Fast Typer, Fast writer?

Something I've known for a while is that I am a faster than average typist. I think it was tested at 60 WPS last time I went through an employment agency, but I'm capable of short bursts closer to 70 or so (provided I don't make typos.)

I chalk it up to learning how to really type during my later teenage years in Compuserve's chat rooms. In the early heydays of the Internet, back when chat rooms were the only thing to do (before the advent of FB, Farmville, and every flavor of MMO imaginable), they were remarkably crowded, and sometimes they'd be completely full and you couldn't even enter your favorite room.

As a result, if you wanted to maintain a conversation, you had to 1. read very fast and 2. type very fast. If you were a laggard, your conversation would end up scrolled up too fast for anyone to bother trying to chat with you.

Now I'm able to touch-type with the "floating" style, and I even use most of the appropriate fingers for hitting keys (right-hand pinky being a stark exception; it curls up when I type. I don't know why.) I also read fast, especially juicy fiction from a favorite author. I can knock out a paperback novel in a few uninterrupted hours.

But typing quickly is not the same thing as writing quickly, or so I thought. During the chat 'n challenges with the Divas, in 20 minutes I'm able to crank out 500-700 words, while others are only putting out 100-200. I think this is a reflection primarily of my typing speed. But it's also a reflection of my writing speed. I have the scene planned out in my mind well before I start writing it, even if I'm not sure of the specifics. And if something is terrible, I can always change it later. Some writers simply prefer to get it "right" on the first go round. So they write slower, but they have to do less revising later on.

There's no "proper" way to write, so long as the final result is high quality. But it's a bit of an ego boost to have high short term numerical output, at least!