Lately, I've been writing a lot of things that are meant to be both persuasive and reasonably factual. In writing these things, I've gotten to thinking about how it is that I write them. Below, an outline of what is, for me, a pretty normal writing process.
1. Sit down and type. Spit something out. This step is normally in the form of a "once upon a time," a manifesto or something argumentative and strong, but kind of messy.
2. Take the result of step one. Ditch any extraneous bits and pieces like "once upon a time" or bits that are obviously self-reflective like "what am I writing?"
3. Take the result of step two. Go through it, isolating ideas. Make it look like poetry. More to the point, turn it into discrete units. This means that each individual idea or portion of an idea gets its own line. Eventually, the piece does indeed look a little like poetry, in that it has a whole series of things in short units lined up one after the other, organized by general topic in stanzas.
4. Take a step back. Figure out what the purpose of the piece is and, indeed, what its structure should look like. Draw up an outline reflecting that purpose and structure.
5. Look at the outline, look at the itemized piece of writing. Grab bits from the itemized piece and fit them into the appropriate places in the outline.
6. Once ideas are in place, read through the filled-in outline. Edit it aggressively.
7. Repeat step six again, as many times as needed until it feels finished, whatever that means.
1. Sit down and type. Spit something out. This step is normally in the form of a "once upon a time," a manifesto or something argumentative and strong, but kind of messy.
2. Take the result of step one. Ditch any extraneous bits and pieces like "once upon a time" or bits that are obviously self-reflective like "what am I writing?"
3. Take the result of step two. Go through it, isolating ideas. Make it look like poetry. More to the point, turn it into discrete units. This means that each individual idea or portion of an idea gets its own line. Eventually, the piece does indeed look a little like poetry, in that it has a whole series of things in short units lined up one after the other, organized by general topic in stanzas.
4. Take a step back. Figure out what the purpose of the piece is and, indeed, what its structure should look like. Draw up an outline reflecting that purpose and structure.
5. Look at the outline, look at the itemized piece of writing. Grab bits from the itemized piece and fit them into the appropriate places in the outline.
6. Once ideas are in place, read through the filled-in outline. Edit it aggressively.
7. Repeat step six again, as many times as needed until it feels finished, whatever that means.
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