Looking for Book Recommendations

How to Write Articles Faster

[Jane_Doe]

I'm looking for some book recommendations to help me organize my thoughts and write nonfictional, kind of dry and boring reference type articles for my sites faster than I currently do. I don't want to read anything that might influence my current writing style or anything marketing, copy writing or magazine style writing oriented. I just want to be faster at writing reference type articles, like something you'd find in a technical manual, business proposal, encyclopedia or college term paper.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[justawriter]

Sorry if this sounds flippant but if you can't touch-type then take a typing course.

[Jane_Doe]

It's not the typing part that is slowing me down, it is the thinking part.

I'm sure if I was a newspaper reporter on deadline I'd be writing a lot faster.

[henry0]

I think that Jane_Doe means more productivity delivered even faster :)

Something I have done in the past was to hire a couple of students.
Give them guidance, point them in the right direction
and have those students performing researches on your behalf.

[henry0]

You shoot faster than I do!

[Jane_Doe]

Give them guidance, point them in the right direction
and have those students performing researches on your behalf.

Thanks for the suggestion. That's more in line with what I'm looking for. But in my case I have the research. I have thousands of books and articles stored in crates organized by subject, and I've read most of them.

So I want to write my own articles. I don't want anyone else to help me write them or do any research for me. I just want to be able to write more than one or two articles a day, and I think if I was more methodical about it I could do that.

[Matt Probert]

dry and boring reference type articles

Dry and boring? I take offence at that <g> (writing and publishing an encyclopaedia as I do)

Is the problem the flow of information? Or, as is my wife's problem, putting that information into words?

In either case, I can't recommend a book, but I can recommend mental agility games and word games. These can help sharpen the mind and so allow the flow of data quicker. Have you ever listened to the Radio 4 program 'Just a Minute'? Give it a try.

Matt

[ikkyu]

What about the voice-to-typing program that emodo(IIRC) likes - forgot the name of it, but it basically converts the spoken word to the typed word.

[justawriter]

Ok typing isn't your problem - how many words are you aiming for in each article?

I'm currently knocking out 6x600 word articles a day for one client, 800-900 words for another plus four or five blog entries for myself.

So how many words are you trying to achieve in your articles?

[shigamoto]

I've written a number of dry articles in my life :) The workflow I use is as follows:

1) Study the area you will be writing about.

2) Come up with a number of angles and questions about the subject, write them down. What would you like to know about the subject?

3) Research the subjects, angles and questions you've come up with.

4) Write a brief sketch of the article with the angles you came up with. Try to write as much as you can on each angle.

5) Add an introduction and an ending that ties the different angles and questions together.

6) Article

Not sure if this was what you were looking for though...