Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012
Master Talktation
Meet the FAST system
The setup
The Focus phase of FAST could take as little as a day, or as much as a month or more. It’s up to you, and it depends entirely on how much time you want to devote to it.
But once you’re done, it’s time for the second phase of the FAST System: A, for Apply.
Now that you’ve got your plan of attack, it’s time to get your words on the page.
The Apply phase is where you write as fast as you possibly can. And that’s a lot easier said than done, at first. You don’t even know if you can write, let alone write fast!
That’s why I’ve come up with a new approach to speed writing. I call it Talktation.
Talktation is similar to dictation, without the intermediary.
Dictation is where you speak into a recording device (a Dictaphone, usually, or a microphone on your computer), and then someone (could even be you) at a later time, listens back to the words, and transcribes them.
Dictation has one distinct advantage over typing or handwriting. You can keep up with your speed of thought. See, we can talk much faster than we can type or hand-write, so when you speak, you’re much more likely to keep up with the lightning speed of your mind.
Talktation is the act of training yourself to type at the speed of thought. Talking is easy. You don’t judge yourself when you talk. So Talktation gets you to “talk” onto the page.
It’s a conceptual technique. It’s more of an idea than a physical technique. But you can physically practice to increase the speed of your writing. We’ll take a closer look at it in Chapter 7.
The Apply phase is all about getting your words on the page as fast as possible. Don’t analyze them. Don’t think about them. Just get them on the page.
Look, no matter what you write, you’ll always read it back later and find some way to fix it. So don’t spend any more time than necessary getting your words on the page.
And then we’ll see what we’ve got.