How do you write long (1000-2500) word articles?

I got the good advice here from a few posters that I should write a few long articles to start getting ranked and it's a process that could take around 3 months for a new site.

I wrote my first article, which is 1200 words. I need to do a bit of editing still. But it sure was boring and took maybe 3 or 4 hours. Only thing I have on my side, is that many years ago, I went to college for a useless major I never used which involved a lot of writing.

Anyway, how do you write articles that don't sound like they were written by a 5th grader or someone who isn't fluent in English, look unique enough for search engines and don't take more than 4 hours?

My method on my first and only article so far was:

1. google the topic and find 4 or 5 articles related to the topic.
   
2. read articles
3. form a general idea of what i want to "write" or make an outline
4. copy and paste various sentences or groups or 2 or 3 sentences from all of the articles into a word doc.
5. rearrange, delete, edit the wording, and add a sentence here and there all of my own. make sure I am making the wording of every sentence a little different, by changing the structure and/or using synonyms.
   
6. review/edit for key words and phrases

All of the above is mainly for search engines. My site is not a blog. The articles will be mainly to get people to the site and move them to other content like JavaScript tools or shorter content pages.