Slow Writing vs. Speed Writing

woman at a typewriter — Image by Yerson Retamal from Pixabay

Do you remember a story you read that stuck with you and made you think, not just feel? This might have been an example of slow writing.

The Czech novelist Franz Kafka (1883–1924) instructed that all his writings should be destroyed after his death. Today, many writers publish with a self-focused approach to be liked and shared. They speed-write and “optimize” their output for growth.

In their world, “content” needs to be churned out at a frantic pace, while the art of slow writing is overlooked and undervalued. But if you appreciate quality over quantity, you want to write slowly and meticulously to engage your readers.

“The human brain has been on a slower evolutionary trajectory than the technology”, writes Pamela B. Rutledge in The Psychological Power of Storytelling (Psychology Today, 2011). “Our brains still respond to content by looking for the story to make sense out of the experience. No matter what the technology, the meaning starts in the brain. Stories are authentic human experiences. Stories leap-frog the technology and bring us to the core of the experience.”

Slow writing takes time

Slow writing is essential for writers. It involves planning, researching, writing, rewriting, continuously revising and editing your drafts and polishing your work. This meticulous approach lets you explore various angles and perspectives to reach more insightful conclusions. It’s a method that emphasizes quality over quantity and depth over speed and applies to fiction and nonfiction.

However, it does not mean overworking your craft until it becomes too well done. Some pieces need to be hammered out and remain unchiseled.

Slow writing is storytelling

When writers take their time, their captivating content exposes unique thoughts, vulnerabilities, pain points and problems that lead to solutions and bring a sense of order. Think Little Red Riding Hood. When you read that story, you can see her bouncing in the forest, encountering a problem, struggling and then overcoming it. You hear the wolf manipulating her. Yes, all good writing is storytelling, using a unique rhetorical style.

Slow writing is an elaborate creative process that requires an artful and precise command of language. You aim to craft not just functionally communicative prose but also to be innovative, provocative, original, thought-provoking, compelling, and memorable.

Not everyone will appreciate your slow writing style. It might never go viral. And that is the point. Like. Share. Done? Not this time.

The most honest writing comes from a personal experience or a simmering inkling, not by rehashing generic how-to content, neatly indented as you’ve been instructed to do in school. No, your word limit is not always set in stone. Long form is back, and slow writing is essential to make every word count.

Slow writing requires contemplation

Slow writing lets you accept a contemplating process and embrace the empty page. It promotes a mindset of patience, depth of thought, focus and concentration that requires deep engagement, which takes time.

To quote the American Author Cal Newport, “Speeding up in pursuit of fleeting moments of hyper-visibility is not necessarily the path to impact. It’s in slowing down that the real magic happens.”

Even the most experienced writers stumble and need time to regroup. In my writing career, I’ve often hit writer’s block, struggled to find the right words or failed to make my sentences sing. Slow writing has helped me slow down and find new ways to express my thoughts.

And as an editor, I sometimes feared I’d overlooked the obvious. The concept of taking a deep breath and editing slowly has helped me many times regain my thoughts and recalibrate my brain so that I could get back to what I wanted to accomplish.

“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another,” writes Carl Sagan in Cosmos. “Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”

We need to tell stories that require time to digest.

Slow writing breaks some rules

Good writing follows specific rules that can guide you. Slow writing goes way beyond these rules. It helps set you apart. You write and use what you know and find words that inspire you to get your readers involved and to “bind together people who never knew one another.”

Slow writing also allows you to free yourself from restrictive grammar rules. It allows you to use the passive voice (which AI grammar tools flag consistently) and to create melodic sentence structures.

“When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely,” writes Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast (1964). This sentence flouts a few basic grammar rules for grammatical purists, with its simple adjectives, repetitive “and” and lack of a comma after “Paris.” But his words sing.

So, in the era of generative AI and quick content snacking, slow writing is invaluable. It promotes thinking outside the box, shuns algorithms and their constraints, breaks a grammar rule here and there and proves that “no one is youer than you,” to quote Dr. Seuss.

Slow writing stresses quality over quantity
This concept of taking time to write isn’t a nostalgic nod to the past or the shunning of efficiency. It’s a critical practice for anyone dedicated to quality content over quantity who seeks value.

It is essential for any writer who wants to create a memorable body of work that quick, viral content can rarely sustain.

Slow writing has helped me appreciate my craft better. While I still need to provide quick content snippets in my editorial work, I also take the time to write authentic stories and narratives that connect and are based on my own experiences.

It isn’t easy. “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people,” Thomas Mann wrote in 1947. That still applies today. Slow writing is hard and often tedious, but when you connect with your readers, you’re halfway there.

So, keep on writing slowly, create your truest sentences and occasionally silence a grammar rule.