The dream of speed — that is, productivity — that is, of getting more things done in a day — is at conflict with great writing.

It is at conflict with creativity.

The express purpose is not to be prolific, although that is not a bad thing. The express purpose is to be clear. Concise. And compelling.

Take the effort behind creating microcopy. You might have 50 pieces of micro copy to write. In sum you might have 50 hours of work ahead of you: the initial draft, the revision, and the testing of each piece. An hour each.

Seem excessive? That’s the price for clarity and brevity.

Or take the writing of fascination bullets. On one hand, says Makepeace, the astonishing tips are easy to write. Writing the common-sense tips, on the other hand, is “an art form demanding a great eye, well-developed skill, and tremendous creativity.”

Mel Martin, a legendary fascination writer, had the eye, skill, and creativity to write the best ones. Yet he agonized for months over a single sales letter.

That’s the price for persuasion.

There are places to write fast … your rough draft, repurposed content, and social media being three of them. Emails yet another. Mass market books, yet another. All largely commodities. Perfect for speed.

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It took me six hours in six days to write this post. It’s less than 430 words. That’s about 1.2 words per minute. Is there something wrong with me?

And that’s not counting the time I spent thinking about this article.

As of late it’s fashionable to write hell for leather. In fact, there’s a hot cottage industry in the writing culture. For lack of better terms, let’s’ call it the “The Hell-For-Leather Writing Movement.”

Or HFLWM.

You see it in titles like “How to Write Fast,” “Write an Article in 20 Minutes,” and “How Fast Can You Write?” But it gets empirical with 5 Personal Writing Metrics Every Content Marketer Should Track by Nate Baker at Raven.

The genesis of his metrics is interesting: Baker noticed that he walked faster and longer as he tracked his miles with a FitBit. He then postulated: “If I track my writing, perhaps I’ll write faster and more often.”

His month-long experiment confirmed as much.

First blush and this is charming stuff. Speed up your writing production and you could write two articles a day instead of one … you could write two novels during November instead of one. Who wouldn’t want that?

Win for HFLWM.

After further reflection, though, you have to wonder: is this even a reasonable goal for a writer?

There is a temptation to say “yes” because of research like this: exceptional individual contributors set stretch goals and adopt high standards for themselves.

But we’ll address this research in a minute. Let’s deal with the problems behind Baker’s idea.

First off, it’s not even fair to compare walking to writing. They are two completely different activities. Walking is pretty basic. Step, stride, balance, repeat. Writing, on the other hand, is not.

If you want to compare a physical activity with writing best use ballet or boxing. Both require years of training for brief moments in the spotlight. Both are deemed art. It would be irresponsible to do either “faster.”

Don’t get me wrong: there is a place for writing fast. It’s located in your rough draft.

Or when you have more work than time. Writing more articles a day is just one stretch goal you could set, yet is that even a legitimate higher standard? Quantity of words?

Better yet: Is it clear? Concise? Compelling? Of course that takes time.

If procrastination is the issue, then set a deadline. And improve your typing speed. That will the get rough draft down on paper faster.

Revision, however, will be time-consuming labor because creativity and efficiency are like water and oil. They do not mix.

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