If you surf for advice on book writing, you’ll find consultants who promise to teach you how to write a nonfiction book in a month, or even a weekend. I don’t have any idea how you would write 50,000 publishable words in a weekend or a month.

Writing a book takes a long time, and every writer thirsts for ways to produce the same quality while writing faster. I personally do several things that, over time, can cut hours from the job—though they don’t produce miracles.

Three practices are my favorites. The first is “70% drafting.” By that I mean stopping short of perfecting your first draft. Why? Because, as Tony Hillerman, the southwestern U.S. novelist, notes with his First Chapter rule: "Don’t spend much time on it. You’re going to have to rewrite it.”

If you strive for perfection, you’re going to tinker over details for too many hours. You will probably surf the web, struggle over minor course corrections, drift into dithering. Author and writing teacher Anne Lamott advocates “shitty first drafts.”

The second practice is giving priority in first drafts to accuracy, not creativity. Early drafting is the time to make your logic or story clear. Focus on saying the right thing, instead of saying it the right way, and you’ll get through your draft faster. With clarity of thought later, your creativity of expression will often follow.

The third is to use placeholders. Journalists, once they get going with a draft, often insert a “TK” in the text—“too come”—when they need a small fact but don’t want to stop to dig it up. They can come back letter, when they come to a natural pause, to fill in the gaps.

If you follow just these three rules, you will keep the chariot of composition rolling without getting your wheels mired in in-process editing.

We all like to get it just right the first time. But when you’re writing a book, you can rarely do so. The mountain of information you face, the twists and turns you have to negotiate in mastering that mountain—they make it too hard.

And there’s a hazard in trying: You get so familiar with your work during the tinkering—so stale—that you don’t have the perspective to come back and edit it with a fresh set of eyes. A lack of freshness will hurt your second and third drafts. Better to retain a “beginner’s mind” for effective editing.

[Revised January 2020. Originally published February 27, 2013]