Do you wish you had a process to guide your writing efforts?
An effective writing process gets you in front of the keyboard, consistently.
But it’s about more than a checklist of the different stages in the writing process.
It’s about accepting that early writing will be disastrous.
It’s understanding that great writing is involves constant pruning, revisions, and rethinking.
And this way of working doesn’t only help you to write more, it helps you to write better.
It’s all thanks to a process approach to writing.
And, here I’m sharing simple, practical strategies you can put into practice right away.
What Exactly is a Process Approach to Writing?
Before we go any further, I want you to think about this question:
How do you get from ideation to the final, polished piece?
Do you have a reliable strategy, a set of habits that gets the work done for you?
Or, maybe you’re like me a few years ago.
Back then, I used to push myself to write an article in a single session. More than that, there was no set game plan for writing. I’d get into it when I had enough time and inspiration.
I didn’t know it then but this haphazard approach was stunting my growth as a writer.
That’s because I was too focused on the final product. I didn’t allow my thoughts or ideas to marinate. My energy was devoted to the outcome, at expense of the process.
It turns out this strategy is similar to one approach to teaching writing called the product approach.
Here is how this writing research paper puts it:
“Using the product approach, students are normally told to write an essay imitating a given pattern. The objective and the focus of such writing approach is on the written product rather than on how the student should approach or see the process of writing.”
When applied to our writing efforts, it’s easy to see where we begin to falter.
We become so fixated with producing what we think good writing should look like. We forget to the study the process so we can properly create that kind of writing ourselves.
Here’s how you start taking a process approach to writing.
Forget About the Outcome
When writing, it’s so easy to get caught up in the end product.
That might be editing as you go or rushing through grammar checks on a first draft.
In The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, Seth Godin writes we’re obsessed with outcomes.
And often we don’t enjoy the process:
More than that, we overlook the role processes play in great outcomes.
“Lost in this obsession with outcomes is the truth that outcomes are the result of process. Good processes, repeated over time, lead to good outcomes more often that lazy processes do.”
Here is what the research said about a process approach to writing:
“Nunan (1991) clearly states that the process approach focuses on the steps involved in creating a piece of work and the process writing allows for the fact that no text can be perfect, but that a writer will get closer to perfection by producing, reflecting on, discussing and reworking successive drafts of a text.”
Here are the common steps in a writing process include:
- Prewriting: topic selection, brainstorm ideas, and consider your audience
- Research: list sources and perform research
- Writing: drafting and reading
- Rewriting: revising your work
- Editing: proofreading
A writing product is about destination.
A writing process, like most things in life, is about the journey.
Write Before You Know What You Want to Say
Not long ago, I started writing an article about landing assignments on internet job boards. The more I wrote and edited, I realized the real story was how to find an online writing job you love. In the end, securing writing assignments from internet job boards became a paragraph.
This is an extreme example. But the point is your finished article might look very different from what you planned to write about.
Sometimes, you don’t even need a concrete idea before you write.
Having a clear point is important. But, it’s not always possible right at the start.
Often writing can dislodge this point or create new thoughts.
Here is what the Writing Center had to say about how the writing process shapes our ideas:
“As we’ve all experienced, our ideas do not necessarily arise in a linear form. We may have a scattering of related ideas, a hunch that something feels true, or some other sense that an idea is “right” before we have worked out the details.
“It is often through the act of writing that we begin to create the logical relationships that develop the idea into something that someone else may receive and perhaps find interesting.”
Neil Haave, an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, takes it one step further, suggesting that the act of writing fires off new ideas:
“The act of manipulating the thought vehicles (sentences) is a way of manipulating our thinking by integrating different ideas—it produces thinking: Writing is thinking. Thus writing is not just about enhancing memory and recording thoughts… when writing sentences, creating new sentences and moving the contained phrases and container sentences around in new structures, the writer is actively thinking, bringing ideas together in new ways that illuminate each other in a manner unknown until that moment.”
Don’t put pressure on yourself to begin with a fully formed game plan.
Often, that will meet you along the way.
You have the freedom to make ridiculous statements and absurd connections during your draft. This is a safe space for you to write about silly ideas that make zero sense. The hardest part about it might just be moving out of your own way.
Two methods to try:
- Freewriting: write non-stop for 10 minutes
- Mind mapping: put your main idea in the centre of your page, adding the connecting ideas
Trust the Process
Writing is a frustrating business.
We’re sitting alone, trying to get the words in our head onto the page. More than that, we want to make the words matter. Not just to us but to some imagined reader we can’t see and touch.
But a process helps you realise that the words do eventually come. And they’re the right words and the right time.
We feel gloriously capable…until we sit down to write again.
We can avoid needless suffering if we change our approach.
Instead of chasing the product, we can follow the process.
Image credit: Photo by Matthew Henry from Burst
