Why Slow Writers Hold a Secret Advantage That Fast Writers Don’t Want You to Know

The Short Of It

There is no denying we live in a productivity and hustle culture, where more is more, and quantity is often favored over quality. Even around the writing community you’ll see a lot of language around writing more, writing fast, and publishing frequently. Even fellow aspiring writers’ well-meaning updates on social media about how they have 3K word writing session today can put the slow writers in doubt: Am I doing something wrong?

We are individuals

Full stop, no. If you are a slower writer, you are not doing something wrong. Nor is the fast writer. I believe in the individuality of process. The same way telling a night owl they should wake up at 5 am to get an hour of writing time in before their day job is setting them up for failure as it doesn’t play to their strengths, telling a slow writer to just write faster is a bit of an oxymoron.

Let’s clarify what I mean by fast and slow. I don’t mean how fast or slow those fingers fly by on the keyboard. I mean how much you can write in a writing session, or how much you can write in a day, or a week. I’m talking about how long it takes you to finish a project. Slow is not one measure and slow writing doesn’t always come from the same place.

Perhaps you’re slow because on top of your day job, house chores, taking care of kids, etcetera, etcetera, you only have so much time and energy left to write. Or perhaps you are very meticulous over your words, favoring getting the writing right (or close to it) the first time around. Or perhaps no matter how much writing time you set aside, your creativity taps out after a certain point sat in the writing chair.

That’s what I mean by slow. That the accumulative efforts of your writing process is slow.

But accumulation matters

Terry Pratchett famously wrote 400 words a day, and that resulted in his 41 book Discworld series, amongst his other published works over his esteemed career. But he was dedicated to writing those 400 words every day, even the day of his father’s funeral.