My variable writing speed

[Martin W]

Added this to Webmasterworld thread, on how much content people add to Adsense sites each day; thread mainly discussed writing.

Early in On Writing Well by William Zinsser, says writing is hard.

The writing I’m best paid for is for magazines; remember when starting out, an editor told me one of his main writers might take a week for 2000-word feature. Also a guy at a news weekly, telling me of being able to bang out 500 words or more in an hour (I think it was) – “Oh, easy,” he said.

My writing rate certainly became faster with practice, but still variable; at times may spend quite some time just figuring how to start an article.

Done a handful of features that took up to a month or so, inc research trips – on expenses, happily. But when I don’t need to do research, around 1500 words in day seems ok to me.
With my sites bringing trickle of money, only occasionally give myself time to add real articles; more often add short forum/blog posts, and photos.

[Martin W]

Soon after my post on Webmasterworld came a post with tips on writing; I added the following:

Good list, Nomis5. Perhaps best advice I ever came across – in book How to Write Like a Pro, By Barry Tarshis [seemed daft title to me; but recommended to me and excellent; lost my copy] concerned focus control. About having some idea of what’s in your reader’s head, keeping them focused, following your article. Seems obvious but my goodness is that an elephant over there… but if you’re clumsy, can lose reader, break chain of thought, and perhaps lose reader for good. Which isn’t to say that have to write one continuous article, a to b to c. But when start para, end should follow from first sentence; next para should follow on too. It’s also good to use "chapters", even within short articles.

To write, also have to read, and read plenty. Try to be aware of techniques writers are using in good articles. For web, those short paragraphs seem to me more important than in print: text may look daunting on screen.

Lately read book by Joe Sugarman, on writing copy to sell, and he used lots of headings: also worth considering; I’ve increased numbers of headings (tho only one h1 per page). Well, not really answering first question here, but maybe of some relevance and use. More on topic: I mentioned writing articles for print. Later, providing I own copyright, can put them on my site(s). [Or, ask copyright owner if ok to use.]

Here on this site, I earlier did an article: Advice on Writing for Print and for the Web

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