today i wrote about kissing a worm (Patreon)

i dont even like worms
in fact as im doing research about worms or like on the wiki page for Worms i have to like actively try to not look at the pictures-- cover them with my hand or whatever-- because i find them so fucking gross
but here i am
doing normal things, i guess
2.4k.

--

last week, chase asked on our discord, more or less. "how do you write so fast?"

i wasn't really prepared to answer that question at the time
because, firstly, i would like to write faster still and don't exactly consider myself an expert on the matter yet,
but secondly because despite the above i do have a number of thoughts on the matter that certainly contribute to being able to write at the pace i am.... and they're not exactly "quick response on discord" material.

i've kind of been orbitting this point over the last handful of posts:
doing something fast is just a matter of doing it comfortably--
you will naturally reach a point of familiarity with a given discipline and then be doing it faster.
but if you are trying to learn to do something faster, what you are actually asking is how to learn how to learn. 

so the bad news is that's kind of too nebulous to give concrete writing advice on,
but the good news is that's an extremely applicable cross-disciplinary skill.
in fact, my core comment on the matter today actually comes from a youtube channel about how to learn visual art called VolenCK. his videos are thick and coarsely presented so i can't exactly recommend the channel, but he does have a lot of good ideas about art and the whole learning how to learn thing.

on the question of "how do you learn to draw fast", he espouses a natural breakdown of why an experienced artist is able to draw faster than a less experienced one.
i will paraphase.

at its core, it is a matrix of problem solving.
when you are doing art, or writing, or any kind of creative work, there are a thousand million little problems you have to solve.
it's easy to overestimate the scale of these problems. "how do you draw hands" is a common problem that many visual artists struggle with, but that's because "how to draw hands" is itself a whole tangle of other tiny problems like:

• what position should the fingers be in

• how do i draw a finger nail

• what shape is the palm

• how do i draw the web where the thumb connects

• how long are the knuckles

• how visible should the knuckles be from this angle

• do i even have the right angle

on top of technical problems like learning a program, compositional problems like muddying the line of flow, or standing out from the body in a clear way, what brush do you use, how do you add flat colors, how do you clean up line art, etcetcetc.

• so here are some examples of little writing problems in a similar breakdown:

• how do i start this fucking sentence

• how do i spell this word

• these sentences feel stale, what do i do about that

• how do i overcome writer's block

• i keep using this word, what's a synonym

• do i use the word "said" 80 times or trying to force a dynamic verb

• what's the fucking word i'm thinking of its on the tip of my tongue goddammit--

basically every single line you draw or write is just a compound web of choices and problems

an amateur learning or challenging themselves to do new things is naturally going to run up against these problems and have to figure out, for the first time (or first times) what the best way to solve them is.
meanwhile someone who has more experience already has familiarity with solving all of these hundreds microproblems and therefore does not have to stop to think about the solutions. they will probably, for all of their artistic journey, be learning new ways to tackle them, but they are going to have solutions they can fall back on in a split second or without even thinking of it, and they will thusly naturally proceed much faster than the amateur.

so this is almost tautological, right, but i think it helps to be able to, as someone learning a skill, or as someone who wants to do something faster, break the nebulous problem of "how 2 fast" into a handful of more solvable bite-sized issues.

once you begin looking for those microproblems-- things hanging you up that you don't even necessarily realize are problems-- then you can begin solving them.
and once you internalize your solutions, you'll notice an increase in speed naturally.