The 4-Hour Article Experimental Workshop Asks: Can you produce a draft manuscript in a short period of time with ease (or at least with less stress than deadline-driven binge writing?)

For most of us, we spend far less time drafting an article for publication than we spend on preparing to write or on revising and polishing what we have written.

Truly, we spend far less time with fingers to the keyboard generating a draft of article than we spend on the early stages of gathering data, analyzing and interpreting evidence, reading relevant literature, or pondering of how best to arrange thoughts on the page for readers.

The early stages of the writing process can take weeks and sometimes months or years—depending on our projects. Likewise, the iterative stage of revision and polishing a draft can take

If you’ve ever put off writing a paper to the last minute and cranked out a version under the duress of an impending deadline, you know you can produce a lot of text in a short period of time. But who like duress or the queasiness of post-binge-writing sessions? There is an easier way.

CSU Writes offers “Write at Speed” workshops most semesters to help writer generate text regularly and with greater ease so that the writer can focus more effort on the polishing and revising of their work.

This fall semester’s experimental workshop on the 4-Hour Article Draft workshop is designed to for writers to practice “writing at speed” to generate the draft of a manuscript. Participants have committed to attending two 2-hour drafting sessions through which they produce a draft of 2500-3000 word article. As with all high-quality research and scholarly writing, most of the hours the workshop writers put into their articles will happen in the preparation (pre-workshop) and revision (post-workshop) stages.

CSU Writes checks in via email to provide tips and asks for feedback about what’s working and what’s not. CSU Writes has asked participants to share their insights and experiences to continue improving the workshop over time. We are grateful to be part of such a dynamic and generous writing community. Look for future article drafting sessions in Spring 2023!