Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

Judge, jury and executioner
Why you hate writing
The setup

It’s important to understand how this Idea Factory works.

It never runs out of ideas. That’s it’s whole job.

Writer’s Block is an imaginary thing. You only run into it when you stop stimulating your mind. See, the Idea Factory will churn out an endless number of ideas. I guarantee you it’s limitless. The well will never go dry, if you stimulate it properly.

But there are some rules here. You’ve got to tap into the well. You’ve got to go with the flow.

You hate writing because you’re expecting the Idea Factory to pump out writing. But it doesn’t. It pumps out ideas. It’s your job to harness those ideas and then shape them into your writing.

When you judge yourself too early, you break the production line of the Idea Factory.

Listen, one of the reasons speed writing is so effective is that it taps into the way your brain is designed to work. You’re working with it, rather than against it the whole time.

Always remember: You can judge yourself later. If you stop doing it now, your writing speed will rocket forward.

And I’ll tell you something. It was one of my biggest lessons.

I used to spend most of my writing time re-reading what I’d just written. Fixing, adjusting, tweaking. Notice that Tweak is the last step in the FAST System. That’s because you just can’t write if you don’t let yourself go through the process.

When you do, that well produces more than you can handle.