One word a minute
This 2,800-word essay took me 45 hours to write. I wrote it from scratch five times, and only 10% of my words made the final cut. That comes out to an average pace of one word per minute; imagine typing a single word, taking a brief walk, and then coming back to type the next. Writing happens at an unbearably slow pace for a culture that’s glued to vertical feeds with split-second reward loops, but thinking takes time. Good thinking takes a lot of time and even more toil. Essay writing is a process I’ve grown to love, a process I believe is deeply human, and yet it’s a process that’s becoming endangered.
-- Michael Dean: Essay Writing as Personal Sovereignty