I can write a lot without stopping, but the result is often bad (when I reread it on the next day with a clear head). But sometimes it's good. There's an important mystery in what determines that.
Here's maybe a datapoint. I often write song lyrics. When I do it at home, or walking in the street, the result is usually meh. But when I do it on the tram, it comes out much better. Why the difference? I don't know. Maybe there's a certain amount of noise, or motion, or something like that, that makes my mind better at writing lyrics. Maybe it's even a subtractive effect: it stops me from focusing too much on something, so I can better focus on something else. It's really hard to tell.
I'm a struggling beginner to this whole writing business, and I've been wondering how to measure my skill as it improves. There is an app called the most dangerous writing app, that deletes the words you've typed in it if you don't keep writing up to a specific amount of time, or for a specific amount of words. I thought it was pretty neat, and naturally I want to optimize it till it ceases to be a good metric. How long are my thoughts? How long do my thoughts remain clear and focused like a laser before diffracting into fuzzy ambiguous vague nonsense? Of course, the app only measures how long you can suppress the inner editor, but I think that's a pretty good proxy for writing skill at my level.
There's this older essay on thought lengths that I often find myself thinking of. The general notion being that some thoughts are quick, someone asks a question, and the answer is right there, top of mind. You already know your reply as they finish asking the question. Other thoughts take longer to think. Someone asks you a deeper question, and you have to think about it for a while. I think you could use the dangerous writing app for long word counts or periods of time only if you've already done a lot of thinking. Only if you've already got most of an idea figured out in your head can you immediately type it out. Or at least, that's how it seems to work for me. The dangerous writing app might be measuring something similar, if you set it higher and higher. Or maybe it's just stream-of-consciousness writing, which is usually a lot lower quality. I don't think this is as useful for experienced writers. Getting the right words is I suspect the harder problem than getting words of any kind out. Though perhaps it's always useful to have something to help suppress the inner editor for a while. It's certainly been useful for me.
Currently, when I set the app for 500 words, I run out of steam. As I write words my hands start typing ahead of my mind, and the distance between them grows. My mind stretches to fill the gap, and eventually fails and there is nothing to write. Then my words get deleted. I have to start smaller, set it to 100 words, and then I still feel the stretch of my hands typing out farther than I can think. But this time I can make it, I can make the 100 word deadline, I get to keep my words, and try to think about the next thought. I've started using it to write paragraphs, instead of trying to write a whole essay at once.
Developing my ability to babble is another way I think of it. In the babble and prune frame I certainly can prune better than I can babble. It makes it hard for me to accept the poor writing that I actually produce, instead of the ideal version in my head, but that's what practice is for. This problem is something that Alkjash noticed and wrote about then, and reading it years ago I realized I had the exact problem they described. Yet it took a while for me to do something about it. I eventually setup a beeminder to journal 250 words a day, and that helped me a little bit, but I didn't increase the number. Plus, journaling is quite a bit different than writing something intended for other people.
It would be cool if I started tracking this, try to gradually increase the word limit and see how far I can get with dedicated practice. Right now I can write 100 words on a topic without stopping. I suspect experienced writers could write for thousands of words before running out of steam, but maybe not. I really like how number of words written without stopping is an unbounded metric, the number can always increase!
It might not be the only metric of writing skill, but it is one that is pretty easy to measure. I intend to use it heavily to gauge my own babbling abilities, and maybe you can to.