Tackling the Writing Process
While it’s true we kept a relatively light posting schedule throughout the holidays (if by “we” you mean “Nate”), you may have noticed that my contribution to Blogstring has been sporadic lately. I attribute this to being rather busy managing CustomScoop’s new magazine, Media Bullseye, and the strain of the holidays–but I fear it may have more to do with my writing process spiraling downhill as I’ve grown somewhat busier at the day job.
At the recent SNCR Symposium in Boston I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Thornley, a whip-smart PR blogger out of Toronto. He mentioned reading my various blogs and asked after my writing process. My response was basically a befuddled, “my what now?”
Because really, I don’t have one. Writing has always been something that just clicked for me–I’d read or hear something interesting, think to myself “oooh, good blog topic!” and then just rattle off however many words flew out of my brain into my fingers on the subject and hit “publish,” usually with only a minor bit of editing. But as I’ve grown a bit more pressed for time lately, this “process” hasn’t been working out quite as well.
Instead, I’ve been seeing or hearing something interesting, thinking to myself “oooh, good blog topic!” and then rattling off maybe three or four paragraphs before something else more pressing has come up. And so, what happens to a post deferred? It never gets finished. I’ve yet to train myself to become the sort of writer who can begin something, and then return to it hours later (or worse, the next day) and pick up where I left off. It seems that if I can’t finish a post in one sitting, I won’t finish the post. I think this stems from my tendency in college to put off even the largest term paper until the night before it was due, and is the main reason my greatest fear in life is the thought of writing a book (shudder).
So obviously, if I ever want to publish anything again, I’ve got to rearrange my process. Hopefully the New Year will have me settling into my new responsibilities, and the lack of holiday commitments will no-doubt free up evening time for writing as well; but a change is still in order.
So I’ll throw it to you guys: what’s your writing process? I’m thinking what I’m going to have to do is just take the time to jot out a rough outline when I think of an idea. Even if it’s completely rudimentary, as long as it’s a complete thought I may be able to return to it when I have time and actually complete it. What are your thoughts and suggestions for someone like me?
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Hey, Sarah:
Even after 30 years at words, don’t know if I have the best answers, but when dealing with longer (than a page or two) copy, I tend to work like this: after discovery phase and research, I do have to organize preliminary content into some kind of outline in order to figure out the overarching structure of the piece (to me, as important as surrounding copy). If you have decent outlining software like OmniOutliner, then editing and moving chunks around is easy. Still, I look at an outline as a runway and never feel I have to stick slavishly to it if a better idea pops up along the way. It’s all about following your nose in the long run, but it’s good to have a roadmap just in case. /D
Sarah Wurrey…
The writing process that seems to have worked best for me throughout my short life has been waiting until the last possible minute and titanic amounts of coffee. Since that won’t get you much farther than college, though, I’ve re-worked my system.
I assume that being pulled in lots of directions is similar to my self-diagnosed ADD while writing. Consequently, I always write down the basics first thing: intro, body, conclusion. Nothing complicated, just the three things I would tell a friend if I only had three sentences to use. Write down the three things that make you so excited about the topic so when you come back to the post, you remember what it is you were so psyched about.
Maybe that’s an amateur idea…but it works for me! Well, that AND the titanic amounts of coffee. Good luck!
Thanks for the responses…I’m thinking outlining, even if it’s just three sentences, is definitely what I’ll be relying on as my mountain of available writing time continues to shrink.
Kait–I’m thinking of asking my doctor for a Dunkin i.v., I don’t think she’d go for it though.