How to Write Fast (While Writing Well) (Paperback)

~ David Fryxell (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Writers Digest Books (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898797381
• ISBN-13: 978-0898797381
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,283,293 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful tool, September 1, 2001

By	Timothy Daiss (Metro-Manila, Philippines (Atlanta, GA USA)) - See all my reviews

Despite some drawbacks, "How to write fast while writing well" is a useful tool. I first read it at my leisure, making notes in the margins as I read. After a while, I forgot about the book until I was racing to meet my weekly deadline for one of the publications I write for and was stumped, unorganized and directionless. I took a quick look at the notes I had made in the margin of the text and found help. Particularly helpful was the advice on writing well via an outline. Not that I am a novice or never graduated from the high school/college requirements of using an outline to write, but actually using an outline for a feature article -- at least at times - does speed the writing process. Other chapters are also helpful.
Considering this, I am somewhat surprised at the lack of reviews for this book. No matter -- it is a useful tool that sits on my desk that I use --particularly-- in a pinch.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on organizing your writing, February 29, 2008

By	Reading & Writing 24/7 (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews

What a lifesaver this book is. I'm a professional nonfiction writer, and write average of one 20,000 word article a month. After being at it for 25 years, about six months ago I hit a wall. All my processes unraveled --I was writing without plan, endlessly rewriting one sentence at a time, etc. What should take 40 hours of work started taking 80. I finally went to Amazon to look for a primer on organization that could take me back to basics and help me figure out where I went off track. I couldn't find anything that looked appropriate, and finally thought to go to into my own 4,000 volume library. I found this book, How to Write Fast While Writing Well by David Fryxell, which I now remember buying years ago when teaching a writing class. It's a perfect presentation of the tasks and tools of writing. From how to get organized to how to put it all together, it's letting me see what steps I lost from my own processes. And it's written in a style that is a pleasure to read, full of the methods of other successful writers and examples from the author's own successful writing career. Of all the books I buy, this is the first in several years I've taken the time to review. It's not the only good book I've read, of course, but this book really is helping get my life's work back on track. I'm sorry to see it's apparently out of print. It's really timeless advice.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Would Timing Your Writing Sessions Help?, October 19, 2000

By	[e-mail] (Topeka, Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews

This paperback edition of a 1992 guide suggests that writing more quickly requires you to be organized, solve problems early on, and cultivate your creativity. In support of the laudable -- but somewhat impractical -- goal of writing everything quickly, the author provides examples throughout his book of well-known writers and their working styles. He suggests that you need to (and can) figure out exactly what you're going to write before you sit down to write, so that you won't have to revise or edit your own work (at all!). For writers like Fryxell, who must be firing on all cylinders at once, crossing that finish line can't happen quickly enough. Although the rest of us may aspire to achieve his level of productivity, we often have to just plod along instead. Still, implementing some of his suggestions, such as becoming more self-disciplined and avoiding time wasters like over-researching and endless interviewing, might speed up even the slowest (i.e., the most meticulous and perfectionistic) of writers. At the very least, it cannot hurt us to try to set and work toward our own such standards.