HOW TO WRITE AN ARTICLE IN 40 MINUTES

Writing just 800 words used to be tough for me. I’m a graphic designer by profession and words have been the last thing I would use to express myself with.

Is it the same for you too?

Here’s the tough part: Not only must I think clearly, but I also have to combine the right words together to make it sound accurate to my thoughts. On top of that, I have to write as fast as I can to save time for other things I have to do in life.

So how do I get to the point of writing a 1000-word article in 40 minutes every day?

Read on for more:

1. Be at peace with why you write

I’m an impatient beast, if anything doesn’t give me instant results, I can spend forever on something, no matter how small that matter is so that it gives me the pleasure to assume I’m working hard on it to make it look really “good”.

At the end of the day, it’s only a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In this age of content marketing, I know some people see results with writing, some profiting from it. I can’t lie that I’m also into writing so that I can benefit from that too.

That was my motivation or agenda for the past 3 years, and I never really wrote consistently or regularly until today.

I told myself that I must be genuine when offering what I know, yet deep down, I badly wanted something in return — eg. more blog traffic, more claps, more shares, more money.

This “telling myself” was using the “fake it till you make it” theory to get through the process, thinking that’s what people do to succeed.

Truth is, when I managed to sit myself down, fingers on the keyboard, I couldn’t do it. I wanted to make it so bad that I wanted to fake it literally to make it. I started by writing what I know rather than what I have been doing.

I wrote to the point where I had to copy paragraphs of books to quote the respective authors until I realised “what’s the point”, I might as well put up a post that recommends all these books.

That’s when I figured I have this problem of being myself, of knowing if I have my own opinions, of articulating how I feel with words, of having honest, deep conversations with another human.

That’s when I started to write daily.

2. Free up the time to write, not to design

As a graphic designer, this was a comfort zone issue. I won’t say I’m bad at writing. I’m sure you can write a 1000-word article under 40 minutes too.

I’ve struggled for years to block off time to write rather than to design because I’ve been spending most of my life working on designs for clients, not for myself.

I love working with my clients. But with the habit of reacting to the needs of my clients, to change the colour of this graphic to black, no, red, etc. It became really easy for me to wait for their next requests.

What happens is, when they don’t request for anything, I took the chance to slack, take a shuteye or do nothing before the next requests were made.

I did not use the time wisely to build my own brand in any way, be it designing or writing for myself.

In fact, doing anything for myself is a challenge since I’ve been taking orders for more than 10 years of my life.

Hence, in order to keep up with writing well, fast and daily, I had to intentionally free up time to write what I truly feel and wish to share.

I didn’t come from a family of writers, nor did I score an ‘A’ for any of my English examinations.

You can do this too. You can churn out your best piece once and you can repeat the same thing over again each day if you put your foot down to say ‘no’ to any other requests at your scheduled ‘writing time’ of the day.

3. Curate resources on a daily basis

Curate, bookmark, highlight anything and store these resources somewhere ahead of time every day so that you can easily dish them out before and while writing as quickly as possible without rummaging for it.

On the move, I simply use my mobile Notes to record a list of ideas I have throughout the day. Each day, I am able to list down up to 5 ideas that can be potentially used as article titles.

If I am stuck with ideas, I go to platforms like Quora, Reddit, IndieHacker and Facebook Groups to search for questions that were relevant to myself and my audience.

When browsing online, I use Pocket to save web articles and tag them with something I can relate to. Example, if it’s a medium article I will bookmark the article on Medium, highlight the portion that resonates with me and my audience and also use Pocket to save it with a “Medium” and “Marilyn Wo” tags.

If I need to leave short notes, Medium’s private notes area is great, but I use Evernote because I have been using it for a while before Medium came up with the private notes feature.

Using Chrome’s Evernote extension, I can save the whole article as text on Evernote. When I open Evernote, I can highlight sections and add my notes in italics or in brackets.

As a designer, image search can take a long time for me too because I read into every photo so much, I end up browsing for too long before publishing.

Also, it’s best to take time to find better photos so that there’s a higher chance that readers will read on. Hence, collecting such resources before the actual writing time is helpful to just write with the flow.

Next, while reading other people’s articles, use that chance to curate the photos you see by pinning them with Pinterest or Evernote. They may be something relevant to your next post, who knows?

4. Create a persona with a clear reason and story

This was another tough one for me.

I used to wonder: “Should I write to a mother about parenting, or should I write to a new entrepreneur how to start a business?”

In the past 5 years, I created many personas and none of them stuck on, meaning they did not spur me on to write because most of them were bogus personas that I’ve made up.

I’m not saying it’s not right to make up a persona. They are fake in a way, but I kind of copied from the personas that successful people have created.

As time went by, I realised these fake personas didn’t give me meaning to write. Somehow, using them made me expect to receive something back.

That held me back from writing because I will try to be perfect in my sentences and time have taken to wonder if each word I wrote would ever bring traffic to my site made me exhausted.

This journey of trying so hard brought me to an ultimatum, that I have to start with a persona such that if this persona were to be a real person, we can actually have a conversation.

Far too many days wasted only by saying “I’m starting today” but never got to it. I finally figured that my persona has to make sense to me. Self-talks like this made me realise every work we do has to work for us.

What I mean by “us” is referring to each and every one of our unique self, situation, circumstance and reason. One tactic can work for one but may not work for another.

Hence, I also don’t write for people who are looking for tactics, but more towards self-discovery processes so that others can learn from my writing to find answers for themselves just like what I’ve achieved for myself.

So how did I end up creating this persona?

Throughout my entire career, I have many friends who have regular stable jobs but hate working for their bosses for whatever reasons.

At the same time, I was an athlete before, hence, my circle of friends are sporty and athletic people who are a sucker for training programs to keep fit and strong.

Some of these friends have long been wanting to start something of their own, quit their jobs yet earn a stable income while travelling around the world without worrying about how to survive the next day.

I am not wealthy or famous, but I am at a point where I can share what I’ve done to live life with purpose, build a business and find the freedom to raise two kids.

Though I write to better myself, the persona I created is for me to remind me of how I pushed through the challenges when I first started my business 14 years back.

In those days I did not document or wrote any journal of what worked and what didn’t work. Hence, this persona has to be created for this purpose. Otherwise, I will be writing only what I am doing now, which most of it in my case has not been proven to work yet, making me feel fake again.

5. Schedule a few times a day for writing

I’m a mother of 2 kids and running a graphic design business with my husband at the same time.

We can block time off, but with kids, life can be random and many times it throws a curveball at you. Some preparation can help hit the ball back.

Hence I created a scheduling system

That is to break up one thing to different times a day.

In case I can’t make it at one slot due to things like kids throwing up at the wrong places, I can still leave my writing and pick it up again at the next slot.

Just like how I master the meditation process, I don’t schedule to meditate 30 minutes at one shot each day but break it up to 10 minutes per time, 3 times a day, one at 430 AM, one at 1130 AM and another one at 5 PM.

Same for writing, before starting, set this schedule up first. You may wish to write 5 times a day, 10 minutes each time, that’s up to you.

For me I need more than 20 minutes due to the time required to be set aside for a bit of research and thinking mode, hence I schedule writing at 6 AM, 1030AM and 330PM every day.

In the past, my writing rhythm used to be only once a week, then two times a week and now I have been at it every day.

Do try this out if you faced a similar challenge. With a few short slots, it helps you to see the goal as something more achievable.

6. Create a writing system

Here are the 12 steps I take to accomplish one article a day with 1000 words in 40 minutes, you can do it too:

Set your timer to 40 minutes

Persona — remind yourself of this person as you write. I have it saved in my Evernote and it’s a separate window tiled at a corner of my screen. While writing, I will refer to it to stay on track

Hypothetical title — taken from my list as mentioned in point 3. Know that you can change later, hence it’s hypothetical

Outline — what I learned from

Ali Mese

is to set the stage for the article first by putting down Introduction, conclusion and short sub-headings in between. I also learned from

Sean D'Souza

’s “Article Writing” to keep outlines simple to prevent “bloating” or more than enough information

Start writing the in-betweens — while writing, there will be areas you need to grab credits, source, etc, highlight them to come back to it later. I find it best to keep writing without stopping because momentum helps to make my writing flow fast

Polish the introduction — the introduction I wrote, in the beginning, was to get me to get into the groove of writing. After writing, I tend to go back to it to make adjustments, sometimes to the point of rewriting it to match the body

Give a punchy conclusion — Thank you,

Danny Forest

, for showing me the way to make the “conclusion the summary of the article and use it to inspire the reader”.

Credits and links — Make sure intended text is properly hyperlinked and all quotes have been credited where it’s due

Edit — Re-read the article and make the necessary edits. Use Grammarly to help identify grammar mistakes. Style your article with sufficient breathing space, screenshots and images where appropriate

Add a striking photo — you may get this from your curated collection or Unsplash to be placed as the first image of the page.