The case for slow writing

Most writing I see in business is fast writing. LinkedIn posts drafted in eight minutes. Sales emails sent in two. Decks built the night before the meeting. Memos written in the gap between calls. The output looks fine and reads fine and disappears within a week.

The writing that actually moves something forward looks different. It takes longer. Sometimes much longer. A 500-word client memo I'm proud of took four hours and three rewrites. The decks that close deals at Diagonal go through six versions before the first client meeting. The sales emails that get a reply on the first send took twenty minutes to draft, not two.

This is what slow writing means. Not slow as in lazy. Slow as in deliberate.

Why fast writing fails

Fast writing optimises for output. You write what comes to mind, ship it, move on. The problem is that what comes to mind is the same generic shape that came to everyone else's mind. Your LinkedIn post sounds like every other LinkedIn post. Your sales email sounds like every other sales email. The reader pattern-matches in two seconds and moves on.

Slow writing optimises for a specific outcome in a specific reader. You start by asking what the person needs to do or believe by the end. Then you work backwards. Then you cut everything that doesn't get them there.

This takes time because clarity is hard. You cannot fake it.

What slow writing actually is

Sitting with the brief is the first part. Before you write a word, you understand who's reading and why they should care. Most bad writing skips this step. Good writers spend more time here than on the actual draft. At PwC and Deloitte I saw senior partners spend two hours discussing the audience for a 12-slide deck before anyone touched a slide. Worth every minute.

Cutting more than you write is the second part. A first draft is usually 30 to 50 percent bloat. Filler phrases, throat-clearing intros, points that do not survive the second read. Slow writing means writing it long, then cutting hard. Sometimes you cut the opening paragraph you spent the most time on. That is the cost of admission.

Reading aloud is the third part. If a sentence sounds like a press release when you read it out, it is broken. The fix is rarely subtle. You rewrite the whole sentence. The ear catches things the eye glides past.

Why it is worth the time

Better writing converts better. Higher reply rates on cold emails. Decks that get shared inside the client's org without you in the room. Memos that do not need a follow-up call because the answer is on the page. We have closed seven-figure projects at my firm where the client told us afterwards that the proposal was the moment they made up their mind. That document took us two weeks. The version we could have shipped in two days would not have done the job.

Less rework also matters. The pages I write fast usually get rewritten anyway, often by me, after the meeting where they failed. The pages I write slowly stand. Net time is shorter for the slow version once you count the redo.

Then there is the compounding effect on voice. Every piece you put out shapes how people read the next one. Generic writing trains people to skim you. Specific writing trains them to read you. Over a year of consistent slow writing, the same person who used to scroll past your LinkedIn post now stops on it. That shift is worth more than any individual piece of content.

How to actually do it

These are the rules I use, in order:

Write the audience and the ask in one line at the top before you start. If you cannot do that, you are not ready to draft.

Write twice as much as you will keep. Cut on the second pass. Then cut again on the third.

Read every paragraph aloud. The ones that sound mechanical are mechanical. Rewrite them.

Bury no specifics. If you are tempted to write "many companies" or "studies show," stop. Find the actual number, the actual company, the actual study. If you cannot find one, your point is not ready to make.

Sleep on it for anything important. The writing you ship the morning after is almost always better than the writing you ship the same night.

A note on AI tools

AI writing tools draft fast. They do not draft well. The output reads like the prose they were trained on, which is mostly the generic business writing this whole essay is arguing against. If you want something that sounds like you, you have to write it. The tools can edit, suggest, fact-check, fix grammar. They cannot replace the slow, deliberate thinking that makes writing land.

I use these tools every day at Diagonal. I never let them write the first draft of anything that has my name on it.

The cost

Slow writing means writing less. You will publish two LinkedIn posts a month instead of ten. You will send fewer sales emails. The volume metrics will look worse.

The outcomes will not. The two posts will get more engagement than the ten generic ones combined. The fewer emails will get higher reply rates. You will spend roughly the same total time and get a better result.

The real reason to keep writing fast is that slow writing forces you to confront whether you actually have something to say. Most writing does not. Slow writing makes you face that. It is uncomfortable.

That is also why it works.