I write tech articles for my blog and for a news outlet here in my country (mostly in French).
I've been doing this for years, but I've always thought that I was slow in readying my stories. I am not talking about the 'seek-and-collect' information phase, but the actual writing of the article.
How long should it take to write e.g. a 1000-word article? How can I increase my efficiency and productivity during the desk hours?
As an ex-journalist my guideline is - just write it, two hours and done. Later try not to think too much about it, focus on the next story instead and come back. If you've got the time for it, review the text on the next day, correct the most obvious things and send it. Other way, if you spend too much time on it, you can pretty quickly get bored with writing at all, and you certainly don't want your job to be boring for you, right?
Your assumption about hours rather than days for the mechanical processes of writing (a feature article, for example) is probably correct.
I have "text entered" 1000 words in a day more than once. The proviso is that the work has been built and rebuilt in my head over several days (possibly weeks) before I commit to the keyboard. On those occasions when the work flows, it is almost as though I am transcribing a tale being told to me. I am not "writing" for those few hours because all that work has been done before.
On the other hand, there are days when I sit down to turn out my 700-800 word masterpiece and never get past 200 because something that worked fine when running around in my head reveals dreadful flaws when viewed on the screen or page. Some authors of how-to books advise that when that happens you simply keep typing as planned and do the fixing later. I always think that I would like to do that, but when the issue arises I stop and tinker.
As in most aspects of writing, the short answer to your question is "It depends on ..."
I write news stories about technology. This means that I have to be as quick as I can when reporting news. It's not very easy to keep up with such a pace and over the years I learned some 'tricks' on how to improve my efficiency.
A big part of this process is eliminating the distraction. So, when I sit to write, I close all the unnecessary tabs, especially those of GMail, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. I use a simple and minimal online text-editor called Draft to write.
I also found out that, the quicker I finish a piece, the better it is. If It takes me more than 2 - 3 hours to write a 1000-word story, for example, I would know that it will be rubbish. Because I just start to rewrite every phrase three or four times, trying to make it 'perfect'.
So I started setting deadlines (I use this Task Timer for Google Chrome. Not very fancy but it's all I need), which helped improve both my efficiency and the quality of my articles. Thinking fast about the 'what to say' instead of wasting a lot of time on 'how to say it' made my stories better.
Style DOES matter, but I always remind myself that I am not a poet and that the people who are reading my stuff are looking for information not for art. In this case, a good writing style has one mission : keep the readers reading the article and and make simple to understand. As the Facebook motto says : it's better done than perfect.
The best way to increase your efficiency and productivity is writing. I mean, you can read 1000 books on the matter and listen to 1000 advised but the only thing that will make you more productive is actually writing. Of course you will be able to sit and put some of that theory to work also, but is the practice that it matters.
In any case, what I use to do is. Think in the manuscript during the day, while I'm not writing and, when I start to write, I cease to think in the manuscript and focus in transcribing what I already thought to the paper.
And another thing. For me, it works really great to have a specific time of the day to write.
The post inspired me a lot. I write SEO articles in this sometimes takes several months just to get it going. Analyzing too much is not good compared to "just writing".
I actually just looked at draft which was mentioned earlier in this article and it is great :)
Sometimes the goal of a long article of 7.000 words can scare your actions. It is better to leave the analyzing and get something written on paper. When I changed this mindset on quickly began to create content. I wrote this article about cycling jerseys in just a few days - but I had the idea for several months.
So to answer the question it depends but if you want to be productive 1.000 words should not take more than 2 hours.
It takes me about three hours to "write" a 1,000-word article. But measuring just the writing time of an article of this size isn't helpful.
If you're writing for a professional journalism publication they'll likely want at least two original interviews for an article of this length. This fact alone can increase the time from hours to days.
Here's why:
Emails and calls to set up the interview: journalists do this more than anything else. Usually, interviewees are high-profile leaders in the public or private sector and it often takes a couple of days just to get them on the phone.
Interviews: These are about 20-30 minutes, but often require taking a little more time to plan questions in advance.
Transcription: This can be quick (writing as they talk) or it can take an hour if you need a word-for-word transcription.
Research: Many articles involve at least an hour or two of research to catch up on the topic.
Writing: And then finally writing, to piece everything together
Editing/Revision: This could be brief or be lengthy if it's a major revision.
