Part 7: Practice Makes Faster
I’m not joking when I say…
If I was under time-pressure today…
I could write my daily email in 10-minutes flat.
It wouldn’t be riddled with typos… wouldn’t be (entirely) incomprehensible… and would still be an engaging read for my audience.
Wouldn’t be too long either. Probably 300-400 words.
You know…
A year ago, I would never even have joked about taking such little time.
But writing thousands and thousands of words for emails kinda helps with getting faster.
And my process also makes it possible.
Because I have my library of email ideas to pull out and start writing on. Without having to stop and wonder what I’ll write about today.
BUT… confession time… I’ve actually NEVER only spent that little amount of time on an email.
Because although I COULD write them that fast… I DON’T want to.
For one simple reason: I don’t like stress.
I’d prefer NOT to put myself under unnecessary pressure like that. 😊
Plus, I like taking time to (anal-retentively) edit the emails into better shape.
So these days, I usually clock in somewhere between 30 and 90 minutes for an email.
Today’s one, for example, is on the lower end of that range. Because I already had a lot of content written for the core of the email.
So I’m just fleshing things out a bit. And getting it into publishable shape.
When I started my email list… a few months before I began daily email… I was spending 2-4 hours on every email!
Now, some emails did need a bit more attention than others. Because of research I wanted to do for them.
Or the clock ticked on while I sat paralysed… wondering what my subscribers would think of me if I said THAT!
Worst was when I was telling a story with dialog (well, doing my darndest to!).
I would spend hours and hours and hours on those. And much of that was me looking up how to punctuate sentences and write dialog correctly!
I didn’t write too many emails like that. Still don’t. Because they are labor-intensive. Although, they’re also a lot of fun too!
I know I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of improving my email-writing speed.
But I’m very OK with where I’m at right now.
Plus, I repurpose a lot of my emails into articles. So it’s handy if I take a little more time now. So they’re in better shape for later.
Writing 300-900 (sometimes more!) words per day in my emails has made me a much faster writer.
I guess it’s the usual case of: The more you practice, the faster you get.
Which is another delightful confidence-booster. Courtesy of daily email!
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EmailForTheWin.com
Chris Milham