needs to be explored will take many more words than this. If you don’t want to write, just admit it and don’t try to project that on others.

If you do your research, use annotations for resources and understand to whom and what you have to transfer than the fewer words the better. Remember that you are demonstrating deep knowledge of the topic by making it accessible to the audience without them doing the research. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Contrary to what academia self-righteously preach, its imperative for any writing and explanation of thought to be simplified. If you cant explain it in short time/short essay you don’t understand it enough.

I disagree, I feel 250 words is way too less to explain any topic. In my opinion, the maximum word count for an essay should be 1500.

It should take long enough that you get all the points you want across in the writing, but not too long as to bore the reader. Writing should be engaging, not boring.

Nice philosophy, but completely unhelpful if you have a paper due tomorrow and limited amount of time to write. The real world doesn’t work that way.

If someone has an essay due tomorrow and they waste time reading this, then they are a bit of an idiot for giving themselves even less time to work with. If they’re leaving work to the last minute like that, then the only thing they should be doing is jumping right in and writing (or planning the essay, but that should be done much sooner).

This is so arbitrary and will depend on the individual. It’s like asking the question, “how long does it take to write a book?” For some, it will only take a couple of months while for others it will take a lifetime. it also depends on the type of writing you’re doing. Some writing is easy and quick and other writing is difficult and requires huge amounts of research.

The uphill task of writing an essay is doing thorough research. Once you have completed the research, you can deliver a 1000 word paper per hour

I completely agree with you on that one. I recently worked on a 4000 word essay, and while the research did take me three hours to conduct, I completed the essay itself in a bit less than four hours and scored a total of 32/34 points.

So happy to read that! That’s because I just realised, that that is what I needed to read. I’ve got two months to write six 2500 word essays. I’ve been procrastinating because I’m simply in fear of doing a bad job. I’ve done lots of research; made lots of notes; collected citations and written nothing. It’s time. I can do this!

I’m writing a 1600 word essay right now as I type this lol

Then show me after you have finished.

Im writing a 2500 word essay, almost done, I can’t even imagine writing a 10000 word essay in university, that sounds EXTREMELY painful 🙁

I found these estimations quite accurate, thank you.

I’m writing a narrative for my English class right this moment and the word requirements are 800-1000. I’ve only been working for two hours and I’m at 1,157. I’m nowhere near done…

your word requirements are 800-1000 and u have 1157? You’ve been done for a while I would say

Wow i have to write a 1 500 word essay in 4 days and I have about 1050 words left Dono how long thats gonna take me 😂😭😭😭

I am writing a dissertation and those estimations made me positive because just 41 hour to write 12,000 essay seems nothing. But at the moment I just finished literature review(though the hardest part yet) without editing I am already at over 35 hours of work. And that’s not even a half! But I am aiming for a good grade though…

I’ve found these estimates incredibly accurate in my years in college. I’m about to graduate next week and have one more 3500 word paper to write. We’ll see if the estimates hold true. However, the estimates (for me at least) don’t include the time it takes to edit so I usually add a little time depending on how long the essay/paper has to be.

Wow, these tips are helpful, Thank You to the creator of this website. These tips helped me a lot in my essay for school.

Popular Posts

• The Top 10 Most Difficult-to-Spot Writing Mistakes
• 4 Simple Tips for Great Writing
• Avoiding Wordiness: 330 Examples & What to Use Instead
• The Oxford Comma: The Splice of Life
• Who vs. Whom
• Affect vs. Effect
• How to Take Notes: The 10-Step Guide to Note-Taking (Infographic)
• CMOS vs. AP – Recent Changes & Comparison (Updated 1. Nov. 2021)
• The Daily Word Counts of 19 Famous Writers
• The Ideal Length of Everything You Write Online ( Infographic)

Recent Comments

• Phony on Word Counter Reading Level Feature
• Jon on Word Counter Reading Level Feature
• Me on Word Counter Reading Level Feature
• Sigma-balls on Word Counter Reading Level Feature
• Incindiary Rat on Word Counter Reading Level Feature

Session expired

Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.

How to Write Faster: 10 Quick Ways to Hit 1,000 Words Per Hour

by Linda Formichelli

on Jan 9, 2024

The schedule gods have given you a break, and you have a rare hour to actually sit down and write. You could produce an entire blog post! An article! Maybe even a short book chapter! Your Google research is all done, so all you need to do now is write .

You apply ass to seat, fire up your laptop, start typing …

… and it’s like watching a video in slo-mo.

Once the hour is up, you do a word count — and let’s just say the final tally is less than impressive.

It’s time to pull you out of that rut and learn the secrets to writing faster.

Here are 10 ways to produce great writing in volume. Using these tactics, I can write a full 1,000-word article in under an hour; I bet they’ll increase your writing speed as well.

Let’s begin.

Want to Know How to Write Faster? Try These:

• Write Under Pressure (from Your Bladder)
• Outwit Writers Block with This Old Journalist’s Trick
• Use Automation to Skip Two Million Keystrokes
• Turn Off the Squiggly Red Lines
• Invest in a Faster Pen
• Do B-Minus Work
• Get Zen Before You Pick Up Your Pen
• Stop Letting the Schedule Push You Around
• Play Games to Boost Your Words Per Minute
• Gamble with Your Reputation

1. Write Under Pressure (from Your Bladder)

When I’m on fire (or on a deadline) and don’t want to stop writing, I skip bathroom breaks until I’m done. Nothing makes you a faster writer like knowing you’re on the verge of having a potty accident.

Being a 48-year-old woman, I have to pee every 30 minutes, so you can bet I’m writing scorchingly fast to make it to the next bathroom break.

Bbut if this isn’t the case for you, try quaffing a couple glasses of water before sitting down at your laptop.

Caveat: I am not a doctor and this probably isn’t the healthiest thing to do.

In fact, I’ve heard of bladder infections being called “secretary’s disease” because they used to happen frequently to secretaries who held it in while they finished “just one more writing task.”

Use this tactic at your own risk!

2. Outwit Writers Block with This Old Journalist’s Trick

Instead of insisting that your facts and examples be all lined up before you put pen to paper, which leads to over-researching, try writing from your head.

Get down what you know and remember from your interviews — and drop in the term “TK” wherever you get stuck and need more information.

TK is shorthand journo-speak for “to come,” and it’s used as a placeholder for the copy you’ll add later.

The beauty of TK is that this combo of letters very rarely occurs in the English language — so once you’re done with your draft, you can do a search on the term in your word processing program and fill in the holes.

You’ll be surprised at how much you already had in your head, and at how much faster you can produce a piece of writing this way!

3. Use Automation to Skip Two Million Keystrokes

Rewriting the same copy over and over, or playing the cut-and-paste game several times an hour, is a massive time suck. In the two minutes it takes you to type in your bio at the end of a guest post, you could have written the lede paragraph of a new post.

Here’s an idea: don’t write it! Lemme explain…

I use a writing tool called TextExpander — which expands custom keyboard shortcuts into frequently used text — for common copy, like my email sign-off, bio, mailing address, book titles, HTML codes, and words and phrases I often use in my writing.

You can even use TextExpander abbreviations to insert images, the current date, and more. (Similar apps include TypeIt4Me for Mac and Breevy for Windows.)

As an example, when I type in “rren,” this pops up: The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success . That’s four keystrokes instead of 80!

TextExpander’s stats say I’ve saved myself from typing over two million characters and saved over 142 hours. Yes, that’s six solid days I’ve rescued from the abyss of needless typing. Faster writing AND increased typing speed? Yes, please!

One trick I learned years ago is to be sure the abbreviations you choose are letter combinations you won’t be using for anything else.

For example, if you choose the word “address” to expand out into your street address, that will also happen when you write, “This blog post will address common time-wasters.”

Try repeating a letter at the front of the word instead. I use the combo “bbio” for my bio and “uurl” for my website URL.

Imagine how much speedier your writing will be if you can simply type fewer words!

4. Turn Off the Squiggly Red Lines

You’re all in the zone, writing like your life depends on it — or like you have to pee really bad; see tip #1 — and suddenly you’re stopped in your tracks by a squiggly red line under a word.

Your inner editor screams, so you pause to check it, breaking your writing flow.

The problem?

The program doesn’t recognize the name of that city in Germany you’re writing about.

So you right-click on “Nuremberg,” select “Add to Dictionary,” and …

… where were you again?

Your Google Doc or word processing program’s spelling and grammar checkers (we like Grammarly ) are good at checking spelling and grammatical errors, but they are phenomenal at yanking you right out of your flow.

I actually don’t mind the spell checker, but when I have the grammar checker on, I find myself stopping every few minutes to yell, “Shut up, I meant to write it that way!”

Guess what?

You have the power to switch off the checkers, so you’re able to write without distraction . You can always run them after you’ve finished your writing if you need to.

5. Invest in a Faster Pen

Like to write first drafts or take notes by hand? The Hack My Study site did a comparison on which pens are the fastest to write with .

Here’s a spoiler: Fountain pens are best for pure handwriting speed, but they’re also pricey and difficult to master. The next best option is a rollerball pen.

Now, they’re not as fancy (or expensive!) as a fountain pen, but they’re still fast because they create little friction on the writing surface.

The third best for speed is the gel pen, which is less expensive than the rollerball, and coming in dead last is the standard ballpoint pen — you know, the kind you pick up for free at your local bank or dentist’s office.

I can attest to the speed of the rollerball; a few years ago I decided to toss out every junky pen in the house and replace them with a few dozen of my favorite brand, the Pilot Precise V7 Rolling Ball Fine — blue for me, black for my husband, and red just because.

That way, whenever I’m in the mood to write a rough draft or take notes by hand, I can reach into a kitchen drawer or my purse and be assured of pulling out a fast, smooth-writing pen every time.

Stocking up on quality pens is an investment (it costs around $20 for a 12-pack of the Pilot pen I use), but it’s worth it if it helps you write faster.

Not to mention you’ll never again waste precious writing seconds furiously scribbling on a sheet of scrap paper to get the ink flowing in your cheap ballpoint.

6. Do B-Minus Work

One of the chief habits that keeps you stuck in slow motion, grindig your writing session to a halt, is editing yourself while writing .

There’s nothing like agonizing over the perfect word in the middle of writing a blog post , article, or sales copy to keep you in perpetual “not quite finished” mode.

(That habit, of course, is a consequence of perfectionism, another common bugaboo for most every author, blogger, and freelance writer).

Value done over perfect and let the words fly.

Yes, it’s important to have top-notch writing skills and produce quality content but give yourself permission to do B-minus work just to get the ideas down on paper, then go back and edit when you’re done.

Chances are, you’ll discover your writing was pretty good to begin with!

The more you resist editing yourself as you write, the easier writing will become. The easier writing becomes, the more confident you’ll be.

And the more confident you are in your writing, the quicker the writing process gets.

7. Get Zen Before You Pick Up Your Pen

If your writing slows to a virtual crawl because you feel the need to check Facebook or answer an email after every sentence, you’ll love OmmWriter , a program that blocks out the files and applications behind the writing page to minimize distractions.

OmmWriter also offers a selection of calming background colors and music to keep you in Zen mode as you write, plus soothing sounds with each keystroke. I especially love the horizontal cursor (instead of the usual vertical blinking one) that seems to say “Write on” instead of “Stop writing!”

Ommwriter was free when I downloaded it several years ago, but is now a pay-what-you-want app; the average offering is $7.33.

8. Stop Letting the Schedule Push You Around

Sometimes a little space is all you need to get perspective on a piece of writing that’s giving you fits, so you can get the words out faster.

An example: Last week I had scheduled myself to write an article for my website called “How Writers Waste Time by Saving Time,” about the dangers of cutting corners in your research and interviews.

I eked out about 500 (crappy) words at a glacially slow writing pace before giving up; the article sounded more like a rant than a solid service piece, and I just couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

Then I looked over my ideas for future articles, and one called “Let Future You Handle Your Writing Problems” jumped out at me. I was inspired! I opened a new Word file, and that article — all 900 words — poured out of me in less than 60 minutes.

This week, I revisited the article I had been stuck on, and immediately saw exactly what the problem was and how to resolve it. An hour later, that article was done too.

If you have control over what you write and when you write it, this writing tip is for you: Stop being a slave to your editorial calendar. When you’re wrestling with a scheduled article or post, let it go.

Scan over your editorial calendar and see if there are any post ideas that get you all fired up, and make the switch. You’ll find that the writing flows much faster that way.

9. Play Games to Boost Your Words Per Minute

A big problem for many freelance writers is that we think faster than we type.

If your brain is churning out amazing ideas and perfect turns of phrase at a blazing pace, but you type slower than my husband, trying to help me come up with a funny metaphor for something slow — you’ll finish out your allotted writing time with only a fraction of your page filled with, you know, writing.

Learning to type is a lot more fun than it used to be, with many sites offering free games, lessons, and tests to help you up your keyboarding speed.

FreeTypingGame.Net has, among other goodies, a game called The Frogs Are Off Their Diet. A similar site, WordGames.com , offers hilariously titled typing challenges like Zombie Typocalypse and Type Type Revolution.

If you often find yourself writing on the go, seek out free apps that will help you learn to type faster on your smartphone or tablet. TapTyping is one example for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, and Typing Master is an app that works on Android devices.

10. Gamble with Your Reputation

Feeling competitive? Try a speed writing challenge and dare yourself to write your blog post , article, or book chapter in a (much) shorter amount of time than you normally would.

I did this once while working with a writing buddy at a café, and her jaw dropped as she watched me complete an 800-word article in 30 minutes. (And yes, it was good!)

Here’s a better idea:

Bet a friend something juicy that you can do it, or throw down the gauntlet on social media. The more people who see it and the harsher the consequences should you lose, the more likely you are to get those words down on the double.

On the low-pressure end, I also like to do mini-challenges:

I’ll see how much I can write in the five minutes while my tea steeps… in the two minutes before the microwave dings and my lunch is ready… while I’m on hold with AT&T before someone picks up.

It’s incredible how quickly you can write when you have mere minutes to get it done.

And That’s a Wrap on How to Write Faster

Fast writing isn’t magic — it’s practice! It took me years to develop and learn these effective tactics for writing like a bat out of hell, but you can try them all on right now .

Feel free to combine tactics: Turn off the grammar checker, shelve your internal editor, down a couple glasses of water, fire up Ommwriter or the Hemingway app, and use a text expander app to produce B-minus work.

Chances are you’ll boost your speed many times over, so you can do even more of what you love (hint: writing & making money ) every day.

Ready for the writing to simply pour from you? Set your timer and get started!

Linda Formichelli

GET PAID TO WRITE

Make 2-5k per month, even if you're a beginner . we're seeking writers of any skill level ..

Written by Linda Formichelli

106 thoughts on “how to write faster: 10 quick ways to hit 1,000 words per hour”.

Thanks so much for inviting me to post on SmartBlogger! I’m honored and hope it helps writers write faster and write more.

Thanks for your post. It’s both informative and light-hearted. I admire your writing style.

Wow these are so spot on. Squiggly red lines are my nemesis. Didn’t even occur to me to turn spell check off! And I would never edit while I go…OK you got me. I can’t help myself! Brilliant post thank you Linda.

Hahaha, you show those squiggly red lines who’s the boss!

Thanks for reading, and for your comment…glad you liked the post!

Me too! Had turned off my email notifications and any dings long ago. But had never thought about the nasty red squiggles that steal your focus. That one tip will save me precious hours each month. Thank you!

Linda, what a great set of super-practical tips and tricks. Thanks so much! Going to try a number of them right away.

Awesome, please circle back and let us know how it goes…and also if you discover any good tips for writing faster that I missed!

The red squiggly line tip is GOLD. The rest of these tips are excellent too.

I like to type loudly and dramatically to give myself the sense that I’m “hammering away” at the keyboard, which helps me write that much faster, The aggressive nature of typing that way makes me feel like a renegade 😉

Off to share!

Hi Linda, Thanks for sharing this awesome post with us! I’ve been looking for ways to speed up my writing. And you gave me the exact answers I’ve been looking for. You did a great job Linda and I’ll be tweeting this shortly! – Iyiola

Aw, thanks for sharing!

The “TextExpander” is a crazy gamble. For what appears to me, I need to rewire my brain to write in a certain way.

Once that is done, a lot of time can be saved.

RIght now, what works for me – I write from my head.

I read and do the research, gain practical experience a lot before I sit down to write down on a certain topic.

And when I sit down, I have enough to write at least 800 words. Sometimes I cough at 600 and sometimes I stretch till 1000 words.

Amazing insights. Stay Awesome.

Thanks, Rohan! I love my TextExpander…have been using it for years now. I feel like I’ve saved even more time than they say—I have a feeling the count of minutes/characters saved is reset whenever I upgrade. I hope it works for you!

I will indeed stay awesome. 🙂 Thanks again!

Thanks for the kind words, Viv! Oh yeah, an article on successful immigrants sounds HUGE and complex…exactly the kind of piece where TKs come in super handy.

Yeah luckily it’s one person in the spotlight at a time, so I’d do research on them. Much harder would be multiple folks in 1 piece! Yep lets see now if I implement at least 1-2 of these strategies.

Great info, Linda. Thank you! Without a doubt, # 6 plagues me the most. Even though I *know* I should just write and not edit at the same time, I still fall into that trap. So my mantra for the next week (and beyond) is “B-, B-, B-“. 🙂

Mark, that one is the hardest for me, too. Sometimes I want to find the perfect word RIGHT THEN. I think that’s OK sometimes, but if it bogs you down frequently, you’ll need to train yourself to stop editing as you write. Sometimes it helps to think about it as an experiment. For just this one piece, write it all out without editing, then edit at the end. How did it feel when you were finally done? Did you save time? Was it easier?

Thanks for reading and commenting!

This is why I have my thesaurus sitting right next to my laptop. Sometimes I can’t avoid picking it up and finding that perfect word for what I’m thinking. (Yes, it slows me WAY down but now that I read your article I can just type TK! Lol! That alone just increased my productivity!) I’m still trying to find a different word for thesaurus, by the way…

I absolutely loved the tips. (How much? I shared the link on a paid Internet marketing forum I belong to so my fellow members could also come here and read it.) This is some really top-notch work and I appreciate it very much. Thank you for writing this article. These tips will definitely make a good difference in my typing skills because of your helpful writing.

Linda…we’ve done so much teaching together, and yet we’ve never compared notes on how we don’t take bathroom breaks until we’re done writing! I’m dying here…I thought I was the only one who did that. It’s a little masochistic, but boy it makes you get to the end of that piece!

Well, you know how it is with us Type A people! 🙂 Can’t stop until we’re done.

They are indeed crafted with love! Glad you liked the post…thanks!

Wow, thanks for the share! I’m thrilled you liked the post that much! Hope it helps.

You’re welcome, Linda. I know for a fact it will help many people become better at what they do.

reference book glossary lexicon onomasticon terminology vocabulary language reference book sourcebook storehouse of words treasury of words

Those are from Thesaurus.com. They all stink! LOL

I just call it ‘that book that has the right word somewhere in it’…

That IS a better one!

Thank you for the great tips on writing faster. I have been struggling to get more content done in a shorter time frame. My favorite tip is “Zen before you pick up your pen”. I think this is a great tip for me, because I’m more productive when I hear wind, rain, or at the beach. I find that my mind is free of distractions when I hear these type of sounds. Thanks again, Stephanie

Thanks, Stephanie! I LOVE Ommwriter. If you give it a try, let us know what you think!

I can relate to your #1 tip! But, I must admit that I am envious of your 30 minute break between #1ing!

Thanks for a great post.

Wait, you’re saying it gets WORSE?

This is a great list, Linda. I’m particularly thrilled by #8. I believe editorial calendars should just be a guide and not a must-follow. Yes, it’s important, but you shouldn’t be enslaved by the schedule.

Thank you, John! As the co-author of The Renegade Writer, I like NOT doing things you’re supposed to do…like stick to a calendar. 🙂

Hey, I just got back from Cannes yesterday! Glad you liked my post!

Hi, Lyon! You start by reading, reading, reading the types of writing you would like to sell yourself…ads, blogs, magazines, whatever. There’s also lots of info online on how to get started, such as on this blog here, and also many, many books in both print and e-book format for new writers of any type. Good luck!

Thanks for this article. I received an alert from Jon Morrow/Smart Blogger. I’m an artist setting up a companion blog to an anonymous street art project. The blog isn’t commerce oriented so I’m not pressed by outside deadlines but I need to write with less distraction. My worst habit is the irresistible temptation to edit as I go. Your ‘TK’ advice is a great antidote and hopefully a cure. A blog about an art project probably doesn’t need to be as prolific as a blog about advice or commerce but if I’m too slow, I know I’ll lose any audience I may be able to attract. The speeding up suggestions will come in handy for that. Thanks

Hi, Clarissa! Wow, an artist — all kinds of interesting creatives here! I’m glad the TK tip will be helpful. Can you post the art project blog here when it’s ready? Sounds interesting!

Wow, right back to you for your generous invitation. I will!

Hi Linda, I fell upon this blog while surfing for types of content to write about. I just started to blog several months ago. I’ve written about 2 dozens articles. I can honestly say that I am guilty of editing and researching while writing. It’s a time suck. That’s for these tips. I will try them out immediately. Got any ideas on what type of content to write about or how to guest author?

Hi, Jeff! You mean what kinds of content for your blog? I think it depends on your goals for your blog — is it a personal passion project, are you looking to attract work, do you want to sell something on the blog?

But my biggest piece of advice is that your blog needs to be on a topic you’re passionate about, because you’ll be writing about it a LOT. On my old blog, I wrote 1,000 posts over 10 years, all on the topic of writing for magazines. If you’re not passionate about your blog subject, you’ll soon be wondering, “What should I write about?” It has to come from your heart.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

To increase my writing speed, I like to use dictation on my phone rather than typing. It’s so fast! After I finish a section, I will go back over it immediately to catch any words that were not captured properly, but I save all other editing for later.

I do that too, Valerie! Last year I “wrote” a 5,000-word blog post in 30 minutes by dictating into my phone. Of course, like you said, editing is a bear because Siri often misunderstands me…but for me, the hardest part is getting my ideas out. Massaging the copy to sound good…that’s my strength!

Thanks for adding this tip! Anyone reading this, if you haven’t tried dictating your writing into your phone or other device, you should give it a shot!

Hi Linda! These tips are amazing…and also encouraging. Time is something I’m trying to squeeze like an old toothpaste. Will give your tips a try. Hope my almost 60 year old bladder cooperates;)

If by “cooperates” you mean “has to pee every 30 minutes,” I’m sure that will happen. 🙂 Every woman I know who is my age and up has the same problem. Though we should recast that as a “benefit” since it helps us write faster!

Thanks for your comment…glad you liked the tips!

Fantastic tips Linda! Need to try the first one haha! I know it is a game changer. Thank you for all the tips. I will try to use them all to increase the speed of my writing

Woot! Finally an upside to the problem of having to pee every half hour. 🙂 Let us know how these tips work for you! And everyone, please do check out my Volume Marketing Challenge…talk about producing FAST. 🙂

Linda, this is fantastic! Thank you!

I struggle with the editing phase. I’m very good at writing fast. But I spent 2-3x as long fixing grammar errors and restructuring sentences. Any help on streamlining that?

I actually think that’s normal…and as with writing, the more practice you get with editing, the faster you’ll get at it. Also, you’ll get to a point where you can write a first draft that’s already almost there, so you won’t need to edit as much.

For example, when I was first starting out, I’d print out each article, go over it with a red pen, make the changes in Word, repeat the process another one or two times — and then have my writer husband give it one last look. These days, I can write a fairly clean draft on the first try because I’ve been doing it for two decades!

Some writers use editing tricks like reading their work out loud (which reveals typos, awkward phrasing, etc.), reading it backward, etc. These may speed up the process.

If anyone here has tips for improving your editing speed, I’d love to hear them!

Linda – thank you for your reply!

Reflecting on your comment — a year ago, I was sweating because I couldn’t write a coherent blog post. 🙂

Okay – I just have to keep at it and in time, it’ll all get better/faster. Must Think Kaizen!

My goal was to make readers pee themselves from laughing so hard! 🙂

Amazing post. I love your writing style. It is easy to follow and I will apply it for my blog posts. I have really enjoyed it.

I can relate to this article. In my previous days, I used to be a lousy writer who never even thought about writing 1000 words per hour.

Just like you, I never pee or take any rest when the deadline is kicking my ass. It’s like an alarm clock.

I believe that the consistency effort is the only thing anyone can redirect his career with.

Using some tools like Grammarly is the time savers. Sometimes, the spelling mistakes can consume a lot of time but these tools can save you.

Sitting and thinking about the glorious piece of the content can’t be created until you have hard determination.

I like to play the games and the writing game, it’s witty. I like to challenge myself.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Have a great week ahead. ~Ravi

Thanks, Ravi! I agree, it takes consistent effort to (1) learn how to write faster and better, and (2) succeed as a blogger. Glad this post resonated with you!

Hi Linda, Great article.

With a deadline to meet we will be more focused to achieve the end objective. The pressure will keep us hyper-focused on the task.

It’s also good to avoid distractions, like to turn off the tool that checks the grammatical/ spelling mistakes. Let the creativity flow, and once we are done with the article we can actually check the article for typo errors / mistakes.

I like your writing style. Any tips?

Thank you! I think all you can do is read, read, read and write, write, write…after a while you start to develop your own distinct style.

The thoughts and suggestions you have provided are well appreciated. Though, others, particularly students, should be careful in construing “to write under pressure” as something synonymous to procrastination. No they are not, working under pressure is simply a state of the mind or orientation that we must set to accomplish the task, it is a driving force rather than impediment.

I do know many writers who purposely wait to write their assignments because they know they write faster and are more focused with a little fire under their butts…but this needs to be a thought-out strategy, not just an excuse to procrastinate! Because otherwise, why will you be any more motivated an hour before deadline than you were a week before?

Nicely written and I guess writing faster would be all bloggers dream and some of the bloggers are indeed good at it.

In the beginning, you can’t expect to sit down and pump out a 1000 word article in the 30 minutes. With practice and training, that may become a reality for you, but to expect it too early in your development is a sure path to failure.

Writing is no different than any other skill we learn, and learning takes time. Eventually, thanks for sharing these incredible tips with us.

With best wishes,

Hello! Thank you a lot for this article. I am new in academic writing and just finished my first ever dissertation of 12,000 words thanks to this. It got me motivated every time I needed it. Great tips in here.

Thanks for sharing these tips on how we can write faster. This is really helpful especially for virtual workers.

Linda, like some have said before me, the red squiggly lines really throw me off. Thanks for the tip! I also think writing down everything in your head helps too. It’s an age old trick, but dump out all the information you have then edit at the end.

Great advice, Linda! Turning off the checker and writing through without revising are two things I need to do. Thanks for helping me to think and act like a pro!

Cool, hope those tips help you write faster!

Nice article Linda. You covered the basics (avoid interruptions etc) plus a few tips that were new to me such as use of TK and odd letter combinations for text expander apps. I most appreciate the links to typing tutorials. I’d given up looking.

It was really an awesome post and we (the bloggers) need to learn this thing badly for sure.

I can write thousands of words per hour only when I enjoy it to write.

So, I think that the first thing that you need to maintain is to find out the topics on which you’ll enjoy writing.

A boring topic will surely kill your time and after even an hour, you may see only a few hundred words on your WordPress dashboard or MS Word (depending on your writing software) with this sort of topic.

Another good tactic to write faster is to check nothing when you write. This will make your writing blazing fast, I bet.

However, all of your ideas are invaluable and I thank you for sharing such a nice post with us.

Wish you all the best, SM

Great post! I am new to blogging but not to writing, and I love setting a time frame of an hour or two to get me focused and tuned in to the pressure of having to finish. I jot down all my frenetic ideas about a topic without stressing about word choice or where it’s going. Then I go back and tidy up and maintain focus as the clock ticks down. No piece is ever perfect, but writing is about connecting and creating relatability, which can be found in raw, vulnerable, imperfect writing.

It’s great article. this’s really helpful especially for me

Great info. Thanks.

I’ll try out the TextExpander app and those typing games.

1000 per hour is definitely a good target but a well researched article will take more time I guess.

A well researched article that supports a blogger’s claim in a post will take more time and adds more blogging credibility to the blogger in terms of what they say. To achieve writing 1,000 words per hour or more, a blogger would have to have a small team of in-house writers “either paid or voluntary.” The benefit of achieving more content output is better long-term search engine rankings in Google, Bing, and YaHoO!, additionally to increased ad revenue and online writing credibility, and more permission based e-mail subscribers + feedback comments. How many times a day are you blogging and how lengthy are your posts?

Awesome post buddy, thanks for sharing this great work.

If you get a program for you laptop or desktop PC known as new ones Dragon NaturallySpeaking which is a quality speech recognition software, you can pretty much ramble off the top of your head in about 10 to 15 min. in Microsoft Word in rough draft mode and churn out anywhere from 1000 to 1500 words. That is, before the proofreading process. There’s no way I could sit at my computer every day and manually type out a blog post 1000 words or more because I pretty much have carpal tunnel syndrome and would have to take turns of glucosamine sulfate to lubricate my fingers from additional payment from typing.

Everyone has thoughts rambling in the back of their mind they haven’t gotten out on paper yet. This is the beauty of blogging and speech recognition, because a person can get a quality voice dictation program with a headset and watch the awesome power of their voice and those thoughts rambling in the back of their mind appear in Microsoft Word in rough draft mode or in a rough draft Google Docs document before editing their final draft.

Thank you for touching on this topic in giving us something to think about! 🙂

P.S. This blog comment was produced using Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance because I would not dare to sit at my computer right now and manually type out every word in this blog comment. This is why my blog comments are much longer nowadays… LOL! 🙂 🙂

#8, I stopped playing around and stopped getting stressed out about writing. Currently I write about 1800-2500 word posts today, my Grammarly stats show I write more than 99% of those using that app, and I love it! Thanks for the great post Linda…, While I think any one of these tips will and could work, #8 was mine, and it worked wonders…

Thanks, David! I’m all about #8. 🙂

For me, nothing like a good 3 cups of caffeine and a rush to help me type like a madman

I hadn’t thought of turning off the red squiggly lines either –and every time one emerges it stops my flow in my tracks. Very simple and actionable. Thank you! I also, plan to try a time challenge, as you recommend.

Thanks, David, I hope the tip helps you write faster!

Your suggestion regarding writing with a full bladder reminds me that “stress is the salt of life”. Nice post :o)

I never heard that expression but it certainly seems to fit the situation, LOL!

Linda you really are a brilliant writer. I enjoyed reading you post whilst getting a lot from it too.

This is an issue I really struggle with. For the next few months I’m in the ideal situation where I can dedicate all my time to writing. The only problem is I’m not being as productive as I want to be and it’s NOT for lack of desire.

I am definitely a perfectionist and the phrase “Value ‘done’ over ‘perfect’ and let the words fly” really stood out to me. You see I know this in my head, but I’m not in the habit of doing it yet.

Thanks for being so open and sharing some of your writing efficiency tactics. As an Englishman and an avid tea drinker, I’m going to try your ‘bladder’ technique, but I’ll keep your disclaimer in mind. : )

Simon, I’m glad you like the post…hope it helps you let go of some of those perfectionistic tendencies and start getting your work out there!

Linda, I saw your headline and knew straight away that this article was EXACTLY what I needed to read.

And wow, you didn’t disappoint!

Your whole article was fantastic. But there were two points in particular which really stood out for me. These were:

#6. Do B-Minus Work

#7. Get Zen Before You Pick Up Your Pen

Let’s start with #6. See, I’m a direct-response copywriter, and I’m always self-editing as I write.

I’m definitely gonna give this method a go and see how quickly I can finish my first draft of a sales letter. You’re completely right – you should be looking to make the quality better in the editing process; NOT in your first draft.

As for your second point, I think it’s fantastic.

It’s reminded me to start relaxing more before I write and, the big one, to turn off Facebook and my phone. When I do, my mind switched off so much easier.

I’m curious, what music do you listen to when you write? Or do you always listen to the music directly from OmmWriter?

Personally, I listen to relaxing fantasy music. Definitely gets me in that zen-like state.

I just need to remember to turn off all distractions. And meditating before writing wouldn’t do any harm, either.

Thanks for a great article,

Tom Andrews

Also…you could always try a social media blocker like freedom.to! I see they charge a monthly fee, but may be worth it…and I’m sure there are free blockers out there, too.

Great post, Linda! I especially like the idea of challenging yourself to write as much as you can in a short time frame. I find that I tend to be a perfectionist and sometimes it takes me a really long time to finish an article, in part because I edit so much. Also, thanks for mentioning Ommwriter, never heard of it before, looks interesting.

Thank YOU for reading, Chris! I encourage you to try out Ommwriter…it’s he best!

Good way of telling, good post to take facts regarding my presentation subject matter, which i am going to deliver in my college

Great pot – some new ideas I haven’t seen.

What a great post. I have always struggled to write quickly. My biggest issue is being a perfectionist in my first draft. I am definitely going to try what you said -not edit it as I go. It takes me days to craft a 2000-2500-word post, every time. So I am always looking for ways to speed up my writing process. I am currently posting once a week, for the most part, on my blog – but would love to get to two posts a week. Thanks for the fabulous ideas, Linda.

Thanks so much for your kind words! The good news is that if your first draft stinks, you can edit it…but you might be pleasantly surprised at the quality of your draft!

Thanks for sharing this helpful information. I wish I had known about #3 years ago. Typing details for images over and over again saps time out of my routine! Who knew a few keystrokes could conquer this time-waster! Great article! (You don’t NaNoWriMo by the way, do you?)

Thanks! Good to know how the trick can save time for bloggers not just in their writing, but in formatting their posts! (I think TextExpander has some special features for code?) I don’t NaNoWriMo, but I admire everyone who does!

Love this article! I’m TKing all over the place now. 🙂 Seriously, that tip alone has been like a booster rocket for my writing. Thank you so much.

For games check out “Write or Die” http://writeordie.com/ (non-affiliate link-just paying forward), can use on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

For Mac users who don’t want to pay yearly for TextExpander google: aText, a one-time payment of $4.99 from the Mac App Store. Does everything TextExpander does.

Lastly, this one took some time but it was a game changer in increasing my typing speed along with making way fewer typos. I switched from the Qwerty keyboard to Dvorak. The increase in speed was more of a result that Dvorak is so comfortable to type with. The caveat, you have to be willing to spend a fair amount of time learning a new keyboard layout. It’s cheaper to use the Qwerty keyboard, I just set the layout to Dvorak in my preferences. Oh, one more cool thing, you don’t have to worry about folks peeking at you when you type your password on the Qwerty keyboard using the Dvorak layout. 😉

Thank you again for your great “booster” tips, Linda.

Ken, thanks for all the great tips! What would be really cool is for someone ti switch from QUERTY to DVORAK and blog the journey: How hard is it to learn a new way after so many years? What tricks helped shorten the learning curve? What have been the results in time saved?

Because man, I can’t imagine trying to learn a whole new keyboard setup after 40 years! 🙂

Hello, Linda!

Just perfect!

The whole 10 points are the apt ones.

I am the self-procrastinating guy when it comes to writing on daily basis.

These all 10 points are super helpful to get me on the right track because I love writing but… without any schedule…

So, I believe the tips are surely gonna work for me (I hope!)

Well, that keyboard shortcut’s tip is great! I can really feel how time-saving it is to hit just fro keystrokes to write the 80-character long sentence! 🙂

Thanks for the great work, Linda!

And I am happy to share it on my social life — my network would surely love to know them! 🙂

Thanks so much, Adeel! Circle back and let us know how it goes with TextExpander (or aText as Ken mentions above).

Hello, Linda

First of all, fantastic article. I just started my blog a couple months ago. Recently I’ve been doing all the writing myself. I have zero experience in writing, even at school, I had a hard time.On top of all that English isn’t my first language

Like anything in life, if I practice enough I will get better and better. My biggest issue is I get distracted fast and lose my concentration. My biggest strength is when I write on a subject that fascinates me, I easily write the article in a couple of hours.

Anyways, great article, I will use some of your tips to enhance my writing skills.

Thanks, Giovanni! You’re right about practice…you should have seen how long it took me to write an article when I was starting out in 1997! As I mentioned in the comments above, I would print out my draft and go over it with a red pen — and I’d do this multiple times until it was perfect. Only through writing every day was I eventually able to write a draft, edit it once or twice on the screen, and send it off.

Thanks for such useful tips.

I’ll definitely follow them as I need to improve my writing skills 🙂

Great post, Linda.

Two more ideas: 1) Doing your work some place different can put you in a different mindset. When we form habits, we’re sort of training our bodies to expect certain things in certain locations. For example, people who read in bed sometimes find it difficult to get to sleep because they effectively train themselves to equate being in bed with reading, rather than sleeping. If you do your research in one room and your writing in another and your entertainment in a third you can help train yourself.

2) Or, if you’re slightly stupid, like me, you can invest $500 in a Freewrite (a sort of digital typewriter). Because you can only write on it and the options for editing amount to backspacing one character at a time, its manufacturers bill it as a distraction-free writing tool or a high-powered drafting machine. I love mine, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of making time to write or having things to write about.

Thank you so much for such a well-written article, Linda! I never knew I could turn off the red squiggly lines, but I will from now on. I also downloaded OmmWriter and it is a-ma-zing.

Can’t thank you enough for the awesome tips I learned and I’m super excited to test them out and see how much my writing speed improves.

Great suggestions! I always go down rabbit holes with fact checking or spell checking. Excellent ideas for keeping on task!

Hi Linda, I have just started my writing a few days back and I easily get distracted by the red and green lines of words and Grammarly. I will switch it off when I will start writing today.Hopefully, it will save lots of time and help me to write more efficiently.

Thanks Dipanjan Biswas

Great post! Full of tips that I’ll be able to apply right away, so thanks!

This is brilliant! I can be soooooo slow! Thanks for the tips.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Latest from the blog.

66 Euphemism Examples to Read Before You Meet Your Maker

18 Satire Examples Spoofing Politics, Film, & Literature

35+ Synecdoche Examples (+ A Simple, Clear Definition)

With over 300k subscribers and 4 million readers, Smart Blogger is one of the world's largest websites dedicated to writing and blogging.

Best of the Blog

© 2012-2024 Smart Blogger — Boost Blog Traffic, Inc.

Terms  |  Privacy Policy  |  Refund Policy  |  Affiliate Disclosure

Shortwave Magazine

How i write 1,000 words an hour, a guide by nicole dieker.

Right now it’s 1 p.m. on Tuesday, February 28.

By 2 p.m., this piece will be 1,000 words long.

Not just because I wrote “right now it’s 1 p.m. on Tuesday, February 28” when I could have written “it’s 1 p.m.” I used to do things like that, when I was an early-career freelancer getting paid by the word. Now I use what I learned, during those early days—not the tricks, necessarily, but the tips—to maintain a relatively consistent 1,000-word-per-hour output.

Day in, day out.

Here’s how I do it—and how you can, too.

I type very, very quickly.

We’ll start with the least interesting tip—since it’s probably something you already know how to do. If you want to write 1,000 words an hour, being able to type 100 words a minute helps.

That said, even people who can only type 17 words per minute will be able to get their 1,000 words in, as long as they’re able to keep it up for sixty minutes straight.

Which means that what really matters isn’t the speed, necessarily. It’s the words—one after the other, until you have 1,000 in a row.

Or, as is more often the case, in groups.

Well-organized groups .

Each successive chunk of text designed to both provide a piece of information and carry the reader into the next section.

Which brings us to—

I outline before I write.

This entire piece—which is already 246 words long, if you’re keeping track—was outlined in advance.

All I have to do now is follow the outline and fill in the text.

Outlining really is the secret to my success. It’s also the secret to my ability to write 1,000 words in succession.

If you are a smart reader—and most Shortwave readers are—you’re probably going to say “Wait a minute, Nicole. You can’t say you write 1,000 words an hour if you spend, like, an extra thirty minutes outlining. The time it takes to prepare the piece is just as important as the time it takes to write the piece!”

You are correct.

There is an argument to be made for, like, retitling this article “How I Write 1,000 Words in Ninety Minutes.”

And here’s the other secret to my success—

I don’t outline all at once.

As soon as I knew I was going to be writing this article for Shortwave Magazine, I created a new document titled SHORTWAVE WRITE FAST POST.

I kept this document open during my morning processing sessions. I added to it, here and there, as ideas came to mind. I shifted the ideas around, forming order out of insight.

By the time it was time to write the piece, I had a very good idea of how it was going to go.

But it didn’t take, like, an extra thirty minutes of me staring at a blank page.

Instead, it took dedicated, daily processing.

Two different kinds of processing, in fact—active and passive.

I set aside time to actively process.

Whenever I teach writing classes—and I’ve been teaching writing classes for nearly a decade—I tell people that they need 20 minutes of process time for every hour of writing time.

This goes double for freelancers, who need not only process time but also admin time (pitches, invoices, following up on unpaid invoices, etc.).

You need time to do the work that allows you to do the work.

Yes, you could start writing without knowing where you’re going next, and plenty of writers do.

But what happens—and I know this because it happens all the time when I draft the Larkin Day Mysteries —is that writing-as-guessing only gets you so far.

Eventually you stop putting words on the page.

You start staring at the page, instead.

I’m going to digress, for about 100 words or so, to explain how this works (or doesn’t work) with Larkin . As you might remember if you read my article on How to Write a Mystery Series , I outline every Larkin Day Mystery in advance—which is one of the biggest reasons why I’m able to complete a new 60,000-word novel every six months.

That said, there are gaps in my outline. Sometimes I know about the gaps before I start writing. My outline might say “AND THEN THEY ALL FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET BACK TO PRATINCOLA,” for example, and I have to figure it out myself before they can. Other times there’s a gap that surprises me. I didn’t know exactly how the character who becomes Larkin’s nemesis (since every Sherlock needs a Moriarty) would announce his mission to menace, and I think I thought I would figure it out in the moment, and I didn’t—so I stared at the page and waited for something to happen, and it didn’t.

When I don’t know what to write next, I can’t write 1,000 Larkin words in an hour.

If I didn’t know what I was going to write next, I wouldn’t be able to write this piece in an hour either.

Much of what is getting written in this piece, including the words I’m writing right now (872, with fifteen minutes to go) took shape during specific chunks of time blocked off for active processing. During that time I check my email and research my upcoming articles and evaluate the thoughts I’ve jotted down in my paper notebook and contact potential sources. I build my outlines, in documents with titles like SHORTWAVE WRITE FAST POST and LARKIN BOOK 4 and FREELANCE TIME MANAGEMENT ARTICLE.

The stuff that goes into my active processing sessions—the ideas , for lack of a better word—takes shape during my passive processing sessions.

I set aside time to passively process.

As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to take a walk.

An hour-long walk, with no music and no podcasts.

During this time, my brain may suggest that I rework one of the sentences I just wrote.

My brain may also offer up a new idea for the next Larkin book.

Or—and this is just as important—my brain may simply take the time to rest.

If I don’t set aside time to passively process—to think without thinking , as it were—not only do I stop writing as well, but I also stop sleeping as well. I toss and turn while my mind churns, going over everything it could have resolved if I’d just gotten outside for a while.

I understand that not everybody can take an hour-long walk in the middle of the day, and not everybody can take an hour-long walk at the beginning or the end of the day.

Set aside the time you can.

Not only will it save you time later, but it will also allow you to complete the last step in the writing process.

When I write, I work without distraction.

The clock just chimed 2 p.m, and I just finished writing my 1,160th word—which means this last section will be a bonus.

Writing without distraction does in fact mean “writing without simultaneously checking your email.”

It also means “writing without taking a break every ten minutes to look at Twitter.”

It even means “writing with your phone set to Do Not Disturb.”

But those are all external distractions.

What working without distraction really means—and what I hope it can mean for you, too—is eliminating the internal distractions.

What’s for dinner gotta fix the water valve on the toilet don’t forget to send the birthday card when are you going to buy a new pair of sandals because your current pair is literally held together by duct tape should we start planning our summer trip to Chicago why has that one client not paid me yet who am I going to interview for the time management post where do I want to be with my career next year who do I want to be as a person why am I not there yet…

There is no way you can write 1,000 words an hour if those kinds of thoughts are in the way of the words you need to write.

Which means that my first goal, as a writer, is to put those thoughts somewhere .

If I were teaching a writing class right now, I’d start there.

Instead, I’ll end here—at 1,414 words, in one hour and thirteen minutes—and go for my walk.

We’ll continue this series next month.

Read the next guide, "How to Write Without Distractions" →

→ View all works by Nicole Dieker

Enjoy this story? Consider supporting our magazine with a small donation.

All donations will go towards paying authors for new stories, or website upkeep to ensure our stories remain free to read.

Nicole Dieker is a writer, teacher, and musician. She began her writing career as a full-time freelancer with a focus on personal finance and habit formation; she launched her fiction career with The Biographies of Ordinary People , a definitely-not-autobiographical novel that follows three sisters from 1989 to 2016.

Dieker writes the Larkin Day mystery series. She also maintains an active freelance career; her work has appeared in Vox, Morning Brew, Lifehacker, Bankrate, Haven Life, Popular Science, and more. Dieker spent five years as writer and editor for The Billfold, a personal finance blog where people had honest conversations about money.

Dieker lives in Quincy, Illinois with the great love of her life, his piano, and their garden.

nicoledieker.com

Copyright ©2023 by Nicole Dieker.

Published by Shortwave Magazine. First print rights reserved.

Cover Reveal – CICADA

Obsolescence is an iba horror finalist, i am ai is a locus award finalist.

We believe in paying writers professional rates. We also believe in not hiding stories behind paywalls. These two beliefs are, unfortunately, at odds with each other. However, your support today could help us continue our mission.

Book News. Author Updates. And a 20% off coupon code.

We respect your privacy. We will never sell your information. You can unsubscribe at any time.

"The Case of the Worm at the Silent Disco"

Your Favorite Author's Favorite Author: Brian Evenson on Franz Kafka

"Daily Dozen"

Cover reveal – when you leave i disappear, cover reveal – teleportasm, i am ai is a hugo award finalist, search for books, authors, news, and more....

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Savvy Calculator

Savvy Calculator is a free online tool of calculations.

Essay Time Calculator

Introduction.

Writing essays is a common task for students, professionals, and writers, but it can be challenging to estimate how much time it will take to complete a specific essay. The “Essay Time Calculator” is a practical tool that helps you plan and manage your time effectively when tackling essay assignments. Whether you’re a student working on an academic paper or a writer with a tight deadline, this calculator simplifies the process of determining how much time you need to complete your essay.

The “Essay Time Calculator” estimates the time required to write an essay based on several factors, including word count, complexity, and your writing speed. While there isn’t a precise formula, the calculator uses a straightforward calculation:

Time (in minutes) = Word Count ÷ Words Per Minute

• “Time” represents the estimated time required to write the essay in minutes.
• “Word Count” is the total number of words in the essay.
• “Words Per Minute” is your average writing speed, typically expressed in words written per minute.

The calculator uses these values to provide a reasonable estimate of the time you’ll need to complete your essay.

How to Use?

Using the “Essay Time Calculator” is a simple and practical process. Follow these steps to make the most of it:

• Input : Start by entering the total word count for your essay in the provided field.
• Adjust Complexity : Select the complexity level of your essay from the dropdown menu (e.g., simple, moderate, complex).
• Enter Writing Speed : Specify your average writing speed in words per minute. If you’re unsure, a common average is around 200 words per minute for casual writing.
• Calculate : Click the “Calculate” button, and the tool will provide an estimated time for completing your essay.

Suppose you need to write a 1,000-word essay with a moderate level of complexity, and you type at an average speed of 250 words per minute. Here’s how to use the calculator:

• Input : Enter 1,000 in the word count field.
• Adjust Complexity : Select “Moderate” from the complexity dropdown menu.
• Enter Writing Speed : Input 250 as your words per minute.
• Calculate : Click the “Calculate” button.

The calculator may estimate that you’ll need approximately 4 minutes to complete this essay.

1. Can this calculator provide an exact time estimate?

The calculator provides an estimate based on the input parameters, but actual writing times may vary depending on individual writing speed, research, and revision.

2. What if my essay is very complex or technical?

For highly complex or technical essays, you might want to adjust the complexity setting to “Complex” to provide a more accurate estimate.

3. How can I improve my writing speed?

Improving writing speed requires practice and familiarity with the topic. Consider pre-writing tasks, like outlining, to streamline the writing process.

4. Can I use this calculator for any type of writing, not just essays?

While it’s primarily designed for essays, you can adapt it for other writing tasks like reports, articles, or creative writing by adjusting the complexity and content type to fit your needs.

Conclusion:

The “Essay Time Calculator” is a valuable tool for anyone who needs to estimate the time required to complete essay assignments. By taking into account factors such as word count, complexity, and writing speed, this calculator offers a practical guideline for planning and managing your time effectively. While it provides estimates, individual writing processes may differ, so it’s important to adapt the results to your specific circumstances. This tool simplifies the task of gauging the time commitment for your writing projects, helping you stay organized and meet your deadlines with greater ease.

• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions

How Long Does It Take To Write 1,000 Words? And How Can It Be Faster?

Kieron Moore

Kieron Moore is a writer, script editor and filmmaker living in Manchester, England. As part of the Eleven Writing team, his specialisms include video editing and how to correctly use an apostrophe. He can be found on Twitter at @KieronMoore, usually when he’s meant to be writing.

Writing can be time-consuming, and many writers, especially those with less experience, can worry that they’re spending too long on their work.

And speed is especially relevant to freelance writers who are paid per word or per article. How quickly you write determines how much you earn each hour or day. But of course, you don't want to sacrifice quality, as this could mean you lose clients and therefore your income.

To help you understand what kind of writing speed is realistic, we’ll look at how long it typically takes professional writers to write 1,000 words. We'll also throw in some tips for achieving your desired speed.

How long does it take to write 1,000 words?

The quick answer is that your typical professional copywriter is often able to research and write a 1000-word article in around one to two hours. However, this writing speed does require some confidence and efficiency.

If it seems faster than you could manage, there’s no need to feel bad about it, as it’s by no means a one-size-fits-all calculation. In fact, there are a number of factors that can speed up or slow down writing, including:

When starting out in their content writing career, a beginner writer can take three to four hours to write a typical 1000-word article. If you’re at this stage, it can feel frustrating to hear about experienced writers working much faster than you.

However, working at this pace is a natural part of your development. At this stage, it’s better to focus on quality over quantity; you will naturally learn to speed up your process as you go.

Level of research needed

The amount of research required depends heavily on the subject matter. With more technical subjects or academic writing, the research can sometimes take longer than the writing itself.

But other times, such as with opinion pieces or subjects the writer already has a lot of knowledge about, the reduced need for research means the entire writing process is much faster.

If you're a beginner writer, it’s good to stick to topics you’re already knowledgeable about, so your process isn’t being slowed down by having to do too much research. But where research can help, it’s important to put the time in and get it right—as you become a better writer, you’ll also become a faster researcher.

Typing speed

When you’re in the zone and know exactly how you want to shape the next sentence or two, then a slow typing speed can cause problems. If your fingers aren’t able to keep up with your brain, then you might forget what you were planning to say and stall mid-sentence.

But typing, like research, is a skill you’ll get faster at as you build experience. If you are worried about your typing skills, look up typing exercises and games online to improve your speed.

The intended audience

One thing that can slow down inexperienced writers is tailoring their content to a specific audience. Whether you’re writing a technical essay for a scientific publication or a casual how-to guide for a lifestyle brand, there’s always appropriate terminology you need to use and a tone you need to hit.

If you’re used to writing in a particular way, it can be difficult to adapt yourself to a new client with its own niche audience. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the house style by reading other articles from the same outlet before starting out. The more you write for an audience, the more naturally it’ll come.

How good is the brief

With many commissioned articles, the writer will be given a detailed brief by their client, or a template to work from. The more detailed the brief, the more time it will save the writer. If the structure of the article has already been laid out, that will save the writer significant time when it comes to working out how to approach the article. A good brief can also explain the tone required and even give leads on research.

{{orderbox}}

With a less detailed brief, you will have to spend more time working out how to approach your article. How detailed a brief is can vary a lot from job to job, and of course, if it’s an article you’ve pitched yourself or your own project, you may not have one at all.

Concentration

One major factor that affects how long it takes to write an article is how much the writer is able to concentrate on it. Allowing yourself to be distracted can make a two-hour exercise stretch out into four hours.

While some distractions can’t be helped, especially if you’re in a busy environment, it’s best to make time where you can concentrate on just your writing. Then you’ll have more time later to deal with other things.

7 Tips to Cut Your Writing Time Down

Tip one: write an outline.

If you start writing an article with no plan for how it will be structured, you’re likely to encounter problems. You could find yourself stalled with no idea what to do next, or even going back and rewriting sections.

By writing an outline of your article before starting, you can save yourself a lot of time. This can be as brief or as detailed as you like, as long as you work out the key structure of the article and which points are made in which sections.

A common structure for a 1000-word article is to assign 100 words each to the introduction and conclusion, with four 200-word sections in between.

Tip Two: Cut out distractions

The more you can reduce the amount of things that could potentially distract you, the more you can focus on your writing. Keep a clean and tidy writing space, ideally somewhere quiet. Put your phone away, close down unrelated browser tabs and apps such as social media or email, and put your word process on full-screen mode.

If you’re struggling to avoid distractions, then you may want to look into alternative writing software with focus modes, or to try out focus techniques such as the pomodoro technique. This is where you alternate 25-minute sessions of strict focus with five-minute breaks where you can allow yourself to get a snack or look at Twitter. By giving yourself these breaks, you reduce the urge to do other things while writing.

Tip Three: Do all your research first

If you’re writing about a subject that requires a lot of research, then don’t dive headfirst into the writing. You’ll find yourself stalling a lot and having to check things elsewhere, which will slow down your process. And, if it’s clear from the writing that you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’ll end up having to rewrite.

So, it’s important to set aside time to do all your research in advance. This may feel like a time-consuming process when you want to be writing, but you’ll save a lot of time later. With a solid bank of research to refer to as you write, the process will be smooth and efficient, and your writing will be more confident.

If your research involves contacting experts, make sure you leave enough time for them to respond, ideally a few days, after you’ve reached out to them. You don’t want to have to delay writing your article because you’re waiting for an email back.

Tip Four: Don’t worry about a perfect first draft

When you’re writing, it can be easy to obsess over getting every word right. But if, every time you finish a sentence, you go back and reword that sentence again and again until it’s perfect, you’ll end up spending a lot of time making not much progress.

A good maxim is “don’t get it right, get it written.” The process of rewriting is much easier and faster once you have the entire article written, and you’ll feel much better about it thanks to having a complete draft.

This also allows you to make bigger changes before dealing with the small things—there’s no point fretting over getting a sentence right when you may end up changing the whole paragraph later.

Tip Five: Query issues in the brief

If something is unclear or unspecified in an article brief, you may be tempted to work it out for yourself and just get on with it. However, it’s always better to check anything you’re unsure about with the editor or client first.

The time saved by not asking will be more than canceled out by the time wasted if you make a wrong assumption and are later asked to rewrite.

Tip Six: Write in your most productive hours

How much a writer is able to concentrate on their writing can vary over the course of the day, and the ideal time to write is different for everyone. You may find it easiest to concentrate when there are less potential distractions, such as early in the morning or late at night. Or you may work better fitting your writing into a more traditional workday schedule.

Granted, this won’t always be possible for writers with less flexibility, such as those working around another job or with family commitments. However, the more you’re able to schedule regular writing hours at a time that works for you, the more productive you’ll find yourself to be.

Tip Seven: Work out your own process

One of the most useful pieces of advice a writer can be given is to take the advice they want to take. That’s not to say you should dismiss guidance on a whim, but that, instead of taking any one prescribed writing process as gospel, you should try out a number of techniques.

Everyone works differently. For example, some writers outline their work in great detail before starting a draft, while others barely outline at all. As you experiment, you’ll find yourself naturally inclined to a process that works best for you.

Trust your instincts—the more you write, the more you’ll learn what process works best for you, and the more confident and faster a writer you’ll become.

The answer to the question “how long does it take to write 1000 words?” is: it varies. While a professional writer will often complete an article in an hour or two, beginners may take twice as long, and there are multiple factors that may make it take longer, such as the level of research required and the amount of detail in the brief.

While it’s better to aim for quality rather than quantity when starting out on your writing career, hopefully our tips will be able to help you increase your average writing speed. As you exercise your writing muscles regularly, you’ll find your ideal writing process, and become a faster and more efficient writer.

Receive insider tips straight to your inbox.

Would you like to speak to one of our experts?

Create custom email campaigns, measure performance, and turn insights into results with Mailchimp’s email marketing tools.

The latest from the Eleven blog

From writing and editing to strategy and marketing, our expert team answers the biggest questions in online content.

SEO Case Study: How NinjaOne Increased Traffic 678% In One Year

9 Signs It’s Time To Update Your Freelance Writing Rates (+ How To Do It)

What to keep in mind when building your writing career, get early access to our course, future-proof against ai, land your dream clients, and command higher rates.

Created by Eleven’s most established editors, SEO strategists, and account managers.

• Good Writing Habits
• Inspiration
• Writing Groups, Tools, & Software
• Writing Tips
• Book Design & Formatting
• Book Distribution
• Printed Books 101
• Publishing Industry News
• Self-Publishing
• Book Launch
• Book Promotion & Publicity
• Online Book Marketing
• BookBaby.com
• Publish My Book
• Free Catalog

Would you like to be much more productive as a writer? It’s possible, and you don’t have to turn into a machine or ingest huge amounts of caffeine to do it. (Although a bit of coffee might help goose your enthusiasm.)

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Table of Contents: • How much can you write in an hour? • My writing speed test results • How quickly can you publish a new book?

Updated March 2023.

If you’re like me, you wouldn’t mind increasing your writing output so you can get more books and information products to market.

This aspiration naturally leads to the question, “How much content can I reasonably expect to produce?” The best way to quantify it is to find out how many words you actually crank out per hour.

I wondered the same thing recently. So I set out to uncover what my real writing speed is. I’m happy to share with you the results and what I learned. And I encourage you to go through this same process to determine your own writing production level.

How much can you write in an hour?

Last month, over a nine-day period, I did seven separate writing sessions of about an hour each.

I know that some writers can sit for hours on end through marathon writing sessions. While I’ve done that in the past, these days I find I’m more effective when I focus on writing for an hour or so at a time.

The results : My grand total for all seven hours added up to 4,885 words.

That’s an average of nearly 700 words per hour. Not bad. There are people who write a lot faster, but I was pretty happy with that number.

My slowest writing session was just 465 words an hour, while I cranked out more than 1,000 words during my most productive hour.

My writing speed test results

Here’s what I learned :

• My lowest word counts came during sessions when I was less prepared and more distracted.
• When I had a clear outline of the section I was working on, I could get into it faster and make more progress.
• The more I wrote consistently day after day, the easier it was to get into a state of flow. Of course, I knew this from previous experience (and that’s why I kick myself for not writing on a more regular schedule).
• The longer the time in between writing sessions on the same book, the more energy you must expend to remind yourself where you left off and get back into the flow.
• With consistent focus and preparation, I feel confident I could probably up my hourly average to 900 or 1,000 words.

How quickly can you publish a new book?

Now let’s translate this into the frequency with which you can publish new books!

To demonstrate, I’ll apply it to my situation…

If my goal is to release more titles, here’s what the math looks like related to my writing time and word count:

Let’s be modest and say I can devote two hours a day, four days a week, to working on a current book project.

That’s eight hours a week of solid writing. If I use 800 words per hour as my average, that equals about 6,500 words per week.

In just three weeks I’d have enough content for a nearly 20,000-word ebook. In five weeks of consistent effort that number would rise to 32,000 words – enough for a small paperback.

If 50,000 words was my goal, that should be easily doable in two months or less.

Of course, I realize that editing can easily reduce these numbers and rewrites can add time to the process. But I hope you agree that measuring where you are with your hourly word count gives you a way to determine your potential output.

Have you measured how many words per hour you write? Do you see the benefit of writing more in less time? What are the drawbacks of this approach?

I welcome your comments below.

Related Posts Counterintuitive Advice On The Craft of Writing Does Your Writing Pass The “Slow Read” Test? Where Do Your Story Ideas Come From? Develop Your Writing Through Sketches Root Out These Five Writing Mistakes Before You Publish

37 COMMENTS

I love how much work and effort you put into your website, as well as how much information you give! ..

I have published 35 books so far. On average I write about 1000 a day and I am happy as long as I can do that. With a day job, teaching twice a month and selling on ebay, laundry and living life in general, its a fair expectation. Energy is my biggest issue. Its not data entry, you have to create the story, make it up as you go. That takes mind power and energy. 1000 a words a day is not too bad. Like the others say, its not a race. Quality over quantity :-)

Interesting reflections. I think that word count is really personal, yet it is useful to see what works for other writers. I think that the topics we deal with affect the word count since it´s not the same to write blogs than fiction.

Surprised, I am journaling and find that I pretty consistently write 2200 words per hour, albeit rarely that long at a time, usualy in 20 or 30 minute sessions. However, this is not deeply considered writing. Nonetheless, I thought I was terribly slow. I guess not.

I write, on average, 1500 words per hour, though occasionally I can breach the 2000 W/H barrier. However, I generally spend around 5 minutes before I write a scene to outline it excessively, so that I write quicker.

I’ve written 1’000 words in a hour it was easy

Writing is an artform. To do it any justice, we as writers make great pains and spend long, thoughtful hours ruminating over our content.

If one is speaking of writing Copy, then I would agree that your productivity challenge would be effective indeed! Much the same can be said for Text Book Writers, Manual Writers, and Nonfiction Writers. All of these platforms have predetermined facts, directions, and historical facts that can be broken down into a helpful outline. There is very little imagination that goes into predetermined information. Unfortunately, for the less rigid writing platforms, the expression ‘You can’t rush art’ applies.

As a Fantasy/Fiction writer, I find that attempting an outline is not much different than learning how to skate for the first time. In other words, it’s challenging, more than is necessary. Lists often help me more so than outlines. But I won’t force my mind into a yolk that I can’t bear up under…words per hour isn’t an across the board fix for all writing platforms, and in my opinion, is only beneficial to a specialized few.

I never count. I write and revise until I am happy with the content. So, I am more focused on quality than quantity.

When I’m typing something I’m pretty sure of–like a blog post where I cam babble like I’m talking, I can get off an 800-ish word post in a little over an hour. If I have to stop and check facts or if I’m writing fiction and not real clear about how I’m going to handle a scene, that can drop to less than 200 words per hour. Doesn’t really have anything to to with how “prepared” I am to write.

[…] If you want to read some more about word counts, check out this blogpost: https://blog.bookbaby.com/2015/01/the-prolific-author-how-many-words-per-hour-can-you-write/ […]

However quickly you might finish … there’s still the editing; the re-editing; the re-re-editing; the re-re-re-editing … and so on, and so forth.

Yeah, that’s why I always try to look at revision as part of the writing process. Revision is writing. Writing is revision. And then one day you throw your hands up and just publish the thing!

@ChrisRobley

Besides, to me, outlining is integral to writing. The better the outline, the faster the writing.

This actually made me realise it’s not going to take forever to write my novel. All I really need to do it get around to sitting down and writing, and from there I’ll be unstoppable (I say that now, but writers block will definitely set it haha).

And make sure to leave time for revision, editing, playing around, etc. Glad this article was a good kick in the pants!

I don’t know… just because you can write 400 or so words per hour doesn’t mean you can write double that in two or triple in three hours. You may be a sprinter. Some days you may writer slower, or after the first burst you may slow down so each subsequent half-hour produces fewer words. You may only be able to give a certain among of time per day before life intrudes. You may need to take a day off every so often to prevent burn-out.

I have recently figured out how many words I can write in a day by writing every day for a week, after which I ended up with 8,000 words. That gave me a realistic goal for myself, and it told me not only how many words on average I should write in a day, but how much of my day I have to expect to give to other activities. It’s no good saying “I’ll write 4 hours” if in reality, I won’t. And I don’t go by hors anyway, b/c some days I can write 3,000 words in the time I take to write 500 the next day. So my goal is 8,000 a week, and my pace is 1,200 per day. I call the daily one a pace b/c it tells me where I have to be each day to make my weekly goal. If I fall behind, I have to make it up the next day, no waiting till day six and hoping to catch up 6,000 words. So far it’s working.

It’s interesting to get a glimpse into different writer’s habits and practice. Thanks for sharing. I generally don’t have the word count pressure weighing on me… because, well, it’s poetry. Often it’s about getting rid of words, but when I do have longer prose projects I tend work best when I can do the hours method. Like, I don’t care how much I write as long as I’m sitting here trying for 2 hours a day, or whatever. But I can definitely see the benefit of putting those word goals out there, and using it as motivation if you fall behind. Thanks again.

I like to keep track of the number of words I am writing per day, and what I’ve noticed is that the larger the window for writing, the higher the average. When working on lighter fictional works, that translates to over 1,000 words an hour when I’m having a good day. But if I’m stopping and starting, I might be lucky to write 400 words in a hour. One of the best days I’ve had netted me 12,000 words, and when I re-read it later, I was pretty pleased with what I’d written. Not perfect by any means, but mostly just how I wanted it.

So how do I try to achieve a ‘good day’? One of the best ways to keep the flow going is to allocate yourself a chunk of time (sometimes I write through the night – desperate I know, but at least it’s quiet). Then to feel really at home with your characters and their motivations, and also to not let yourself get distracted.

TOP TRICK I’ll let you into a little secret. One of the ways I avoid ‘stalling’ is to substitute a word I can’t think of that moment with ‘xx’, and then come back to it later. That way I don’t interrupt the flow.

Using ‘xx’ is also useful if I can’t remember something to do with continuity – such as a minor character’s name or place name that I know I’ve referred to before. My trick for that is to keep a separate document where I list all of the characters and places for that book/series, but again, don’t even look at the list when you’re in a flow – use xx for now! It is easier and better for time management to search for ‘xx’es and sort them out all at once at a later date.

A word of caution though for those of us who delight in counting our words – for every day spent writing freely, you will have several days of painstaking re-reading and editing. So on those days, the word count is more likely to go backwards than forwards. To my mind that’s the hardest bit of becoming an author…

Great points. If you’re looking only at word count then you’re creating a lot of revision work later on. Also, I TOTALLY do that XX thing! I even use “XX.” I also sometimes use the recorder on my iPhone to dictate some stuff and I say “something here kinds like (the missing idea).”

And wow, 12,000 words in a day! Did you sleep for the next week?

Hi. This all makes sense and would really be helpful! Just wondering if there’s a way to come up with a word count for the outlining or planning stage of writing? I find it extremely difficult to set goals for the index card/prep stage – any thoughts?

Instead of thinking about word count, what if you broke the outlining stage into chapter outlines per day/week. For instance, give yourself 6 weeks to finish the outline; 5 workdays a week X 6 weeks = 30 writing days; 30 chapters? 1 chapter outline a day. 15 chapters? Two days of outlining per chapter. Etc. Word that work for your project?

What if I have around 80k? How big would that be in a normal-sized book? I mean, when I write I use font-size 10 with the Arial font on Word. I’ve figured out that books have around 350 words per page, which would be around 14 with Arial. That would make around 230 pages, right?

Here is an interesting article about word counts by genre: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-post

If you’re writing a novel, you probably have enough material (though maybe a little bit on the light side, in which case you could write another 10-15k words or so and see what happens in the editing process).

General standard word count is 250 words per page. Or, it used to be. Per Writers Digest.

I write with 12 pt. font size and use “Times New Roman” font face. My last book had 88,000 words and was 333 pages long. So using a smaller font size would give fewer pages. Nothing less than 11 pt. font size for reading.

The only times you even hinted at quality were two brief mentions of preparation and one of outline.

I agree with the fiction and poetry writers that outlines are not always helpful for what they do.

There are ways that the writing process can be more efficient, and you touched on some of them. But the general tenor of your article is that writing is a race to get “content” out the door so you can be paid. This attitude debases writing into factory labor on the assembly line. I read this and pictured the time and motion expert on the factory floor, stopwatch in hand. Don’t talk about words per minute. You are writing, not just typing!

Gandhi said it best: “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. As someone who writes mostly poetry (and web content), I’ve never been super concerned with word counts. I can see those goals being helpful especially for non-fiction writers, though. Also, great Gandhi quote!

I have to agree. I like to write Young Adult Fiction and some of my hours writing are more productive than others. If I can get down on paper a thousand words a day, and like what I’ve written, that’s great. My tendency is to revise while I’m writing; then I move on. I try not to let “plot” override “character development.” Sometimes I’ll start in one direction and then a car will backfire or a dog bark and off I’ll go in another. To each his own I guess. But an assembly line of words—never.

The late, great Thomas Wolfe, author of “Look Homeward Angel,” was known to have written 10,000 extraordinary descriptive and highly creative words for a novel in one evening.

Wow. I imagine him doing the early 20th century version of “drops mic” after that sitting.

To be perfectly honest, I was not thinking along these lines. In my own writing process, all I have been doing is just sitting down and writing leisurely. Now that I have read your post, I guess I have something new to think about. Much respect and appreciation/One Love!

I quite often have time to ‘free write’ – just to get the content out onto the page without self editing as I go then I review later. I often write word counts and time spent down so I have a fair idea of output although yes like you say it often depends on focus and if the ideas are there.

I have written 420 words in 10 minutes, but generally I write on average 500 words in half an hour, about 1000 words an hour.

Output, volume and ideas no worries, my issue is sitting down to write more consistently!!

I love free writing, especially to generate ideas for poems. But I so seldom sit down to write that way. I haven’t been able to make a habit of it. Here’s hoping you can make a habit of writing more often. Thanks for reading and commenting.

[…] The prolific author: how to measure your productivity in words per minute […]

Well, fiction is different; even with an outline, there are periods of thinking and digesting and plotting and changing. Besides, an average novel is 80K words, so yeah…much easier, with fiction, to determine daily output versus hourly typing skill.

I agree. With fiction, and perhaps even more with poetry, it’s tough to think about productivity being in direct relation to words per. Revision is such a huge part of the process.

When you say “write” do you actually mean “write” in the literal sense as in longhand, putting pencil or pen to paper, of do you mean “write” as in on a computer keyboard which, in essence would be “typing.” If you mean “write” in the form of longhand I am indeed impressed!

LEAVE A REPLY Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Recent Articles

How to Self-Publish & Market a Nonfiction Book

How To Title a Poem

How to Write a Book With No Experience in 10 Steps

How to Add Research for Your Next Book Project

© BookBaby Blog. All Rights Reserved.

• Place order

How to write a 2000-word Essay: What works Best?

Writing a remarkable 2000-word essay is an overwhelming task for students. This type of essay requires an overwhelming amount of knowledge, time to write, and the ability to organize your thoughts concisely. This guide will explain everything you need to complete a 2000-word essay.

How long is a 2000-word essay?

In academic writing, a 2000-word essay is the same as four pages of a single-spaced document or eight pages double-spaced one . Double spacing means there should be blank lines between each line of text that prevent them from blurring together. Your instructor may ask you to double-space the essay to make it easier to read and to allow reviewers to make comments or suggestions about the assignment.

Each page of single-spaced content has 500-550 words, while a double-spaced page has 250-275. If you are using MLA or APA formatting style, the formatting standard for an essay should be (1) double-spaced, (2) Times New Roman font, and (3) one-inch margins all around. If you use Ariel font pages

How Many Paragraphs is a 2000 Words Essay

A 2000-word essay consists of between 7 and 9 paragraphs, each having between 3 and 5 or more full and coherent sentences. Please note that there are no proper rules on how many sentences your paragraph should have since each paragraph discusses different ideas relating to the main topic of your essay.

Some paragraphs could be shorter and others longer. Some paragraphs could be a sentence shorter, and others about half a page long. What matters more is how you structure and complete the paragraphs.

However, you should not concern yourself with the length of your paragraph that you forget what matters most: the content of the paragraphs. Communicate effectively the quality of the message to ensure you answer the topic.

Can I Write 2000 Words in Two Hours?

Writing a 2000-word article in two hours is challenging but not impossible. Typically, a good essay requires in-depth research, a clear structure for the paper, and an organization of your ideas, which requires adequate time.

However, quickly completing an essay depends on your familiarity with the topic and typing speed. Most adults have an average typing speed of 40 words per minute (WPM). However, for experienced typists, the average typing speed is about 76 words per minute. Many college students trying to finish their assignments on time usually type 60-70 words per minute.

If you are having an essay crisis and can’t seem to figure out how to write a 2000-word essay in two hours, use the following tips;

Plan your essay

Take 10 – 15 minutes to organize your thoughts by identifying your essay's main topics and ideas. Focus only on key ideas and avoid unnecessary details to save time. Then, decide how you will organize them in your paper. A great tip is to have a logical order, ensuring a link between all ideas.

Research Efficiently and effectively

All academic papers, especially long-form essays like a 2000-word essay, require in-depth research to gather supporting information for your topic. You need to dedicate a few minutes to gather sources before writing.

Write the Introduction

Use 5-10 minutes to write a compelling introduction, beginning with a hook to grab readers' attention. Then, provide some context about the topic and state your thesis statement.

Write the Body Paragraphs

Allocate 10- 15 minutes to discuss each idea supporting your main topic. If you have 5 ideas, it will take you about 50 minutes to finish writing the body of your essay.

Write Your Conclusion

Use 10-15 minutes to finalize your essay by restating your thesis statement, summarizing the main points, reminding the readers why they should care, and providing recommendations/ suggestions for the main topic.

Revise Your Essay

Use 20 minutes to review your draft to correct any mistakes you made while writing. The final draft should be free of any errors (punctuation, grammar, and spelling) and be plagiarism-free. You must also ensure that all ideas are clearly and concisely written.

Please note that writing a 2000-word essay under time constraints will likely affect the quality of your work; however, following the above tips ensures you finish a well-structured 2000-word essay quickly.

What is the Format for a 2000 Word Essay?

A 2000-word essay is an academic paper with the same format as others. This means it has an introduction, a body paragraph, and a conclusion. Your introduction and conclusion should comprise approximately 25% of the total word count of the essay, while the rest of 75% should be dedicated to the body.

Introductions

An introduction of a 2000-word essay is 5-10% of the total word count. It should be between 100 – 150 words of concisely written content. If you have no idea what to include in the introduction, the following tips will offer a starting point.

• Set the scene
• Introduce the topic or problem under discussion.
• If needed, provide definitions of complex concepts.
• An explanation of why the topic or problem matters. (provide the size or the scope of the matter).
• The purpose of the essay.
• Introduce the thesis statement, which is the central idea of the essay.
• Briefly provide the outline you will use to explain the paper's logic.

Your introduction should be a paragraph or two long since a paragraph is made of 100 words.

The Main Body

A body of a 2000-word essay will make up about 75% of the total word count. It should be divided into 5-7 paragraphs, each discussing one central idea that identifies the main topic. These paragraphs should be 150- 250 words, each supported by 2 or more references. Note that the longer the assignments, the more important it is to provide links that refer to earlier points, thus connecting ideas.

When you begin writing the body, your ideas will likely flow randomly from the mind. Since you are writing for readers with different backgrounds and viewpoints, you must organize these ideas to make it easier for them to process and understand. Use the following format to organize the body of your essay;

• Write a topic sentence that identifies the paragraph topic you will discuss.
• Supporting information , such as examples, details, and evidence, contributes to the main topic. When you provide evidence, ensure you explain why it is relevant to the topic.
• A concluding sentence also acts as a transition to the next paragraph. Provide a conclusion that reminds readers of what they have read and shows the topic's significance.

Use the above format to organize the rest of the body paragraphs. Consider writing this plan on paper and pinning it on your desk to remind yourself whenever you write an essay. 

Additionally, consider using the following writing techniques and tools to help finish your essay in under two hours.

Technique 1: The Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro Technique. This technique involves working continuously for 25 minutes and then taking a 5-minute break. The Pomodoro technique is effective because it allows you to focus while avoiding burnout. Research shows that taking regular breaks can increase well-being and performance.

Technique 2: Write in Batches

Writing in batches is an effective method to finish a 2000-word essay in two hours. It involves dividing your essay into sections and working on them before taking a break.

Use tools such as Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to help edit your work and ensure no errors before submission.

This is the final paragraph of your essay. Like an introduction, a conclusion makes up about 5-10% of a 2000-word essay. This means that a conclusion for a 2000-word essay has approximately 100-150 words.

If you follow the above format, the total word count will 2050.

How Long Will It Take to Write a 2000 Words Essay?

Finishing a 2000-word essay will take 6-8 hours on average. However, if you are just typing the essay without doing any in-depth research, outlining the work, or adding citations and references, it will take about 50 minutes. For a handwritten essay, it takes about 1.7 hours to finish a 2000-word essay.

Please note that some students can finish a 2000-word essay in just under two hours, while others can take at least five days (2 for in-depth research, 2 for writing the essay, and one for revising and editing) to finish. All this will depend on the complexities of the topic. A complex topic will probably require more time for research, especially if getting the sources for the topic is challenging.

The assignment deadline will also influence whether someone can finish the essay quickly or not. Many students often find themselves swamped with assignments, wondering which to prioritize. If you have a 1000-word essay and another for 2200 words, prioritize the latter and focus on finishing the shorter one later.  

If you want to finish your essay quickly, avoid distractions such as social media, TV, friends, etc.

How Many References Are in a 2000 Words Essay

A 2000-word essay should have between 10 and 20 high-quality references. Please take note that these are just suggestions. Logically, there should be a source in every paragraph. Each argument supported by credible evidence must have a reference. Some factors that will determine how many references each of your paragraphs will have include:

The Type of Research

If you are conducting empirical research, you will need more references compared to doing research for a theoretical paper. This is because the latter focuses on synthesizing existing concepts.

Depth of the Research

If your 2000-word essay is about a complex topic, you must do more thorough research to locate all the evidence supporting or refuting your claims. This means your essay will have more references than one that does not need much research.

Assignment’s Requirements

Your instructors will specify the number of references to use in your essay; they might verbally communicate this in class or highlight it on the assignment prompt. Thus, it's essential to always read and understand your prompt before working on the assignment.

If there are no specifications about essay references, check with your instructor how many are appropriate for the type of essay you are writing.

Writing Time by Word Counts

The following table outlines how long it takes to complete an essay, depending on the number of words.

From the above table, it's clear that a person's typing speed will dictate whether they can finish an assignment quickly or not.

Writing Time by Page Counts

Wondering how long it takes to complete a page? The table below will let you know how long it will take to finish an essay based on page counts.

This rough estimate is based on slow, average, and fast writers.

Tips to Help You Finish a 2000 Words Essay

So, you left your 2000-word essay until the last minute and can't seem to figure out how to finish it on time? No worries. The following tips can help.

Eat a Good Breakfast

A study published in the National Library of Medicine has shown that eating a good breakfast is associated with positive outcomes for learners and professionals. Breakfast gives you energy after fasting overnight for more than 7 hours. Take some brain food fuel, such as yogurts topped with berries, to give you steady energy as you write your essay. This will prevent you from feeling hungry, which could be a distraction.

Pick Your Equipment and Workstation

When you sit down to write, everything must be within reach. So, pick a conducive environment away from distractions and collect all materials like your laptops, pens, notebooks, etc.

Set Time Management Goals

When you have an urgent assignment that is 2000 words long, time management is key to success. Good time management skills will help you finish the task quickly while avoiding distractions. You can break up your tasks into chunks and work on them individually.

Use Online Tools to Speed Up the Research Process

Research can take an awful amount of time, especially for a complex topic. So, speed up the process by using online tools like Google Scholar to find sources for your essay.

Also, check if your instructor has published a list of sources on your module's online platform. Most of them are kind enough to put them online.

Write Your Notes directly on Your Laptop.

Normally, when researching a topic, you will write ideas in a notebook and then use it later when typing on your laptop. However, since you are in a hurry, skip this step and directly type the ideas and their sources on our computer. Once you are done, you can drag and drop paragraphs in the correct order.

An essay that is 2000 words long is a common type of essay you will encounter in school. You must be well prepared by understanding what it takes to complete this type of essay. Whether you are a seasoned writer or a beginner, the above guide will be helpful when writing a 2000-word essay.

If you are struggling with writing a paper or essay that is 2000 or 2200 words long, we can help. EssayManiacs has a team of professional writers who can write such an essay in under a day or between 7 and 8 hours or less. Therefore, if you want help with your assignments , we are online and ready to help. Please place an order, and we will assign your paper to a writer within the next few minutes. In terms of cost, it should cost you around $18-25/page, depending on the urgency. Engage us for a discount.

Need a Discount to Order?

15% off first order, what you get from us.

Plagiarism-free papers

Our papers are 100% original and unique to pass online plagiarism checkers.

Well-researched academic papers

Even when we say essays for sale, they meet academic writing conventions.

24/7 online support

Hit us up on live chat or Messenger for continuous help with your essays.

Easy communication with writers

Order essays and begin communicating with your writer directly and anonymously.

How Many Words Do You Write Per Hour?

• Post author By Peter Lyle DeHaan
• Post date March 25, 2022
• 2 Comments on How Many Words Do You Write Per Hour?

Do you know how many words you typically write per hour? Do you know how long you can sustain that rate? This is a critical number to know when estimating how long a project will take. We need this for meeting deadlines and for quoting projects.

Without having a firm grasp of our typical writing speed and sustainability we run the risk of not meeting deadlines or of underquoting projects. No one wants to turn in a project late or end up working for next to nothing.

But what we shouldn’t do is compare our writing speed with others. If we write more than most people, then we may feel pride or look down on them; if we write less than others, then we might feel discouraged, assume there is something wrong with us, or even try to change our writing process to write faster than we should.

None of these are good outcomes.

Also, we need to realize that our writing speed is for our first draft, which will require additional work, such as re-writing, editing, and proofreading. Some people who can crank out high word counts on the first draft often spend much more time bringing their work to its final form. Conversely, other people with slower writing speeds often have much less work to do afterward.

We need to know how fast we can write, how long we can keep up that pace, and how much more work is required to polish it to final form.

I’ve talked to writers who write about 100 words per hour. On the other end, I have heard of writers pushing two thousand. But people seldom share with me how much time they spend later on to bring these words to their final form.

On most projects I write in the neighborhood of four to five hundred words an hour, though it occasionally goes higher, approaching one thousand; my record is 1,750, though I’m not sure how I pulled that off.

I also know my second hour is often more productive than my first, which is an important reason to set aside a block of time to write. I also know I can keep up this pace all morning, providing I take periodic breaks.

My “first draft” is in decent shape and seldom requires re-writing, so I just need to polish and proof the results, which takes 15 to 25 percent additional time. (Remember that I mostly write nonfiction.)

Though I don’t like working on the same project for more than four or five hours, I often switch to something else in the afternoon, which seems to reset my mental focus and I’m off again. In the morning I can consistently produce two thousand words or more, assuming I don’t need to do too much research or fact-checking.

When I write in the afternoon, it’s always smaller projects, such as articles or content marketing. In this way, I can hit up to four thousand words a day (my personal record) if I need to, but that doesn’t leave much time for anything else.

Armed with this information, I’m now able to set realistic writing deadlines and hit them. I’m also able to give reasonable quotes for contract work. And it only took me about five years to get to this point and figure these things out.

Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs : Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.

Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.

Share this:

• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Tags editing , freelancing , proofreading

By Peter Lyle DeHaan

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, publishes books about business, customer service, the call center industry, and business and writing.

2 replies on “How Many Words Do You Write Per Hour?”

Peter, this is a very interesting concept that I have never really thought about before. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Patti. I know what you mean. I never gave if much thought either until I started needing to quote jobs or meet deadlines on big projects.

Comments are closed.

• How It Works
• Prices & Discounts

We Write Custom Essays For You

The #1 urgent essay writing service for busy students who value their time and budget.

Trusted by over 50,000+ students worldwide

Hire a Professional essay writer

Top paper writing service for students, high school to doctoral paper writing services, fast turnaround for last-minute assignments, plagiarism-free, human-written custom essays, wide range of citation styles, support for native and non-native students, custom essays for specific requirements, expertise in complex and challenging topics, essays reflecting personal voice and style, we are ready to handle your writing assignments.

When you need a website that will write an essay for you with professionalism and precision our online academic writers are ready to create a well formatted custom essay no matter what type of paper you need.

How to Order an Essay

Fill out the order form online, make a payment, writer assigned, receive the final paper, real reviews of our writing service, exclusive offers from our essay writing service.

Explore the benefits of Writers Per Hour: exclusive discounts and special promo codes to buy an essay, insightful blogs, and the latest news about our writing service. Join our online community on social media now!

WritersPerHour Your Legit Essay Writing Service

We are an ideal online essay writing service for students seeking to buy an essay that stands out in quality and authenticity. Our writing service is based in Brooklyn, NYC, and made with professionalism, ensuring that each essay is not only written by a real person essay writer but also by a subject matter expert. Therefore our essay writing company guarantees professionally written, plagiarism-free essay that meets academic standards and are well formatted.

How Our Paper Writing Service Can Help

Custom essay writing from scratch.

Writing original essays by affordable paper writer is our forte. We understand the importance of originality in academic work, which is why our essay writers for hire are committed to creating custom essays tailored to your specific requirements, topics, and of course, budget. From research to writing, we handle every aspect meticulously, ensuring that each essay you buy is a unique masterpiece.

Plagiarism Checking and Removal

Our plagiarism-free essay writing service includes a thorough plagiarism check to identify and remove any unintentional similarities in your essay. You can legally hire an academic writer at Writers Per Hour because we are using advanced tools like Turnitin and meticulous manual review to ensure that when you buy an essay online at our service, it’s not only original but also adheres to the highest academic standards.

Editing and Proofreading

Our essay editing and proofreading services are dedicated to enhancing the clarity, flow, and coherence of your work, while also correcting grammatical and syntactical errors. Our paper writers for hire are equipped to assist not only with editing and proofreading your essay, but also with your term paper or dissertation. We ensure that your document is error-free and correctly cited according to APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard or any other specified format.

Paraphrasing and Rewriting

Our paraphrasing and rewriting essay service is designed to help you re-articulate someone else’s or your own paper without losing the original essence. This is ideal for those who need to approach a topic of their essay or thesis from a different angle or need to ensure their work is entirely unique. Our reserach paper writer will find out how to rewrite your essay in the best way and also can find more trusted scholarly academic sources. All this perfect featuters are available on our paraphrase essay website.

What Our #1 US Essay Writing Service Can Offer

We go beyond just delivering essays and dissertations. We offer a range of services designed to ensure your complete satisfaction and academic success when you hire writer for paper creation:

Unlimited Revisions Within 30 Days: At our website that creates essays many years we understand the importance of perfection in academic work. That’s why we offer unlimited revisions for up to 30 days after submission, with the possibility of an additional one-month extension upon request.

Transparent Money-Back Guarantee: Your trust is our priority. Refer to our transparent refund policy for a clear understanding of how we ensure fairness and satisfaction in every transaction.

Budget-Friendly with Regular Promotions: Experience affordability like never before. We offer a 15-20% discount for first-time clients and up to 25% for our regular clients during promotional periods, plus custom codes for our loyal customers.

Originality and AI Reports via Turnitin: We guarantee that you will buy custom written essay and ready to provide originality reports from Turnitin, assuring you of human-written, plagiarism-free essays submitted by real person. We are the website that write essay without plagiarizing and trusted by many students.

24-Hour Customer Support Across Multiple Channels: Have a question at 3 AM? Our customer support is available 24/7 via WhatsApp, live chat, and email to assist you whenever needed.

Strict Confidentiality for Everyone: Your privacy is super important for us. We adhere to stringent policies and terms to ensure the confidentiality of your information.

Simple and Secure Ordering Process: Buy custom made essay with ease and confidence. Our online form is user-friendly, with simple steps, and secured with SSL encryption to protect your data.

Flexible Payment Options Including Installments: Financial flexibility is key for big projects. We offer multiple payment options, including PayPal, credit/debit card, Apple Pay, and more. For larger projects, payment can be split into 2-3 manageable installments.

Upholding a Stellar Reputation in ’Buy an Essay Help’ Services

Reputation of our website that writes essay for u speaks for itself when essay writers needed. We are proud to have garnered numerous positive reviews.js across various third-party platforms, including esteemed sites like Sitejabber and Reviews.io . These accolades are a testament to our commitment to quality and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, our own platform is brimming with positive feedback from our valued clients, who have shared their experiences through live chat and emails. This overwhelming response from our customers not only fuels our passion for excellence but also cements our position as a trusted and reliable essay writing service in the realm of academic writing services where students buy custom essay paper online.

Your Go-To Essay Writing Partner for Students on the Move

At our custom writing service, we understand that quality is paramount. This means adhering strictly to your professor’s guidelines, whether you’re tackling college assignments, IB essays, or any other academic writing challenges.

Our essay writing service is designed for the time-strapped student, to those who can’t find enough hours in the day to complete their assignments and are thinking of ordering an essay online. Whether you’re grappling with complex topics or simply lack the necessary knowledge, our professional essay writers for hire are here to assist. From drafting initial outlines to locating credible sources, our goal is to be your reliable academic writing service where you can engage a writer for your paper.

But our site that writes papers for you isn’t just for those who need a helping hand in essay writing. It’s also for college students seeking inspiration and guidance from top-notch essay writers. Imagine having a bespoke custom paper written for you and serving as a rich source of ideas and perspectives for your own work. That’s the kind of essay writing support we offer.

Parents, too, find a valuable resource in our paper writing service because they can hire a student to write my paper that will not be that complicated and follow their high schooler writing style. So, if you’re looking to support your high-school or university student through online exams, term papers, reports, or any other academic writing tasks, we offer the expertise and understanding needed to help them with their essay writing challenges.

Why Choose Writers Per Hour as Your Trusted Custom Writing Service

Writers Per Hour is one of the companies that write papers for students, and we pride ourselves on being a premier destination for those seeking exceptional essay writing services. Here’s why you should choose us:

Expert Academic Writers: Our team consists of professional American essay writers for hire, each bringing years of experience in crafting and formatting academic papers of varying complexities. Additionally, our term paper writers are not just experts in their fields; they are active educators and professors from renowned colleges and universities worldwide, as well as talented college and bachelor students who writes uni essays for money.

Wide Range of Writing Services: We specialize in a variety of academic writings, including essays, research papers, dissertations/theses, reports, IB papers, case studies, projects, creative writing, literature reviews.js, PowerPoint presentations, memos, marketing plans, and more.

Extensive Subject Coverage: Our expertise spans across numerous disciplines, including American history, American literature, accounting, architecture, art, digital sciences, engineering, family and child studies, gender studies, innovation, and technology, among others.

Continuous Improvement and Client-Centric Approach: We are dedicated to constantly enhancing our essay writing services and introducing new features. Our commitment includes actively listening to our client’s feedback to refine and improve the writing services we offer, customer support, communication with hired essay writer, and many others.

Writers Per Hour is a academic help writing service that understands your writing challenges and is equipped to tackle them head-on, delivering excellence every step of the way.

How To Order Your Custom Essay

Start with filling out the order form online.

Begin by creating an account on our essay writing platform, a quick and simple step that can be done either before or during the process of filling out the online order form. Once your account is set up, you’re ready to provide us with the details of your assignment. Just fill out the form with the necessary information, such as the type of paper, academic level, deadline, and other specific requirements. Our good essay writing website is designed for ease of use, allowing you to input your information quickly and accurately.

AI-Driven Writer Matching

After you’ve submitted the order form, our advanced AI technology takes over. It works to find and assign the most relevant academic essay writer who matches your unique requirements. By analyzing your order’s details against our writers’ profiles, which include their previous experience, rankings, and success rates in similar assignments, our AI ensures the best match for your academic needs and makes sure that the person writing an essay meets your requirements.

Receive Your Ordered Paper

Once your order is complete, we deliver it straight to your email in your preferred format, whether it’s Word, PDF, or PPT. For added convenience, the completed work is also securely uploaded to your personal account at our university essay writing website, where you can view and download it directly.

With exceptional essay writing service, ordering personalized academic assistance is as simple as it is effective, designed to provide you with a best experience and high-quality results.

Do Not Miss Your Chance

As you navigate the challenges of your academic journey, remember that we are the best website to write college essay and 24/7 are here to offer not just assistance, but a transformational experience. By choosing us, you save valuable time and money, two resources essential for any college student. When you need to hire an essay writer USA keep in mind that our company has a dedicated team to make professionally written essays that not only meet your university and professor’s expectations. The result? A significant improvement in your academic performance paves the way for future success.

Moreover, with our commitment to punctuality, you can always rest assured that your essays will be delivered on time, every time. This reliability is just another way we aim to ease the stress of academic deadlines and help keep your studies on track. So, why wait? Take the first step towards enhancing your academic journey.

Start benefiting from our top-notch ’Buy an Essay Online Now’ service today, and embrace a brighter, more successful academic future.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have any difficulties to purchase an essay online or you just want to know more about our paper writing service. Please chat to our friendly team or go to Help Center.

Monday 00:00 AM − Saturday 01:00 PM (UTC)

Is it legal to use Writers Per Hour?

• As a Study Aid : Access additional resources to deepen your understanding of the topic.
• For Inspiration : Utilize it to brainstorm and develop your own views and arguments for your submission.
• For Comparison : Compare it with your work to gauge different perspectives.
• To Focus Your Research : Identify key points in the topic as described by our writer, guiding your own research.
• As a Planning Tool : Use it to plan and structure your own submission effectively.
• For Academic Compliance : Ensure that your work meets all the academic requirements.

Who are your essay paper writers?

Where is your essay writing service based, when do i need to pay for an essay, can i buy essay without plagiarism, can i buy an essay fast.

• Within One Hour : We can write 250-500 words or edit 1000 words.
• Two to Three Hours : Capable of completing a 3-6 page simple essay or a 4-page research paper.
• Four to Six Hours : Suitable for more complex essays and small presentations.
• Seven to Nine Hours : Ideal for in-depth research essays over 2000 words.

How do you hire a writer for an essay?

What should i do if i’m not satisfied with the essay i purchased.

Last updated: Jan, 11, 2024

The Best Paper Writing Website to Buy Essays

Our American essay writing service is all about providing you with top-quality, custom paper writing services. Ever wondered who writes uni essays for money? It’s us – a team of US essay writers for hire dedicated to your academic success. We make it easy and stress-free to pay to get your essay done, ensuring every paper is perfectly tailored to your college needs. Don’t let essay deadlines get you down anymore. Let’s get started on writing that authentic essay for you. Your peace of mind is just one click away!

• How it works
• Research paper help
• Essay Writing Help

Dissertation Writing Help

• Coursework Writing Help

Can you do my homework for me?

Yes, we can! Professional homework help is just one click away

Why choose our homework writing?

Because we know exactly what matters most to you

Check out how HomeworkFor.Me works

Get expert homework writing help in 4 steps

Students trust HomeworkFor.Me team?

Take a look at real reviews about our service

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found these guys to do my assigment. The essay turned out great. I submitted it with days to spare and got an A!

I never needed anyone to do my writing until I got a part-time job in college. Good thing I did my research and chose this website to outsource all the essays. I’ve been using their services for a year now, and they have never let me down.

When I realized I couldn’t keep up with football practice and essays, I decided to hire someone to complete the homework for me. I chose this site for affordable prices and excellent support. Don’t plan on replacing it with others.

If you need cheap, quick and professional writing, I definitely recommend Homeworkfor.me. I got two As and a B with them without a single revision!

• 150 Orders completed daily
• 50+ Disciplines of expertise
• 500+ Professionals on our team
• 4.86/5 Is the average order rating

Questions our customers ask

How can i get someone to do my homework for me.

To have your homework completed, start by specifying your assignment details and academic level. Review the total price including any additional features, then proceed to submit your payment details. Once done, you'll receive your finished homework well before the deadline for your preview and download.

Are your services legitimate for getting help with my homework?

Absolutely. We take pride in offering legitimate essay writing services. Our team consists of skilled writers who craft original, high-quality content tailored to your specific requirements.

Can I trust your writers to do my homework?

Yes, you can. Our writers are carefully selected professionals with expertise in various fields. They are thoroughly vetted and committed to delivering top-notch work, ensuring your homework meets your expectations.

Which academic disciplines or areas do you cover for assistance with assignments?

We cover a wide range of subjects and topics. Whether it's math, science, history, literature, or any other academic field, our experts are well-equipped to handle diverse assignments and provide comprehensive assistance.

How do I ensure confidentiality when seeking help with homework?

Confidentiality is a priority for us. Your personal information and the details of your homework assignment are kept strictly confidential. We maintain a secure platform to safeguard your privacy at all times.

What assurances or commitments do you provide when requesting help with assignments?

We guarantee plagiarism-free content, timely delivery, free revisions, and 24/7 customer support. Your satisfaction is our priority, and we strive to ensure you receive top-quality work that meets your expectations.

Who Will Do My Homework for Me?

In the age of the gig economy, it’s no wonder you can rent an apartment the world over, hail a driver through your smartphone, or pay people to do your homework. There are dozens of quality writing services online, and most work just like Uber or Airbnb. They connect freelance academic writers looking for extra cash with overworked students in need of help.

Buying homework is just like calling an Uber. You explain what you need, and the system automatically finds the person best suited to meet your requirements. The person doing homework for you is usually someone with a degree in your field of study with a couple of years of writing experience and a good reputation among students. And the best thing is that you don’t have to waste time screening writers; the writing company does the legwork for you. Even the payments work almost the same as with Uber, with the bulk of the sum going to the writer and a small commission awarded to the writing company that connected you two.

Will You Do My Homework for Me Cheap?

Do you want good paper or cheap paper?

There can’t be a third option that’s both good and cheap because we don’t live in a perfect world. The truth is there are cheaper services, but they usually hire undergrads from third-world countries to do the job. So when they pay their writers $2 per page, they can afford to charge you $8 and still make a profit.

We go the other way around and start with the best writers money can buy - professionals with proven credentials and writing experience. Of course, they don’t work for free, but we still manage to keep the prices manageable for most students. And if you want to save more - order early and look out for discount codes and special offers.

Why Should I Trust You to Do My Homework for Me Online?

When you think, ‘I need help with my homework,’ online services aren’t the first thing on your mind, especially with all the rumors about scams and plagiarism. And while there are some shady companies out there, you can entrust us with your assignments, as thousands of students have done already. To keep you safe, we guarantee

We respect your desire to keep the details of your order, your name and your college to yourself. And we will never disclose this information to third parties. You can be sure that no one from your class or school will learn about our deal unless you tell them. So be cool, and your little secret will remain safe with us.

Honest Refunds

We cannot promise to give your money back if you notice a couple of typos because our writers deserve to get paid for doing their jobs. What we do guarantee is to pay you back if you notice plagiarism or your paper is late. We are 100% sure that won’t happen, so you are perfectly safe every time you come to us asking, ‘Will you do homework for me?’

24/7/365 Support

You are not the only one to remember urgent assignments in the middle of the night or on the holiday weekend. Luckily for you, our writers are scattered across the time zones, along with our support agents, so there’s no chance you’ll be left alone with your school troubles. Reach out via live chat, email, or phone anytime, and we’ll be there to help.

Affordable Prices

We found the balance between high-quality writing and student-friendly rates for a real win-win. Just make sure you place the order as early as possible to enjoy the lowest prices. And keep an eye out for special offers and promo codes. Get in touch with our support team to get a first-time or regular client offer.

Tailored Writing

We don’t believe in standard solutions and make sure every piece is crafted with your specific requirements in mind. For best results, when you come to us asking, ‘Do my homework online for me,’ please provide us with a sample of your writing and your professor’s rubric. This way, you’ll get a paper that meets your needs to a T, and it will never raise suspicions in school.

Fast Delivery

Our experts can produce a solid paper in under six hours because they know the ins and outs of their respective fields and keep an eye out for the latest research trends. Unlike you, they don’t have to waste days looking for credible sources or outlining every argument. Their writing experience ensures you’ll get your assignment just in time.

It’s Always a Good Idea to Pay People to Do Your Homework

It’s all about your school and life goals.

If you got into college for a degree and better employment prospects, you need to get through the four years as fast as possible and make most of the networking opportunities the campus presents. In this case, when you ask us, ‘Write my homework for me,’ you’re making a wise and profitable investment in your future.

If you’re in school to learn and become the best in the field, it pays to outsource the assignments from all those required classes that have nothing to do with your major. There’s no sense in wasting your valuable time on homework that won’t do anything for your career prospects. It’s smarter to let professionals handle it while you focus on what really matters to you.

If you’re already in college and still have no idea what you want to do with your life, now is the time to sample everything campus life has to offer. And getting out of homework is the first step towards finding your passion, especially if your assignments are nothing but a series of dull essays on the same stale topics.

The Benefits of Write My Homework For Me Services

It’s not just about saving your time or getting out of boring schoolwork. When you buy a paper from us, we throw in a few free extras to make your experience even better.

Free Revisions

We guarantee your assignment will be perfect, and these aren’t empty promises. Our writers are that good, but they are also not afraid of producing the second, the third, or the tenth version of your paper. They will work on revisions for free until you are completely satisfied with the results. The only concession we ask of you is to give our writers time to rework your assignments. With sufficient leeway, they can work wonders.

Free Outline

We’ll throw in an outline of the paper to help you make sense of the structure. It may seem like a nuisance for an essay, but outlines are invaluable for long-form assignments, like research and term papers. Use it as you see fit, either to browse core ideas of the paper at a glance or as a guide to follow when working on a future homework assignment.

Perfect Formatting

We are taught not to judge books by their covers, but we all do, nonetheless. And that’s why every paper you get from us is formatted to perfection according to the current guidelines of your chosen style. You won’t find a single missing citation or reference, all because we stand on guard against plagiarism, even if it’s unintended or accidental.

Plagiarism-free

If plagiarism is your biggest concern when you’re thinking, ‘I want someone to write my homework,’ you can forget about your worries once you place an order with us. You won’t find a single sentence copypasted into your paper, a borrowed idea or an uncredited piece of data. Even if your school uses Turnitin or similar software, your homework will never raise red flags, and you’ll be 100% safe from any suspicions or accusations.

Services Offered by HomeWorkForMe

We can do anything for you, whether you need someone to look over your college admission essay or get answers to the surprise quiz your professor ambushed you with. You can get help with

• Writing from scratch
• Editing and proofreading
• Problem-solving
• Paraphrasing and rewriting
• Multiple-choice questions
• Questions and answers
• Professional writing (resume, CV, etc.)

After years of helping students, we found that these assignments are the most troublesome and call for professional writing assignment help more often than not.

Research Paper Help

What you get from us is a comprehensive study of the topic you choose, complete with detailed and reliable data, in-depth analysis, and creative and insightful conclusions. You can also ask for copies of the sources used if you plan on expanding the research paper in the future. And getting a one-page abstract can help you familiarize yourself with the paper even faster.

Start with a research proposal. Our writers will craft a great outline and rely on the latest research to make your proposal look irresistible. After that, you can order the full dissertation or break it down into chapters to make it easier on your advisor and your pocket. Make sure you specify your preferred writer to guarantee the same person works on the whole thing and keeps it cohesive.

Coursework Help

We won’t leave you alone to face school troubles if your professor is fond of mixing things up. Whether you’re thinking, ‘I need someone to do homework for me’ when you need an essay, a short answer to a question, quiz answers, or problem-solving help, our experts will have your back. They can handle any coursework your professor comes up with as long as you provide all relevant information, like rubrics, prompts, and other input. Make sure to specify any details you wish your writer to address, and they will deliver outstanding results.

Term Paper Help

Term papers are notoriously troublesome for college students because of their huge scope and in-depth research necessary to meet the requirements. Luckily, our writers know a thing or two about large-scale projects and can come up with a logical structure and insightful content for your term paper. Make sure to get an outline with your assignment to show to your professor as proof of your hard work.

Case Study Help

One of the more exciting college assignments is among our writers’ all-time favorites. They love looking into individual cases, researching causes, dissecting problems, and developing viable solutions. Of course, we can come up with case study topics on our own, but if your professor provides a prompt, it will save your writer time better spent on perfecting your order.

Bibliography Writing Help

Professionals will unearth credible sources, browse and analyze them to build an impressive annotated bibliography for your research project, thesis, or dissertation. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about automated bibliography formatting mistakes. Our writers can tell MLA and APA apart in their sleep and format references to perfection regardless of your professor’s preferred style.

Application Essay Help

You won’t find a better team to take over your admission papers. Our writers can uncover the hidden gems in your past experiences and turn them into a compelling and riveting story tailored to a specific school and major of your choice. They can also work magic on what you’ve already written or inspire you to write applications to other colleges on your list. It’s up to you to decide how much help you need and how much of your history you’re willing to share.

Speech Writing Help

Our online academic helper team has turned writing a good speech into an art form. They never fail to grab attention, provoke strong reactions, and make the grand finale memorable. With their help, you’re sure to make an impression, whether you need to give a speech in front of your class, the whole school, potential investors, or your boss.

The full list of classes and subjects our writers cover is a mile long. Here’s a sneak peek at what they can do for you:

• Soft sciences. Our experts can help with anything from Art History to Women and Gender Studies and everything in between, including Film Studies and Poetry.
• STEM classes. We specialize in essays but also employ plenty of experts in Math, Geometry, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, and other STEM majors. Our writers will take over your assignments, lab reports, and case studies.
• Law school. If you’re thinking, ‘I wish someone would write my homework for me’ on Litigation, Ethics, Constitutional law, or Family Law, our writers have your back. Thanks to years of research experience, they are the next best thing after practicing lawyers to have on your side.
• Nursing and Medicine. With our help, you’ll finally get a good night’s sleep and find the time for something other than classes and field practice. Let our writers take over your Anatomy, Biology, and Nursing homework while you get back on your feet.
• Economics, Finance, Investment, Accounting, and more. Our experts love any class that deals with money-making, so you know they’ll do their best to deliver top-notch essays, case studies, and term papers.

How can I get help with my homework?

Getting in touch with our support team is the easy way. Let them know what you need, and they’ll take you through the order process and keep you updated on its status. Or you can just set up an account and place an order like you would at Amazon. Once you pay for the assignment, we’ll take care of the rest.

Is paying someone to do your homework illegal?

Not really. We don’t know of any country that has laws against paying for getting your homework done. However, you should check with your school’s code and regulations. Some colleges and universities frown upon getting professional writing help.

How much does it cost for assignment help?

The prices range from around $10 per page to over $200 per page. High-school-level assignments on extended deadlines are the cheapest, while rush-order admission essays are the most expensive. Doctorate-level writing is also quite expensive. If you’re not sure you can afford to pay for homework help, use our calculator to get an instant quote.

Is assignment writing illegal?

No! It’s like asking if doing homework is illegal. You don’t see tutors, writing coaches or TAs getting arrested and put behind bars for helping students complete their assignments. For now, there’s not a single country in the world that prohibits assignment writing.

Who can help me with my homework?

There are plenty of offers of homework help online, both among freelance writers and academic help agencies. All you have to do is decide who you’re willing to trust - an anonymous freelancer or a respectable company with years of experience and hundreds of reviews from happy customers. Besides, no writer can cover your every class, but essay writing companies employ hundreds of experts who can do your homework on any topic.

Can I hire someone to do my homework?

You sure can. And with us, you don’t have to waste time choosing the perfect writer for your assignment. We’ll do the heavy lifting for you and find the right person to take care of your homework. As long as you provide us with enough details about your paper, we guarantee to match you with an expert.

What should I look for in a homework company?

Good reputation, realistic prices, transparent terms, and policies are all signs of a reliable writing service. So take your time when researching company background and genuine reviews, read the fine print in legalese. And don’t fall for the cheapest rates you see because they will likely cost you extra in the end.

Can you do my homework for me on any topic?

We employ hundreds of experts in dozens of academic fields, so there’s a 99.9% chance we can do your homework on any topic. But if you think that your major is too obscure or complex for us to handle, get in touch with our support team before placing an order. They will be able to look up the experts in your field and answer any questions about them.

Can you do my homework for me with zero plagiarism?

That’s the only way we do it! Plagiarism is a blight on academia that we’re set on eradicating one original paper at a time. So any piece you get from us will pass plagiarism checks like Turnitin with flying colors.

Can you deliver my homework within the deadline?

Sure, we promise your homework will be ready within the timeframe you set. Even if you only give our expert six hours to work on your assignment, you will receive it with time to spare.

Will you rework my order if it does not meet my requirements?

Sure, we offer free revisions for a reason. While our experts are good, they can’t always hit a bullseye on the first try. Feel free to send your assignment for revision with comments on what you want to be changed, and you’ll get an improved version within 24 hours. Please remember that your revision instructions should be in line with your initial requirements.

Ready to get your homework done?

Last places remaining for June 30th, July 14th and July 28th courses . Enrol now and join students from 175 countries for the summer of a lifetime

• 40 Useful Words and Phrases for Top-Notch Essays

To be truly brilliant, an essay needs to utilise the right language. You could make a great point, but if it’s not intelligently articulated, you almost needn’t have bothered.

Developing the language skills to build an argument and to write persuasively is crucial if you’re to write outstanding essays every time. In this article, we’re going to equip you with the words and phrases you need to write a top-notch essay, along with examples of how to utilise them.

It’s by no means an exhaustive list, and there will often be other ways of using the words and phrases we describe that we won’t have room to include, but there should be more than enough below to help you make an instant improvement to your essay-writing skills.

If you’re interested in developing your language and persuasive skills, Oxford Royale offers summer courses at its Oxford Summer School , Cambridge Summer School , London Summer School , San Francisco Summer School and Yale Summer School . You can study courses to learn english , prepare for careers in law , medicine , business , engineering and leadership.

General explaining

Let’s start by looking at language for general explanations of complex points.

1. In order to

Usage: “In order to” can be used to introduce an explanation for the purpose of an argument. Example: “In order to understand X, we need first to understand Y.”

2. In other words

Usage: Use “in other words” when you want to express something in a different way (more simply), to make it easier to understand, or to emphasise or expand on a point. Example: “Frogs are amphibians. In other words, they live on the land and in the water.”

3. To put it another way

Usage: This phrase is another way of saying “in other words”, and can be used in particularly complex points, when you feel that an alternative way of wording a problem may help the reader achieve a better understanding of its significance. Example: “Plants rely on photosynthesis. To put it another way, they will die without the sun.”

4. That is to say

Usage: “That is” and “that is to say” can be used to add further detail to your explanation, or to be more precise. Example: “Whales are mammals. That is to say, they must breathe air.”

5. To that end

Usage: Use “to that end” or “to this end” in a similar way to “in order to” or “so”. Example: “Zoologists have long sought to understand how animals communicate with each other. To that end, a new study has been launched that looks at elephant sounds and their possible meanings.”

Adding additional information to support a point

Students often make the mistake of using synonyms of “and” each time they want to add further information in support of a point they’re making, or to build an argument. Here are some cleverer ways of doing this.

6. Moreover

Usage: Employ “moreover” at the start of a sentence to add extra information in support of a point you’re making. Example: “Moreover, the results of a recent piece of research provide compelling evidence in support of…”

7. Furthermore

Usage:This is also generally used at the start of a sentence, to add extra information. Example: “Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that…”

8. What’s more

Usage: This is used in the same way as “moreover” and “furthermore”. Example: “What’s more, this isn’t the only evidence that supports this hypothesis.”

9. Likewise

Usage: Use “likewise” when you want to talk about something that agrees with what you’ve just mentioned. Example: “Scholar A believes X. Likewise, Scholar B argues compellingly in favour of this point of view.”

10. Similarly

Usage: Use “similarly” in the same way as “likewise”. Example: “Audiences at the time reacted with shock to Beethoven’s new work, because it was very different to what they were used to. Similarly, we have a tendency to react with surprise to the unfamiliar.”

11. Another key thing to remember

Usage: Use the phrase “another key point to remember” or “another key fact to remember” to introduce additional facts without using the word “also”. Example: “As a Romantic, Blake was a proponent of a closer relationship between humans and nature. Another key point to remember is that Blake was writing during the Industrial Revolution, which had a major impact on the world around him.”

12. As well as

Usage: Use “as well as” instead of “also” or “and”. Example: “Scholar A argued that this was due to X, as well as Y.”

13. Not only… but also

Usage: This wording is used to add an extra piece of information, often something that’s in some way more surprising or unexpected than the first piece of information. Example: “Not only did Edmund Hillary have the honour of being the first to reach the summit of Everest, but he was also appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.”

14. Coupled with

Usage: Used when considering two or more arguments at a time. Example: “Coupled with the literary evidence, the statistics paint a compelling view of…”

15. Firstly, secondly, thirdly…

Usage: This can be used to structure an argument, presenting facts clearly one after the other. Example: “There are many points in support of this view. Firstly, X. Secondly, Y. And thirdly, Z.

16. Not to mention/to say nothing of

Usage: “Not to mention” and “to say nothing of” can be used to add extra information with a bit of emphasis. Example: “The war caused unprecedented suffering to millions of people, not to mention its impact on the country’s economy.”

Words and phrases for demonstrating contrast

When you’re developing an argument, you will often need to present contrasting or opposing opinions or evidence – “it could show this, but it could also show this”, or “X says this, but Y disagrees”. This section covers words you can use instead of the “but” in these examples, to make your writing sound more intelligent and interesting.

17. However

Usage: Use “however” to introduce a point that disagrees with what you’ve just said. Example: “Scholar A thinks this. However, Scholar B reached a different conclusion.”

18. On the other hand

Usage: Usage of this phrase includes introducing a contrasting interpretation of the same piece of evidence, a different piece of evidence that suggests something else, or an opposing opinion. Example: “The historical evidence appears to suggest a clear-cut situation. On the other hand, the archaeological evidence presents a somewhat less straightforward picture of what happened that day.”

19. Having said that

Usage: Used in a similar manner to “on the other hand” or “but”. Example: “The historians are unanimous in telling us X, an agreement that suggests that this version of events must be an accurate account. Having said that, the archaeology tells a different story.”

20. By contrast/in comparison

Usage: Use “by contrast” or “in comparison” when you’re comparing and contrasting pieces of evidence. Example: “Scholar A’s opinion, then, is based on insufficient evidence. By contrast, Scholar B’s opinion seems more plausible.”

21. Then again

Usage: Use this to cast doubt on an assertion. Example: “Writer A asserts that this was the reason for what happened. Then again, it’s possible that he was being paid to say this.”

22. That said

Usage: This is used in the same way as “then again”. Example: “The evidence ostensibly appears to point to this conclusion. That said, much of the evidence is unreliable at best.”

Usage: Use this when you want to introduce a contrasting idea. Example: “Much of scholarship has focused on this evidence. Yet not everyone agrees that this is the most important aspect of the situation.”

Adding a proviso or acknowledging reservations

Sometimes, you may need to acknowledge a shortfalling in a piece of evidence, or add a proviso. Here are some ways of doing so.

24. Despite this

Usage: Use “despite this” or “in spite of this” when you want to outline a point that stands regardless of a shortfalling in the evidence. Example: “The sample size was small, but the results were important despite this.”

25. With this in mind

Usage: Use this when you want your reader to consider a point in the knowledge of something else. Example: “We’ve seen that the methods used in the 19th century study did not always live up to the rigorous standards expected in scientific research today, which makes it difficult to draw definite conclusions. With this in mind, let’s look at a more recent study to see how the results compare.”

26. Provided that

Usage: This means “on condition that”. You can also say “providing that” or just “providing” to mean the same thing. Example: “We may use this as evidence to support our argument, provided that we bear in mind the limitations of the methods used to obtain it.”

27. In view of/in light of

Usage: These phrases are used when something has shed light on something else. Example: “In light of the evidence from the 2013 study, we have a better understanding of…”

28. Nonetheless

Usage: This is similar to “despite this”. Example: “The study had its limitations, but it was nonetheless groundbreaking for its day.”

29. Nevertheless

Usage: This is the same as “nonetheless”. Example: “The study was flawed, but it was important nevertheless.”

30. Notwithstanding

Usage: This is another way of saying “nonetheless”. Example: “Notwithstanding the limitations of the methodology used, it was an important study in the development of how we view the workings of the human mind.”

Giving examples

Good essays always back up points with examples, but it’s going to get boring if you use the expression “for example” every time. Here are a couple of other ways of saying the same thing.

31. For instance

Example: “Some birds migrate to avoid harsher winter climates. Swallows, for instance, leave the UK in early winter and fly south…”

32. To give an illustration

Example: “To give an illustration of what I mean, let’s look at the case of…”

Signifying importance

When you want to demonstrate that a point is particularly important, there are several ways of highlighting it as such.

33. Significantly

Usage: Used to introduce a point that is loaded with meaning that might not be immediately apparent. Example: “Significantly, Tacitus omits to tell us the kind of gossip prevalent in Suetonius’ accounts of the same period.”

34. Notably

Usage: This can be used to mean “significantly” (as above), and it can also be used interchangeably with “in particular” (the example below demonstrates the first of these ways of using it). Example: “Actual figures are notably absent from Scholar A’s analysis.”

35. Importantly

Usage: Use “importantly” interchangeably with “significantly”. Example: “Importantly, Scholar A was being employed by X when he wrote this work, and was presumably therefore under pressure to portray the situation more favourably than he perhaps might otherwise have done.”

Summarising

You’ve almost made it to the end of the essay, but your work isn’t over yet. You need to end by wrapping up everything you’ve talked about, showing that you’ve considered the arguments on both sides and reached the most likely conclusion. Here are some words and phrases to help you.

36. In conclusion

Usage: Typically used to introduce the concluding paragraph or sentence of an essay, summarising what you’ve discussed in a broad overview. Example: “In conclusion, the evidence points almost exclusively to Argument A.”

37. Above all

Usage: Used to signify what you believe to be the most significant point, and the main takeaway from the essay. Example: “Above all, it seems pertinent to remember that…”

38. Persuasive

Usage: This is a useful word to use when summarising which argument you find most convincing. Example: “Scholar A’s point – that Constanze Mozart was motivated by financial gain – seems to me to be the most persuasive argument for her actions following Mozart’s death.”

39. Compelling

Usage: Use in the same way as “persuasive” above. Example: “The most compelling argument is presented by Scholar A.”

40. All things considered

Usage: This means “taking everything into account”. Example: “All things considered, it seems reasonable to assume that…”

How many of these words and phrases will you get into your next essay? And are any of your favourite essay terms missing from our list? Let us know in the comments below, or get in touch here to find out more about courses that can help you with your essays.

At Oxford Royale Academy, we offer a number of  summer school courses for young people who are keen to improve their essay writing skills. Click here to apply for one of our courses today, including law , business , medicine  and engineering .

Comments are closed.

• Recent Posts

How many words do you write in an hour on average?

I just read Algis Budrys's Writing To The Point and he says that an average person should be able to write a thousand words an hour. I reckon that's probably about right for a lot of people, but I've been averaging more like a thousand words every three hours for years now. I'm not beating myself up over this, but I do wonder what other people's averages are, and whether some of you might have techniques for writing faster.

Don't stress word count and production rate. We're all different. Some people write fast, some write medium, some write slow. Some produce clean copy, some edit twelve times. There's no one right way - as long as your way gets the story on the page and finished, it's the right way for you.

V34 : R,HM,R V35 : HM,R,R,HM V36 : R,HM,HM,SHM V37 : HM,SF,SHM,SHM V38 : (P)F, SHM, F, F V39 : SHM, SHM, HM, SHM Published Finalist Volume 38 Pro’d out Q4V39 www.rebeccaetreasure.com

Managing Editor, Apex Magazine

Agreed. And it's about your own expectations. I'd love to write more, have more words, etc. At this point, I've set a goal of 500 words a day. If I do this, by the end of the month of January I'll have more than all of last year. But each hour? I dunno. Again, expectations.

1x Win 2x NW-F 2x S-F 9x S-HM 11x HM 7x R

I work full-time and only have my lunch hour to write, so that hour has to be productive. No checking Facebook or Twitter. No researching and looking crap up as I write. Clickety-clickety-clack...don't talk smack. Aherm, yes, well, that kinda went off the rails. What were we talking about again? Oh right, writing productivity.

If I'm staring at a blank screen and the blinking cursor hypnotizes me into a gob-smacked brain stupor, I'm lucky to get 200 words on the page before its time to head back to the office.

On the other hand, if I've successfully thought about my story and sketched the thing out ahead of time like I'm supposed to, I can easily hit 1500 words during that lunch hour. For me, it really all depends on how PREPARED I am to write that day. More preps = more reps. No wait...that's evening gym time. Anyway, you know what I'm saying here.

"You can either sit here and write, or you can sit here and do nothing. But you can’t sit here and do anything else." — Neil Gaiman, Masterclass

Drop me a line at https://morganbroadhead.com SFx1 HMx4 R/RWCx5

I don't have any idea how many words per hour I can type. When I started writing I was using my index fingers to get my story written.

That was so slow I started using Dragon, a digital typing program. My word count went up considerably.

The problem that slowed the process down was misheard words. When you have to backup and fix the issue it slows the story down, making it hard to stay in the zone.

After one frustrating day I learned to type so I don't have to back up anymore. Writing is a lot more fun now.

Today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality-D.R.Sweeney HM x5 Published Poetry 2012 Stars in Our Hearts Silver Ships

Posted by: @storysinger I don't have any idea how many words per hour I can type. When I started writing I was using my index fingers to get my story written. That was so slow I started using Dragon, a digital typing program. My word count went up considerably. The problem that slowed the process down was misheard words. When you have to backup and fix the issue it slows the story down, making it hard to stay in the zone. After one frustrating day I learned to type so I don't have to back up anymore. Writing is a lot more fun now.  

I've heard of Dragon dictation. Some writers have tremendous success with it. I tried it once. The good news is I wrote about 800 words. The bad news is it was 800 words of phrases like, "No wait, that's not how it goes...What was I saying again?...Holy crap I can't even read that...What are those letters—is that even English?"

If I'm in a particularly fast writing mood, I can reasonably bang out about 100 words in 5 minutes, but if it's slow then it's 100 words in 15 minutes or so. I've never measured word count for an hour though. 

@chezecaek , RETreasure put it best (and succinctly, compared to what follows). Find what works best for you. Resist the urge to judge yourself against others, as the negatives (longer-term stress at not measuring up) often erase what positives (a burst of initial productivity) may occur. But if you feel you write "slowly," how can you find out whether writing "fast" works for you?

When I started writing (NaNo 2019), I tapped out between 800-1000 words per hour (WPH) of non-outlined fiction. Two hours of writing per day, every day, notched a NaNo "win". Yay. Cue confetti. By May of 2020, I had doubled my speed, which I maintain as an average now. Two specific books helped me iteratively improve my process. They are: Chris Fox, 5000 Words Per Hour (full disclosure, I’ve never come close to that), and Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k . Of the two, Fox's helped me the most in terms of writing faster.

Three important factors to writing speed:

• Typing speed
• Thinking speed
• Time spent editing, correcting

Potential solutions to these factors:

• Take typing courses (I didn’t do this; I type no faster than I did two years ago).
• Spend 5 minutes thinking about your scene beforehand. Write notes, block beats.
• Don't edit, delete, correct, fix anything. Move your cursor forward, never backward. Don't use "delete." (By far the hardest)

I like to think of writing pace like jogging pace. Most people cannot run a fast, steady pace for two hours the first time they lace up their shoes. It takes training. Building up from short to long distances. Perhaps more importantly, running faster may or may not equate to enjoyment. If I pass out before reaching the finish line, or miss my family waving from the sideline because my eyes are blurry and stinging from sweat, or if I spend the rest of my post-race day yarking oatmeal and banana while fighting off hamstring cramps…well, it’s the entire process that needs to work for me, not just the running of one race.

Writing speed is no different. I started small; five minute blocks. I thought about a scene for five minutes, then wrote for five minutes without stopping. I still do this, and sometimes it's five, sometimes it's twenty. Call it a "plotting brainstorm session" for a panster. It helped sharpen my focus on a goal for my writing, which was often all I needed to get going. And the delete button? The delete button was and is my enemy. It took a long, long time for me to eliminate delete button usage. Weeks. A spelling and grammar check before submission is wise and recommended, but why bother doing it while I write? Slashing an entire block of text during revisions doesn't give back the time I spent polishing that section's spelling and grammar. My perfectionist brain struggled until I compromised (with myself, yes) to run a spell-check directly after every writing sprint. After a while, it made a big difference in speed (and it kept me in the dream state for longer blocks of time). Do I submit error-laden stories? No way. (I hope not.) I just don't worry about it when I draft.

Does this guarantee a more enjoyable writing process? No. Tracking words and not pausing for thought might strangle creativity. In that case, it might be a case of been-there, done-that, thank you, next. I don't think any of us want to lose our sense of joy or creativity in the process. I believe that's the most valuable part of this whole writing thing, anyway.

In the end, I believe faster / higher WPH only measures faster drafting. Improving my speed was a way for me to purge all (okay, some…okay, maybe a tenth…) of my bad words so I could mine the good ones. They're down deep. I probably should check if fracking is an option for writers, maybe then I'll publish something. Writing faster was a way for me to get ideas on the page and to not grind over one story for years. 

I went through periods where my WPH seemed to matter more than good story or finished / submitted manuscripts. When that happened, I stepped back and wrote slower. I did exercises (from Ursula K. LeGuin’s Steering the Craft , among others) which made me think and ponder and play while I wrote. For me, writing speed has little to do with the quality of my writing. I don't sound like a genius when I write slowly, I'm not illegible when I burn through a draft. This may be a good thing or it may be a bitter condemnation of my abilities. Only through writing a lot and studying have I (hopefully) improved my prose and storytelling.

For others, faster writing may not even reduce the time from idea to submission. As MrH mentions above, this idea of “writing speed” rarely (or never) considers time spent revising. My revision process is still a work in progress. It is molasses-slow, but that is regardless of whether I've written a slow first draft or a quick one. In that way, writing faster first drafts has helped speed up my overall process. Or that's what I tell myself so I don't crawl into my closet and whimper in the dirty laundry. 

John Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath longhand over five months, 2000 words a day, but what went on the page, in general, stayed on the page. Stephen King wrote The Running Man in about two weeks. Robert Silverberg says he has published over 25 million words in his lifetime. Frank Herbert wrote Dune over a period of years. Does writing fast matter in the end? In terms of quality, or success, I don’t think so. But for writers who have limited time, one of the potential pitfalls of writing may be the time it takes to finish something . That’s where writing faster may help. The world doesn’t get to experience an unfinished novel or story, and someone is out there waiting for yours. So whether you write a hundred words a day or 2000 an hour, please keep writing. 

Best of luck.

In a three-hour stretch on a recent Saturday afternoon I knocked out 500 words, so 167 / hr. That resulted in a nearly-finished scene, edited, thought-out, and written so as to fit in its place in the story and accomplish its goal. The scene later filled-out to 730 words.

HMx9 SHMx1 (Q2'22) 2xCritiquer for Published Winners (Oh yeah, it's now a thing)

It seems to me very stupid to set some kind of framework, because we are all different and everyone writes differently, but if everything is bad with writing, then there are good services that will gladly help you 

@susan-737  

Susan, I completely agree with you, it is easy for someone to write and this person can write 2 thousand words in an hour, and someone cannot write 100 words in an hour, I am more of the second type of people, and writing is hard work for me

Posted by: @gary @susan-737   Susan, I completely agree with you, it is easy for someone to write and this person can write 2 thousand words in an hour, and someone cannot write 100 words in an hour, I am more of the second type of people, and writing is hard work for me

But if you never ask, you never know. Knowing you're uber-faster than average may explain your numerous mistakes. Knowing you're super-slower may inspire you to try new techniques.

Posted by: @susan-737 It seems to me very stupid to set some kind of framework, because we are all different and everyone writes differently

I think it’s all really just knowing how you write, when you write best, at what speeds you can work productively, etc. Getting to know yourself as a writer is important so you can understand where your current limitations and weaknesses are. That way you can push past yourself and improve over time. Stephen Covey once said, “Where performance is measured, performance improves.” Imagine being a long-distance runner and having no idea what your pace times are. Can’t get better if you don’t know where you are. 

Posted by: @morgan-broadhead I've heard of Dragon dictation. Some writers have tremendous success with it. I tried it once. The good news is I wrote about 800 words. The bad news is it was 800 words of phrases like, "No wait, that's not how it goes...What was I saying again?...Holy crap I can't even read that...What are those letters—is that even English?"

Respectfully: If you’ve tried it once, you haven’t tried it. It took me three months to get productive, a year to get good. Today? 54,000 words in a month is not uncommon.

I was forced to stick with it in order to make use of two hours of commute each day. It started really awkwardly. It got better.

http://nineandsixtyways.com/ Tools, Not Rules. Martin L. Shoemaker 3rd Place Q1 V31 "Today I Am Paul", WSFA Small Press Award 2015, Nebula nomination 2015 Today I Am Carey from Baen The Last Dance (#1 science fiction eBook on Amazon, October 2019) and The Last Campaign from 47North

Posted by: @morgan-broadhead I think it’s all really just knowing how you write, when you write best, at what speeds you can work productively, etc. Getting to know yourself as a writer is important so you can understand where your current limitations and weaknesses are. That way you can push past yourself and improve over time. Stephen Covey once said, “Where performance is measured, performance improves.” Imagine being a long-distance runner and having no idea what your pace times are. Can’t get better if you don’t know where you are. 

I’ve been tracking the data for a year now, and it’s eye-opening.

If I dictate during my morning or afternoon commute, I dictate 25-30 words per minute. (But I once hit 100 wpm on my morning commute. Pure inspiration!)

If I dictate on almost any other trip: 30-40 wpm. Maybe traffic is more risky during the commute?

If I dictate on my treadmill: 45-55 wpm. And I burn 500 calories in an hour!

If I dictate in a quiet room, sitting still with NO distractions: 60-65 wpm.

Obviously the quiet room works best IF I can arrange no distractions. Usually I can’t. When I’m on the treadmill or driving, I’m forced to ignore email, Facebook, etc.

Knowing these numbers helps me plan ahead.

@martin-l-shoemaker  

I definitely have some research to do and some equipment/apps to purchase to get myself set up productively. Several of us have been discussing best practices/equipment. Just purchased  On Being a Dictator , so I'm hoping that will help me out.

Just to chip in my notes here, I am aware of how much I can write. When I know exactly where my writing is going, when I have no distractions, and when I'm just hitting it, my general typing word-count hits between 1,500 and 2,000 words an hour. That's quite rare, however, and I've learned not to really judge myself on how much I write, but more on simply  whether  I write.

For example, yesterday, I spent an evening thinking through some scenes that I wanted to write, and wrote exactly zero words of any of them. Tonight, I worked on the first of those, and wrote 1,100 words in 45 minutes, which is close to that 1,500 words an hour. But I couldn't write those words without first having written none. And sometimes, my writing is more exploratory. This scene was active, in part a chase, which had an easy dynamic to follow. Other scenes are more careful and thoughtful, and may require a lot more. I've had other times when I found it a slog to get out 500 words in an hour. Generally, if it drops below that level, though, I'm not feeling any sense of flow with my writing, and I'm likely not enjoying it, or finding it at all rewarding. I'll usually break from it and return later, in the hopes that the gears will click the next time.

That actually touches on my feelings about dictation, I keep thinking about trying it, as I've been intrigued by the idea of how well it might work--but I've come to suspect that my underlying blocker with it is not so much a sense of whether it would work,  but rather whether I would  enjoy  it. I'm not naturally someone who likes to story-tell. When my wife'll say tell me a story,  I'm almost immediately at a loss. I know people who can sit around a table and share stories for hours on end without seeming to pause for breath, but my brain doesn't get into that gear very naturally.

DQ:0 / R:0 / RWC:0 / HM:15 / SHM:7 / SF:1 / F:1 Published prior WotF entries: PodCastle, HFQ , Abyss & Apex Currently on a writing hiatus

Currently viewing this topic 1 guest.

• 1,689 Topics
• 53.1 K Posts
• 11.2 K Members

Writers & Illustrators Contests

• Writer Contest
• Writer Contest Rules
• Illustrator Contest
• Illustrator Contest Rules

Related Sites

• L. Ron Hubbard
• Author Services, Inc.
• Galaxy Press
• Battlefield Earth

Connect With Us

• Educator Resources

Get the Reddit app

A place by and for freelance writers of all kinds to discuss and share every facet of freelance writing.

How many words per hour can you write?

I often charge per hour and typically tell clients that I can write between 500-1,000 words per hour, assuming no research is needed. That rate includes time for revisions as well, but excessive changes of course could increase that time. I’m curious what other freelance writers are able to complete per hour. I know it depends on type of writing, but what would you say you can write on average?