“Can Writing Faster Diminish Quality? A Tortoise’s Take on the Sprinting Fox’s Secrets”
Have you ever found yourself racing against an invisible clock, counting down the words you’ve written like a contestant on a reality show? If so, you’re not alone. In the quest to become more productive, many writers, including myself, have dabbled in tracking “words per hour”—an enticing strategy that promises to unlock a torrent of creativity at breakneck speed. But as I sat down with Chris Fox’s 5,000 Words Per Hour, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this focus on rapid output could be stifling rather than liberating. After all, does churning out heaps of words really translate to improving our craft, or does it just lead us down a rabbit hole of frustration and unrefined thoughts? Join me as I explore my experience with this method, revealing why my pursuit of speed ultimately came up short. It’s a deep dive into the subtle art of writing, where clarity and creativity often matter more than mere quantity. LEARN MORE
Focusing on words per hour didn’t help me refine my thinking
Have you ever read a great page-turner that, in the end, just wasn’t for you?
Chris Fox is a developer-turned-author with more than 20 novels and an 8-book nonfiction series for writers to his name, to say nothing of his YouTube channel for writers with more than 40,000 subscribers. A few months ago, I read 5,000 Words Per Hour, the first book in his Write Faster, Write Smarter series. Unfortunately, after giving Fox’s main technique a try in my writing, I’ve decided that it’s not one I will apply in the future.
5,000 words per hour
5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter is a highly readable and quick-moving ebook that teaches several techniques for writing a great deal of content in a short amount of time. At the time of writing, Fox had gotten his daily word count up 5,000 words/hour on his best days, an amount that initially staggered me. Although I have always been good at writing, never in my life have I hit such a large a word count in such a small amount of time.
This rang especially true when I read the book. I had recently written several blog…
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