There isn’t an author on the planet who wants to rush their work, but very few would pass up the opportunity to speed up the writing process occasionally.

Writing a novel is hard work, and at times, it can feel like a slog. For some authors, it often gets the better of them, leaving countless potential masterpieces gathering digital dust on hard drives across the world.

Clearly, you don’t want your work to add to that pile, and with that in mind, the following strategies will help you speed up the writing process of your next book, and make it a far more pleasurable experience, to boot.

Write every single day

This one is pretty easy, although tricky to keep up, consistently.

The more you write, the quicker you’ll get at it (like anything in life) therefore if you can schedule time in your diary each day to write, you’ll become a master at the craft.

It doesn’t matter what you write, either. It might be work on your current draft, a journal, blog post, or just a few thoughts in a notebook. Whatever it is, keep it up!

Don’t get hung up on the research

There’s a lot to be said for writing first and researching later.

Authors often fall at the first hurdle by feeling nervous about undertaking the research phase. It feels like such a massive, insurmountable task, after all.

If that’s how you feel, throw caution to the wind, and start writing straight away. The research can wait until you feel up to it, and the more you write, the more you’ll know where to focus your research.

Work from an outline

While skipping research is no bad thing at all, ignoring the importance of an outline is rather risky.

Outlines work. Every goal needs a plan, and if you dive head first into the writing process without an idea of the key touchpoints along your story, you’ll quickly head down a cul-de-sac littered with opportunities to run into writer’s block.

Spend plenty of time on your outline - it’ll give you that all important direction for your writing and will get you through some of the tougher times we all experience as writers.

Don’t fear writer’s block

Face it: you’re going to hit writer’s block at some point during the writing of your novel. It happens to even the greatest novelist out there.

With that in mind, it’s important not to fear writer’s block and, while ‘embracing it’ is something a of cliche, it’s absolutely true.

Writer’s block isn’t a failing of you as a writer, it’s a natural process you need to go through in order to write your book. The key lies in addressing it sensibly, and that usually involves stepping back for a time and doing something completely disconnected to writing.

Take writer’s block as a sign that you need to back off and take some time out. Do something that makes you happy, and return to the book once you’re done - you’ll likely find that the writer’s block has magically vanished!

Wrapping up

There are, of course, plenty of other ways to speed up your writing process, but the above are the strategies that you may not have thought of.

As always - enjoy your writing. It’s why we’re all in this game, after all!