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I fail to understand what the problem is. Since you've been working as a writer for 10 years, you can't be too slow, right?
> i do know that the speed at which i write changes from beginning to the end of the project. i am my absolute slowest in the beginning. i feel almost overwhelmed with all the possibilities, all the demands. i crawl. i space out. i think. i consider. i plod along. but then, wonderfully, usually half way into it, it's like suddenly i can see it. i see how it's all going to come together, i see beyond my nose and all the way down the street. the text to come is so obvious, it simply falls out of what i've already written. i speed up dramatically. at this point, it's almost giddying. and usually by this time, because i've "wasted" so much time in the beginning, the deadline for what i'm writing is almost impossibly before me and i barely get it in under the wire. and when the praise comes, i think, gee whiz, it could have been even better if i'd had just one more day!
>
Hey, that's how I work too! (I don't think it's being slow as such, just human nature to use up all of the time in a deadline). But if you're really worried and you're writing about hardware, one tip that works for me is to create detailed isometric illustrations of the equipment I'll be documenting first. By the time they're done, I grok the hardware and am ready to write about it. Plus there are time-savings that come from using pictures--instead of thousands of words--to depict concepts (and people tend to be fascinated by detailed illustrations so they pay more attention to the procedures).
>
> -diotima
>
> (also a slow reader, when it?s important)
Chris
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