I’m With Ray Bradbury on Writing Fast — in Quickness is Truth

How to zap lightning from your fingertips

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I’m with Ray Bradbury on writing fast. Bradbury published over 30 books and wrote more than 600 short stories in his writing career — many of them award-winning.

Here’s what Bradbury says:

In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth dead falling or tiger-trapping.

When I shared that I typically write at 1,000 words per hour, kit_carmelite asked some follow-up questions:

• When you write quickly, are you not also just saying the same stuff being said by others many times? Without time for thought, can there be a new idea or a fresh take on the topic?
• How does free-writing fit into your process? Do you have a rough outline in mind first?
• Do you always free-write before you pair research and writing your article?

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

How I have fresh ideas when writing quickly