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How do you write longer replies?

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Icey!:
I notice that there are a lot of people in this forum that are able to make really long and wordy replies to basic questions in a short amount of time, for me it would take about an hour to make a 2 minute read when someone else could do the same in a quarter of the time.

I mean, do you know how much sleep I am losing from trying to make topics in the middle of the night? I enjoy making these but I don't feel the amount of time I spend writing these is really worth it. Could you give me some pointers? Thanks.

As of currently I spent about 30 minutes writing this. (estimate)

Guest:
I honestly just put down a stream of consciousness, kind of as if I was talking to someone in real life verbally.

Things I want to say just come into my mind as I type, and then I literally talk to myself as I am typing as if I was having an actual verbal conversation on this thread to get the phrasing right in real time. Typing takes just a bit longer than talking for me, because I am doing the same thing, just with my hands instead of my mouth.

I feel like short form social media has kind of destroyed our ability to express ourselves socially with words. It's all short, poignant opinions and one liners nowadays.

My only advice is: try to write with the same mental muscles that you're also holding a conversation with in real life.

purelyconstructive:
Part of it is being able to get into a comfortable state for writing. I have written a lot of material over a long period of time, but I still have those moments where I might rewrite something simple hundreds of times until it sounds "ok" to me.

I also find that having a desire to share something that has been useful to me is always a strong motivator. If I can get through shorter replies, then I know that longer ones are possible too as they are simply more ideas chained together.

tarraxahum:
I think that's just because I'm an emotional and argumentative person. I'm also very talkative IRL. The kind of talkative that waves their hands around and speaks so fast half the audience can understand a thing. And then if I'm passionate about something I can also start yelling without noticing it. Some people perceive that as an attack, so I'm glad posts can't be heard.

In writing, that all translates into walls of text. I'm not exactly thinking what to say, it's like /home/user/ put it, a stream of consciousness. And that consciousness sometimes goes faster than I type and then adds thing on top of that, so I'm addind and adding and adding and suddenly whoops, that's a huge damn post.

To be fair these posts also sometimes take like an hour to write, but that's not 'cause I'm writing it slow, that's 'cause I'm writing a lot of stuff non-stop ahah.

Now, a mystery for me is people who write short messages precisely on point. Ask me to shorten some rant of mine to a hundred words and I'll spend hours sweating and suffering 'cause how can I throw something out when it all evidently helps to make my point clearer? :tongue:

(I've also been writing stories and things like that, quality nonwithstanding, ever since I learned to write at all, so that probably also plays a role).

Melooon:
If you have dyslexia or dyspraxia (I have both :grin:smile: or other similar learning difficulties - then I'd say this is actually quite normal. Im the sorta person who will spend 5 minutes on every text message and then the person Im talking to will reply in 30 seconds :omg:k:

Some people write very quickly and coherently, others do not! I need to revise and review my messages quite a few times before they make sense, and just turning thoughts into words takes a lot of extra effort. That said it has gotten better with practice as Iv gotten older, but its been a slow process :ohdear:

Regardless though, these are a few tips I use that could help:

* Something you can try is using a text-speech program to read your first draft back to you; I find that really helps me to know if my writing makes sense or not.
* On the flip side, a dictation app can be really helpful - you can speak your first draft, and then edit it as text.
* Avoid distractions like music when your writing, that just makes everything harder. (says while listening to the Inception soundtrack)
* Don't worry about making you text good on the first draft, write as fast as you can and then go back and make lots of edits and smaller rewrites

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