Some questions for the veterans about writing speed

Hi, everybody.

I'm new to this industry. Not new to research and writing in a professional capacity, as I worked in market research for many years - but new to the extravagant volume of output needed to make a good living in academic writing. It's just basic math - you need high CPPs, high pages per hour, and pages. Lots of them. This is no secret.

I've read most of the worthwhile threads on this forum, and have repeatedly seen claims that one needs to be comfortable churning out 10-20 pages per day on a consistent basis. This seems to be the magic number.

While I am not at that point now, I think I have the potential. To that end, I have some questions and I would be greatly indebted to hear from members who have a long history in the industry.

I know I am asking a lot of questions. Feel free to respond to all or some; any information would be appreciated. :)

1. Were you able to consistently produce 10-20 pages per day when you first started writing academic papers? If yes, do you think it's a skill that can be taught, and what advice would you give? If no, how did you get faster? Did you learn to spot easier jobs, did you devise a "recipe" to follow, etc.?

2. Do you stick to fields you're trained in, or do you mercenary write anything a la Ed Dante? Why/why not?

3. It is obvious that any research time is time not spent writing, and therefore time when you're not making money. How do you minimize this effect? Again, do you write only in your field? Or do you develop the chops to research super efficiently? If the latter, do you have any specific advice?

4. What quality do you generally aim for? Are you consistently producing A papers because you're just that damn efficient? Or do you achieve your speed by setting the bar lower, aiming only for B/C papers?

Thanks in advance. I am really looking forward to the replies. Please don't flame me too much; I am seeking honest advice and hopefully I will be able to pay it forward some day.

Nope. When you start doing this for the first time, the idea of writing a 10-pg paper in a day seemed like a pretty big deal, just like it is for most students. In my opinion, if you have the writing skills, it's more about realizing what you can do and gaining confidence. On the other hand, if writing well isn't something that's a natural ability for you, it's going to be tough to improve your skills enough to do this for a living consistently and most days of your life.


No, I don't stick to just the 3 fields of my formal degrees (History, Psychology, Law); but no, I don't do what "Ed Dante" described doing either, because he just lied to clients telling them he had a degree in whatever subject they needed. When someone asks me about a Nursing or Philosophy project, I don't claim to have a Nursing or Philosophy degree the way Dante said he did. I just explain that I've done hundreds of assignments in each of those fields and that I'm very confident with it, if that's the case. There are many topics that I know more about today just from reading and being an informed person than I know about many areas of History (healthcare reform, housing bubble collapse, etc) and also just from having an interest in them (aviation, veterinary science, etc). The list of academic fields and subjects in which I routinely write A-quality essays is much longer than my short list of formal degrees, but I still err very much on the safe side and decline projects that I'm not confident about, but it really has nothing to do with what degrees I have. There are some topics within my formal degree areas that I wouldn't touch and many topics that are totally outside of those areas that I do all the time.


I don't do any research or studying that isn't specific to an actual pending project. When you do this for a living, you get pretty good at learning about stuff quickly and figuring out where to find what you need to know. At first, I relied more on all the books in my library and my father's that he left me, but there's obviously much more information available online. Basically, if it a subject area I'm comfortable writing about, I know how to find out whatever I need to know to do the project well.


I can't imagine "aiming" for less than an A-quality paper. In my experience, writing speed is not as related to quality as you seem to think it is. In fact, if anything, it's backwards from what you're assuming: usually, the easier the topic is for me the faster I write it and vice-versa. If there's a "trick" involved, it's not about learning how to write faster; it's about learning how to identify subjects and topics that are within your strongest areas and choosing those topics over others that you might be able to do if you had no choice but that will be more difficult to do well and that will take much longer.

Thanks for the excellent reply - you were definitely among the forum members whom I was hoping would answer.

Your last answer resonated with me the most. You're saying that speed and quality are directly related, not inversely, because when you know a topic very well (well enough to write an A paper), you're generally able to write faster. This makes a lot of sense. Also, it's very helpful to know that aiming for A quality is practical. Maybe it sounds strange to you, but to me, it's been a significant question whether this volume is doable at A quality or whether the successful ones are really the ones who've mastered the "stretch 2 paragraphs to 10 pages" strategy. Lord knows that would pass muster with a lot of clients and their instructors.

Right now, I think my biggest challenge aside from speed is "breaking in" to common but unfamiliar topics like nursing, organizational psychology, and maybe even some law. The best way I can think to do this is to try to snag undergraduate assignments that can be completed without much familiarity w/ the literature - and build off of that knowledge. It certainly sounds like you've managed to get your foot in the door to some unlikely fields.

I'm not as experienced as FreelanceWriter, not by a longshot, but I'll give you my thoughts.

1. Probably. I had to learn or re-learn citation styles and the like, and pick up a few techniques to fluff out the paragraphs the way an academic would -- starting out vague and working into something more specific over the course of several sentences. There is definitely a degree of natural ability involved. That's not to say that speed can't be increased, though.

2. If you try to stick with one or two areas, you won't be able to make a living. Anyone who is doing a large volume of this work is taking on projects from numerous fields. None of it is all that hard at undergraduate level, though I have gotten in over my head on some things, such as accounting papers. As FW said, you live and learn.

3. A lot of the magic is right here.

4. If you're good at this, the papers will just naturally come out at A level. Sometimes you may have to dumb it down at the customer's request. This takes longer than writing it the normal way.

I appreciate the reply. Love #3 ; )

Do you agree that 10-20 pages per day is the "golden standard" for which to aim?

I think the number-of-pages-per-day is a varying thing. As I am and ESL writer, my workload my differ from that of FWL or any other established NS.

Secondly, it also depends on your commitment to freelance work - whether you're doing it full time or part time.

Last, it also depends on the months of the year. Some months are busier than others; some are even plain peaceful. It is possible for a busy writer to do justice to even 40-50 pages a day in the essay industry's spring season.

But, to me the most important thing is the quality of work that matters and not the number of pages.

Basically yes, 10 to 20 pages is good. An average below 10 and you probably won't make a living. More than 20 and you may find life not worth living!

But you'll do better to think in terms of dollars and what price per page you can average. If you get some private clients you can get the standard of living you need with fewer pages. Or you can go all out and earn more. I happen to know for a fact that both Professor Verb and Freelance Writer drive late-model Chevy Tahoe's with 24-inch rims, custom fade paint, and supercharger kits.

Only because the Lambos are in the shop until next week.

Good point re: dollars. I definitely plan to take advantage of local clientele come fall; definitely a way to ease up on pages or just make it rain, like you noted.


Yowza. Certainly not a sustainable thing, I would imagine. This actually seems hard to believe.

On a related note, I came across this passage on freelanceessaywriters.com:


To those who said A-quality is the goal -- would you say this is a compatible point of view? Even when writing an A quality paper for someone else, would you say your mindset is much different than if you were working on your own assignment?

not it is not. that is a ridiculous statement.

Many writers on this forum have stated the same thing over and over. Mind spending a bit of your time using the search-box?

you are a pathetic hack if you're producing that much content in a day. i don't need a search box.

First, you don't know how to argue and be polite. Second, there are surely times when I have to write this much a day. I am sure other writers would agree to it. Why is it so hard for you to accept it? You live in Utopia.

By stating that you do not want to use the search box clearly tells me that you do not have the heart to confront reality; it also suggests that you're a stubborn person who is not convinced by rational arguments but by self-deception.

Exactly. I've never written more than 30 pages in any one day and couldn't even imagine writing even 20 pages per day consistently.

I know only one writer who has ever said he writes 20 pages on a daily basis but I would find that impossible to maintain. I've written 20+ pages in a day many times but I've only done that for more than 1 or 2 days at a time very rarely. It's draining and I need to recuperate afterwards. To keep up that kind of output, I imagine that you'd need to be very disciplined and lock yourself into regular 9-to-5 hours in your home office as though you were going out to work a regular job 5 days a week. I do whatever's necessary to meet all my deadlines, but I don't keep any "schedule" and I sleep and wake up and work when I want to, and usually, in my boxers with the TV or radio on.


I don't know anything about that particular company, but I totally disagree with that quoted statement. I only wish I wrote my own college papers as well as I've written the thousands I've written for other people. In my experience and opinion, nobody who does this for a full-time living would ever speak in terms of taking personal "ownership" of the work or of "deliberating over this word or that sentence" because the two concepts are largely unrelated. Wasting time deliberating over words and sentences is a function of inexperience as a writer, not level of concern or "ownership" of the work. Experienced writers don't have to do that, whether it's for their own work or a paying customer's. Only very inexperienced writers would find themselves ever having to make the conscious choice to be more careful or less careful about the words and sentences they use.

It's much more about the evolution of your writing process as you gain experience than about how much you care about or "own" a particular project. When you start doing this, there may be a very significant difference between your first draft and your final copy; and you may need to print out your writing, wait a day, and then read it from a fresh point of view to spot everything that needs to be fixed. When you've written thousands of essays and routinely bang out 10 pages in a sitting (or 15 pages in two sittings with a break in between), your first "draft" comes out around 95% as good as your most polished work. When an inexperienced writer edits and proofreads his work, he's finding and correcting major stuff; when I look over whatever I just wrote, I'm finding maybe one missing word or article or one or two typos here and there and maybe one sentence in the entire piece that needs to be rewritten because it starts out one way and ends differently or just repeats something earlier in the paragraph. The point is, my finished copy is just as good whether it's for me or for a paid project and it's only very inexperienced writers (who probably shouldn't be taking money for their work just yet) who ever have to make any kind of conscious decision about how good their writing or work is going to be to get them done.

shutup and stop ripping people off churning out sub-par content

True. Qualified writers produce exceptional content, regardless of time constraints. To me, writing is as natural as walking or breathing.

Freelance Writer

Thanks for the reply. Interesting to hear conflicting views - I understand what you're saying and I'll try to stay attuned to that evolution in my own writing. Although I have a lot of respect for anyone who can consistently write a first draft that quickly/well, I personally do see some merit in the opposing point of view. Ultimately, in a professional service industry like this, two things matter. Profit and customer satisfaction. If a customer cannot distinguish between a good and an excellent paper simply because he does not have the wherewithal to recognize true quality, it is perfectly sensible to trade some quality for time. In other words, the true quality of a product doesn't matter if the customer is satisfied in the end. You might argue that there is a third major factor - the professor's evaluation / the grade - and this is true to an extent since it might affect repeat business. However, for a writer like yourself, it is very likely that a 70 or 80% effort would earn an A. The standards just aren't that high.* So in my view, the goal is to do the bare minimum needed to ensure repeat business and referrals. Depending on the skill of the writer, that may or may not be his best effort.

That may sound a bit cold and capitalistic, but business is business to me. Sure, I want my customers to be satisfied, but ultimately it's only because I stand to profit. (To not sound like a total dick, let me at least qualify this by saying I do get pleasure from a job well done and pleasing others. I'm just trying to leave emotion out of the equation for now.) ;)

And I understand - or at least think I understand - that you're not necessarily saying you put everything you've got into every paper, just that you've reached a level of mastery where it's not particularly draining to consistently and quickly output high quality works. Nevertheless, I think the debate is interesting and relevant.

You might be interested in reading other articles on the site. Whether or not you agree with the author, it's a pretty solid resource in what's generally a sea of mud. freelanceessaywriters.com

*EDIT: maybe not usually, but often. And many times you know which institution the student is at, which can be a pretty good clue.

I don't think you understand my main point: namely, that your premise equating quality and writing time is flawed (except for very inexperienced writers who probably shoudn't be taking money for their work quite yet unless they charge a lot less than the most experienced writers). For me, the actual writing is usually the easiest part of every project (even the hardest/longest ones) and everything I write comes out at the same quality once it's written. If a project takes longer than usual, that time is mostly spent on going through the materials and/or learning whatever I need to know about it to formulate my ideas. Once I start hitting the keys, my hardest jobs take no longer than my easiest and the relative quality of what you might consider my "first draft" is the same in both cases. Basically, what I'm trying to say is as long as you (meaning anybody, not necessarily, you) views the writing aspect of this as the challenge, you're not really capable of doing this for a living quite yet.

Look at it like this sports analogy: If you play hockey at any serious level, the last thing you're ever thinking about or worrying about is your skating, because it's totally automatic and you always skate just as well and just as fast when you play great as when you stink up the ice. As long as you're concerned about how well you can skate backwards or turn and stop in both directions, you're not really playing hockey yet, but still learning how to skate well enough to play the game. The "writing" part of this job is very much like skating is to a hockey player.

Ah, OK. Yes, perhaps my use of the word "writing" was too imprecise. I did not intend to sharply distinguish between the research/planning process and the writing itself. My original post would have been better worded as "production speed" more broadly, rather than "writing speed." I do not think it particularly challenging to write 10-20 quality pages per day of creative works, other non-research-based material, or even familiar research-based topics. I completely agree that the challenge is in the learning curve of the material - researching, ramping up, and outlining a cohesive piece is by far the most painful part of the process. Generally, I find that the paper writes itself once the outline is done.

I wasn't trying to equate writing time (in the narrow sense) with quality, although I admittedly was trying to equate overall production time (writing in the wider sense) with quality. I do understand why you're saying the inverse is often true. Not disputing that at all.

If you go back to my original post and read it in this context, perhaps you'll better understand my intentions. In fact, I'd say question #3 really encapsulates my struggle best. When I say I respect writers who can write first drafts very well, I'm not only talking about composition. I'm talking about individuals who can sit down with a low level of knowledge on a topic, ramp up, outline a well-organized paper, and write it all in enough time to keep the CPPs high. The writing itself (in the narrow sense) is only the last step, and is not my primary concern. Like I said, I find that papers tend to write themselves when a solid foundation is present.

I don't claim to be an amazing writer (in the narrow sense), but I think I'm decent enough. To use your analogy, I feel like my career so far has taken me to the minor leagues, but it is TBD whether I'll make it to the NHL.

So to summarize more precisely, what I'm really interested in are the lessons you can teach in terms of research and outlining.

My Internet research methods are very basic and I subscribe to a couple of databases. My topic range and knowledge base are already wide enough without branching very far out into areas I don't already know something about and I hate researching. A lot of time, the clients provide the research materials so I just have to go through them. I don't really make outlines; I just start with a few headings and subheadings based on the material and I make a little note reminding me roughly how long they're all supposed to be based on how long the paper is supposed to be. Sorry if that's less help than you were hoping for, but I'm probably a better skating instructor than a research and writing teacher.

No worries, not looking for anything extensive. It's helpful just to hear in broad terms what's worked for other people. Appreciate the insight, as always.

Students know this. Wikipidia is your only source.

What most students know is that it's spelled Wikipedia.

As usual, all of the first 20 posts in this thread are legitimate contributions to the discussion topic from forum members who present themselves honestly as writers and as company reps and who are all capable of having a civil conversation about their industry even though most of them are direct competitors. Also as usual, the only nonsense and unprovoked baseless attack against others comes from the one forum member here who dishonestly refers to himself as an "observer" instead of admitting to having an obvious financial reason for being here and an equally obvious reason to try to disparage competitors.

Here's the thread topic of conversation reposted below for your convenience. Instead of expressing your continual hatred for me simply because I can actually express real ideas in complete, grammatically correct sentences in the English language, why don't you just dazzle everybody here with your most articulate response to some of the questions posed by the OP?

Yes. I take couple Wikipedia articles, copy-paste in msword and rewrite sentences. Take 3-4 hours max to get 10-20 pages.

As long topic is on Wikipedia I can manage with no problem. Sometime there are strange character pasted but msowrd fix it for me by highlighting them.


My Internet research methods are very basic. Research is no problem - people that post in Wiki do research. I do re-writing.


I set bar low as possible coz I pay by word count. My computer memory buffer is always full from Wiki paragraphs. To get one page quickly, I copy few paragraphs and then rewrite them so it look not 100% plagiarized. It look 30-50% but I tell client it's plagiarism software problem or that I use many citations. Many believe this story but some do chargeback.

Wow. Those questions were from bluezinc1, but who slipped this guy the truth serum?

Definitely sounds like he knows in great deal how such a process would work ...

I think this is why clients are in two minds about paying in advance!

Stu, what is your writing company and rate per word that you stick to only wiki ?

BrighterWriter, he wasn't actually admitting to relying on Wikipedia; he was clumsily trying to accuse me of doing that (as usual), but he's just too dopey to figure out how to communicate that clearly. Don't expect any kind of answer from Stu about his company, either. You see, while you and I and most others on this forum openly admit to being here because we're either customers or writers or writing company reps, Stu pretends to be some kind of objective "observer" who doesn't have any direct financial interest in being here in the first place. His habit, as I pointed out above, is to invade any thread on any topic of discussion including those in which I haven't even posted) to launch his totally unprovoked attacks against me while ignoring the actual topic of any semi-intelligent conversation in the thread. He's continually trying his best to convince readers that all I do is "rewrite" Wiki articles because that's about the only way he can hope to "compete" against any writers whose posts on this forum demonstrate (at the very least) that we can actually communicate in grammatically correct English. His mantra is that customers shouldn't use American writers like me who can actually speak and write in good English because good academic essay writing requires much more than just communicating in good English. Of course, that's a straw-man argument because nobody's ever suggested that writing good English is the only skill an academic writer needs. He's (previously admitted that he's) never seen a single thing I've ever written about anything beyond my forum posts, but he continually spouts off about how "poor" my research skills must be. Meanwhile, he's never demonstrated any of his own supposedly fantastic research skills either, but he's hoping some customers might really be dopey enough to believe that the worse his English is the better his research skills must be just because he's not an American. His ridiculous premise is that every ESL writer must, necessarily, be a better researcher than every American writer, as though it somehow follows logically that being unable to put together even the shortest sentence in correct English is some sort of "evidence" that he's some fantastic researcher because he can barely communicate in written English.

I've also received word that at least one of them has been spotted at Finish Line buying Nike LeBron X PS Elite+ basketball shoes, not on sale. Certain of them are also known to maintain extensive collections of vintage Air Jordans.

En ENL writer who is used to the high page writing capacity of college and masters level papers will find it easy to churn out more than 20 pages per day. An ENL writer who is not used to writing at a high volume because he also outsourced his work during his college years, and is now trying to write for a living will find it difficult to produce even 5 pages per day. A 3rd world writer, will be starting himself off at 1 amateur paper per day. Yes, it is a skill that can be developed over time, if you are not at the ENL-College level writing skill yet. You just get faster over time, without noticing it, because you get used to the types of papers formats required and you learn how to access research information without needing to go through every Google sourced page. Yes, you will learn to spot easy jobs and go for it. There is no recipe to follow. Constant writing will develop your skills without your noticing it.

If a writer begins his career with a writing company, it is the company that will determine the number of pages you will be writing for a client. They normally start out their new writers with single page high school level papers, increasing the word count and field exposure as time progresses. You normally have to complete several papers at a certain quality rate before you can move on to the next level, with increased page numbers. That process cannot be rushed for writers who do not actually have a writing background. It will also depend upon the English proficiency of the writer. The better he writes in English, the more pages he can produce for a client.