Writing a memoir is a big project, and for many first-time authors, one of the first struggles they face is determining exactly how long it should take to write. Many authors, especially when they feel compelled to write a memoir based on something that they have learned in their lives that could help others, want to get that book in readers’ hands as fast as humanly possible. There are many books and programs out there with flashy promises of finishing your book in a couple of months if not a couple of weeks. Other writers hear horror stories of projects stretching out forever and are determined not to let that be the case for their book. Writers will all move at different paces, but trying to rush through your book can actually slow you down, especially if you have high standards for your final manuscript. This week, we’re looking at ten reasons why you should take a breath and the time it takes to do it well rather than trying to rush through your writing process.
Product vs. Process
Many of our the writers we work with are feeling the pressure and the persistent urge to rush. It shows up across experience levels and project types, and it consistently undermines progress. Urgency actually pulls them out of the work and into self‑sabotage. Part of the difference is in how writers view process versus product. Process‑driven writers tend to give themselves room to explore, revise, and adapt. They stay engaged with the work itself. Product‑driven writers, by contrast, often attach their success to a specific outcome or date. Those deadlines may feel motivating, but they frequently erode the very process required to produce strong work. In most cases, the push toward a polished product is what slows the project down. When the pressure to “catch up” or “finish faster” kicks in, use these reminders to return to what matters: staying present in the process rather than racing toward an arbitrary finish line.
Creativity Suffers
The more we push ourselves into a productivity‑at‑all‑costs mindset—focused solely on getting words down and finishing the book—the harder it becomes to access the imaginative, intuitive thinking the work requires. Productivity pressure narrows our attention; creativity needs spaciousness.
Creativity needs room to explore, freedom to make unexpected connections, and a sense of psychological safety—all things that urgency undermines. When we punish ourselves for not moving fast enough, that freedom and safety disappears. The work becomes more difficult, ideas feel less accessible, and the project grows heavier with each forced step. In short, when urgency takes over, creativity dries up—and the writing process becomes exponentially harder.
Rushing will make the whole process slower
Sustained urgency pushes the body and mind into a prolonged state of strain. When we operate in that mode—driving ourselves to “get it done” at all costs—we eventually hit a point of exhaustion. At that stage, progress stops not because we chose to rest, but because we’re forced to. Breaks themselves are healthy; being driven into one by burnout is not. In many cases, a gentler pace would have allowed the work to continue steadily without interruption.
Even more heartbreaking is that a rushed draft sometimes becomes impossible to return to. We’ve seen writers push themselves through a manuscript so quickly that, when they finally step back, they can’t even bear to look at it. The quality isn’t where they hoped, the process felt punishing, and the project becomes emotionally heavy. Some writers set those drafts aside for years—sometimes a decade or more—because the combination of urgency and disappointment made continuing into next steps feel impossible.
Urgency narrows our capacity, increases the likelihood of burnout, and heightens the risk of disengagement. Pulling back from that pressure—releasing the artificial deadlines and returning to the work with presence—almost always leads to a steadier, more sustainable, and ultimately faster path forward.
Problem-solving takes time
Memoir writing is a cumulative learning process: with every chapter and even every paragraph, we’re asked to make decisions about structure, emphasis, pacing, and meaning. As we move through the draft, our ability to make those decisions improves, but as our skill grows, so does our awareness of the decisions that need to be made.
When we rush, we compress the very space that allows this growth to happen. Instead of pausing to evaluate options or consider the strongest narrative choice, we push forward simply to maintain speed. The result is predictable: we miss opportunities to refine our thinking, we overlook structural issues, and we bypass the deeper problem‑solving that strengthens a memoir from the inside out. By contrast, when we give ourselves room to learn as we go, the work improves more quickly. Rushing denies us access to the iterative learning that makes later chapters easier, not harder. Ultimately, skipping that developmental space leads to a lower‑quality manuscript and, ironically, a slower overall process.
Taking your time saves you money
An author we worked with noted that memoir writing is a perfect demonstration of a classic truism: in any project involving quality, speed, and price, you can only ever promise two. Memoir writing is no exception. When writers push for speed and quality simultaneously, cost is almost always the variable that expands.
We’ve worked with many authors who completed a rushed draft before seeking editorial support. In hindsight, several recognized that if they had slowed down—giving themselves time to absorb craft guidance and apply it as they wrote—many of the structural and developmental issues we later addressed might not have existed. Rushing often produces a draft that requires extensive editorial intervention, and first‑time authors are rarely equipped to revise those issues on their own. The result is higher editing bills, and in some cases, the need for partial or full ghostwriting to repair the manuscript.
By contrast, when writers remove artificial speed from the equation, they gain the space to integrate what they’re learning, make stronger decisions earlier, and produce a cleaner draft. That not only improves quality; it reduces the amount of professional support required later. Slowing down becomes both a creative advantage and a financial one—an investment in a more sustainable process and a more cost‑effective path to a strong final book.
Professional writers need to remind themselves of this, too! We may have professional deadlines and that creates another layer of urgency, but rushing can often hurt our bottom line even more than missing deadlines will. Not long ago I made the joke that we writers should “STET not STAT” which, admittedly, is a joke that is both incredibility nerdy and quite antiquated, since no one really uses those old-school, Latin-based copy-editing marks anymore. STET in editor speak means “let stand” or essentially “suggested revision not needed.” It’s a good reminder that pushing it out as fast as possible now often means more revisions later.
Writing is more than producing words
Writers who rush tend to overfill their schedules with writing sessions in an attempt to accelerate progress. While this approach may feel efficient, it overlooks one of the most valuable elements of memoir writing: the thinking that happens between sessions.
When we write a chapter a week—or even a chapter every two weeks—we’re not abandoning the project between writing periods. We’re living with it. The material stays active in our minds, and as we move through our daily lives, new insights surface. Memories shift in meaning, connections deepen, and our understanding of the story evolves. This reflective space is where much of the real memoir work happens.
Rushing eliminates that space entirely. When every available moment is devoted to producing more words, there is no room for the quiet cognitive work that strengthens the narrative. We lose the chance to sit with the material, to let experiences resonate, to discover the deeper layers that make memoir compelling. Slowing down isn’t just about pacing—it’s about preserving the mental and emotional conditions that allow the book to grow in depth and clarity.
Rushing undermines the readers’ experience
When we think about memoir, every decision ultimately comes back to the reader’s experience. Even as we encourage writers to stay true to their own voice and intentions, the work must still reflect care for the person on the other side of the page. When writers take the time to think, refine, and clarify, that care becomes visible in the finished book.
Rushing produces the opposite effect. When speed becomes the primary goal, the quality of the reader’s experience inevitably declines. Most of us instinctively know this as readers ourselves. If someone told us a memoir was written in six weeks, we might hesitate—because we understand how much depth, reflection, and craft memoir requires. A book that was pushed out quickly rarely inspires confidence.
What readers respond to is a book shaped with intention: one where the author allowed space for clarity, nuance, and genuine connection. That kind of book signals care. And care takes time.
Safety, Not Speed, Fuels Good Writing
Urgency shows up in memoir writing as a full‑body experience. The pressure to write builds when you’re resting, when you need to stop for the day, or when a chapter is throwing up problems that need attention. That sensation—I must move now—is not a creative impulse. It’s a survival response.
When urgency takes over, the body interprets the writing process as unsafe. Our system shifts out of openness and into protection. Memoir, however, requires the opposite. It requires emotional safety, freedom of expression, and the ability to think deeply about vulnerable material. None of that is accessible when we’re writing from a survival state.
Writers can still produce words under urgency, but the work rarely feels connected or authentic. Ask whether the situation will still feel urgent tomorrow. Remind yourself that books are not emergencies. (STET not STAT!) Then create the conditions your body needs to feel safe—slow your breathing, get comfortable, make tea, wrap yourself in something warm. The best writing comes from a regulated, grounded place, not from urgency.
Deferring Decisions Slows You Down
When we write in a rushed state, we inevitably encounter decisions, problems, and structural questions that require thoughtful consideration, but we don’t give ourselves the time to resolve them. Early in a memoir, writers can sometimes push through on momentum alone because the opening chapters are often clearer in their minds. But as the project progresses and fatigue sets in, keeping up that pace often means deferring decisions. We “hand‑wave” our way past problems with the intention of fixing them later.
The cumulative effect of this is a manuscript built on deferred decisions like a rickety scaffold of “maybes” and “insert transition later.” This is overwhelming in revision. Writers who took their time during drafting typically face far fewer structural repairs than those who rushed and postponed choices. Solving a problem in the moment, while the chapter is fresh and the intention is clear, takes far less time than returning months later to decipher what you meant, what you were trying to do, or where the logic broke down.
Rushing invites shortcuts
When writers feel behind or overwhelmed, the pull to use generative tools to “speed things up” becomes significantly stronger. Even writers who never intended to rely on AI often find themselves reaching for it when urgency becomes the driving force. Writers who started out with a temperate AI policy find themselves using it for longer and longer sections, partially addicted to how dang fast it can be.
But using AI to fill gaps rarely serves the work. In many cases, writers end up rewriting entire sections because the AI‑generated content flattens, generalizes, and takes out edges and uniqueness. Rushing creates the perfect conditions for compromise, and those compromises almost always cost more time and effort in the long run.
Urgency Closes the Door on Insight
Finally, when we are rushing to the finish line, the last thing we want is actually something crucial to all writers: feedback. When speed becomes the priority, writers avoid anything that requires them to pause. Feedback can come formally through coaching or informally through everyday conversations, but either way, it requires slowing down long enough to listen.
When we’re locked into urgency, that pause feels intolerable. We skip opportunities to gather outside perspectives, even though some of those perspectives could meaningfully strengthen the work. And because we don’t know what we’re missing, we lose access to insights that might have clarified structure, deepened meaning, or prevented larger issues later in the process.
Slowing down creates the space for feedback to do its job. It allows us to integrate what’s useful, discard what isn’t, and move forward with greater clarity. When we resist that pause, we cut ourselves off from one of the most powerful tools available to us as memoirists: the ability to see our story through someone else’s eyes.
PS. Searching the internet for writing, publishing, and book marketing advice can be exhausting to say the least! If you’re ready for hands on, one-on-one support for your memoir, check out The Memoir Method. We’d love to welcome you into this nine-month group program specially designed for women writing their first memoirs. And don’t forget, if you’d like to chat with Amanda about the program (or any other services we offer), you can book a free consult any time!
