How To Write Fast: 8 Secrets To Better, Quicker Content Creation

Q&A Tuesday is coming at you. Don’t you want it? Don’t you want it? Yeah.

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, business and life advice that works. Today’s question comes from Sisal [phonetic 00:00:36]. And Sisal writes, “Hi, Marie. I’m finding that it takes forever to write my newsletters. I know that I should be sharing content and connecting with my audience, but there’s just so much else to do. Any advice you can share on how to write faster?” Sisal, awesome question. Sisal, first let me say that everybody I know struggles with this very issue, especially when you’re first starting out. When I started my business and I had to write a lot of content, sometimes it would take me two to three days to get out one good article. So I totally know how you feel. And even to this day, I’m still looking for ways to write faster. The truth is creating high quality content does take some time, but the good news is I’ve got eight great strategies to help you create high quality content even faster.

Number one, flip your script. If you want to change anything in your life, you first have to take a look at your internal script. What are you saying to yourself? What’s the story you’re telling yourself about the thing you want to change? So for example, if you’re telling yourself, “I’m a really slow writer, and it takes me for ever to write my newsletters.” Well, guess what? You will be a really slow writer, and it will take you forever to write your newsletters. Your subconscious mind is a powerful little biatch. And let me tell you, you want her on your side.

Too slow.

Baby, let’s flip that script.

Mama, you so fast.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). So before you do anything else, flip your internal script.

Number two is begin with the end in mind. You want to think about your end result. What is the thing that you want your reader to walk away with? What action, if any, do you want them to take? Then you have to reverse engineer your content to get them there. For example, as I was creating the answer to this very question I asked myself, “What do I want you to walk away with after this video?” And my answer? A highly actionable list of things that will help you write faster and a video that you’d want to share with your friends.

Number three, keep a topic list. Now tell the truth. You waste a ton of time trying to figure out what you should write about in the first place. Here’s the fix, keep a running topic list of all your ideas. So for example, if you get inspired by magazine articles or interviews or anything you watched on TV, write it down. Or something really good that really works for me is questions that people ask you all the time, great fodder for content. So you can use a notebook or you can use Google Docs, or you can use Evernote, which is amazing. Or you can even use your iPhone and get little miss Siri to help you out. Siri, remind me to write an article about Evernote.

Marie, you should be focused on making videos, not creating content.

Number four, make it short and sweet. Remember that high quality content does not mean long content. Sometimes the best way to serve your audience is to make it short and sweet. Remember, nobody’s not going to read your content because it’s too short. So try just sharing one tip or one idea.

Number five, plan it out. Create an editorial calendar for your content. So you want to spend about one to two hours planning out your content for the next three to six months. This takes the decision out of what you’re going to write about each week and it just plans everything out for you. So when it’s time to write, you just go to your plan, you follow your plan, and you’re done. And as you’re writing your content, you don’t have to wonder, “Should I include this whole section here? Or should I save it for another post?” You can just go to your editorial calendar and you’ll say, “Oh, this idea is going to be great for July 5th.”

Number six, and this is a biggie, don’t write and edit at the same time. Get everything out and don’t edit as you go because it only slows you down. So for example, if you’re writing and you think of a better way to say something, don’t delete what you just wrote. Just stop, write the sentence the new way, and keep going. This frees you up for making it perfect the first time and allows you to just get everything out. Editing is usually a much faster process when you have a lot of content on the page.

Number seven, remember Mr. P’s law. That would be Mr. Parkinson, and he says, “The amount of time one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task.” Another way to say it is work expands to the time allotted. So give yourself a time limit. Now, Mr. Tony Robbins kicked my ass on this topic, and I wrote a whole article about it and you can check it out in the link below.

Number eight, be the vessel and not the source. One of the most powerful things to remember is that you’re the vessel and not the source. You know, Marianne Williamson said once that she is the faucet and God’s the water. And Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, she has this great saying. She thinks that each of us have our own genius that comes to visit us and inspires our creations. Now, I know this one may seem a little woo woo, but it really works. It takes the pressure off so you don’t have to do everything by yourself. You’re responsible to show up, be the vessel for the great work to come through you.

So there you go, Sisal. Eight great strategies to help you write faster. I hope it helps you and please come back and let us know how it goes. Now, if you’ve got strategies on how to write faster, or you want to let me know what strategy from this video resonated with you the most, I want to hear it and tell me about it in the comments below. Like this video, subscribe to my channel, and share this with your friends. And if you want even more great resources to grow your business and your life plus personal insights from me that I just can’t put in videos, come to marieforleo.com, sign up for email updates. And I’d love to have you on board. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time.

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Papa Smurf moment. Where did that come from?

Yeah.

That was dumb. Okay.

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