6 What Are Sound Writing Methods?
George was more than comfortable with his writing methods. For George, writing was like putting on his most comfortable shoes, sweater, and coat, picking out his best walking stick, and taking a leisurely stroll down his favorite paths. George had written so much over the years that he had gradually shaped his writing methods to the most felicitous contours. For George, nothing about writing felt stiff, awkward, or foreign. Everything George did as he wrote was instead integrated, organic, fruitful, and natural. When George heard or saw what some other writers did, their methods left George aghast. He no more would have adopted their methods than to cook with the fine wine while serving up the cheap swill. Fortunately, no one asked or required George to change his writing methods, as fine and productive of a writer as George was.
Methods
Never mind for a minute improving your writing. What about straightforward writing methods? Writers generally develop or fall into habitual methods, strategies, or simple approaches to writing. Writing is nothing if not methodical. No one snaps their fingers and suddenly has great written work. Writing proceeds by jot and tittle, a very little bit at a time. Producing a writing requires some form of diligent approach, following certain usual or unusual practices. One supposes that every writer has the writer’s own methods. If your methods work for you, then keep at it. Yet you may not be aware of other writing methods or approaches that you might find more fruitful or reliable than your own. This chapter explores some writing methods that you may already practice without realizing it, and might thus rely on more heavily once known, or that you don’t know and may wish to adopt.
Files
Most of us today write using digital means, specifically a keyboard, electronic files, and screens, perhaps supported by automated transcription of early rough drafts. The days of the parchment paper and quill pen, or even of the yellow pad and sharpened pencil, have largely passed. The ability to efficiently draft, store, retrieve, edit, share, and publish writings electronically has vastly eased, if not revolutionized, the writing craft. Thus, the first act in writing generally involves opening and naming an electronic file. A first tip for writing efficiently is to do so as soon as you receive a writing assignment or conceive of a writing project. Don’t let the least bit of procrastination creep in. Starting a writing project can be its most difficult stage. When you immediately open and name a file, you remove the first obstacle and create the first bit of momentum. You also instantly have a location to store any idea that pops into your head about what the writing should include. Don’t make the file name the writing’s title. Instead, for accessibility, name it the simplest, clearest, and most-obvious way that you think of the project, followed by its blog, article, chapter, or book form, as in Writer’s Blog, Writing Article, Editing Chapter, or Publishing Book. Then, record your thoughts and tasks related to that project in that file, not in a separate document or task list. You are then already well on your way to producing your writing.
Folders
Where you store your writings for frequent and easy retrieval also makes a difference to your productive writing. Most writing projects require returning frequently to the project, whether over hours, days, weeks, or even months in the case of a book project. Facilitating frequent retrieval removes another small impediment to more writing. Computers and their word-processing systems require that a writer store electronic files in electronic folders. Create and maintain a clear system of folders and subfolders to intelligently store and easily access your writings. For instance, put all writings for a certain client in a folder with that client’s name. If you write monthly batches of assignments, create a subfolder for each new month so that you can quickly get to the correct month of writing assignments. Make your writing folders accessible remotely, so that you can work on your writing projects from any wifi location. Anytime you discern a better folder organization, promptly execute it so that your writings are always in good order and accessible.
Templates
Most writers write new projects similar to some degree to their prior projects, whether, for instance, memoranda, briefs, bulletins, blogs, newsletters, articles, chapters, or whole books. An efficient method for writing another iteration of what you’ve just written is to save a template file. Template files can save you from having to start all over again reproducing the writing’s format and structure, including headers, footers, pagination, title block, contents page, headings, and subheadings. If, for instance, you write multiple articles that have the same or similar formatting conventions for the title, author, abstract or summary, headings, subheadings, text font choice and font size, block quote indentations, footnotes, headers, footers, and pagination, then take the most-recent article you’ve written, duplicate it under the title of an article template, and then delete everything but the small bits of text you need to remind you of the article’s structure. Do the same for blogs, newsletters, chapters, books, bulletins, memoranda, or anything else that you commonly write. If you write books, manuals, or other texts in different page sizes, from 8 1/2 x 11 down to 6 x 9 or 5 1/2 x 8, then save a template for each size. Then, when you have a new writing of that same kind with which to begin, simply duplicate the template file, giving the duplicate your new project’s name. You’ll save considerable time fiddling with the format.
Keying
Refining your keyboard skills can also speed and ease your writing. Your word-processing program likely has styles for titles, subtitles, headings, subheadings, and text. Learn to access the styles menu or use their keyboard commands to quickly insert the styles. Learn to use the cursor control keys and shortcuts to more easily move around within a document, page, or paragraph, or among words on a line. Every small efficiency in your keyboarding skills increases not only your speed and flow in writing and revising text but also your willingness to revise and improve what you already have on the screen. Learn to use a split screen or dual screens, and multiple tabs and windows, to more easily read and research while you simultaneously write and edit your project. Learn to adjust the screen size and magnification for your optimal reading and writing comfort as you work, so that you can work longer with less eye strain and effort. Reducing your physical and mental effort devoted to keying, cursor control, and screen monitoring can preserve, extend, and amplify your energy devoted to thinking, writing, and editing.
Titles
Published writings, including blogs, articles, chapters, and books, generally bear a title. When you open and name a new file to begin a new writing project, immediately give your new writing a title. Chances are good that you will soon revise the title, maybe several times before you finish and submit the writing for publication. But that’s the point of immediately titling your draft, to help you consider, reconsider, and consider yet again whether you have given it the best title, each time you open the file anew to continue your work on the writing. When you have a working title on your writing, you’d be surprised how often glancing at the working title afresh, each time you open the file, leads to instant ideas for improving the title. Thus, immediately give your new writing a title, even if you must force yourself to come up with something unoriginal or awkward. You’ll likely revise the title, probably several times, each time improving it. Published writings may also bear a subtitle. Books and articles tend to do so when a catchy title, although attention grabbing, can benefit from some explanation in a subtitle. Thus, an article titled Here’s to You! might benefit from the subtitle Tasty Toasts for Your Next Grand Party. Do the same for any book dedication or acknowledgments, immediately recording the first thing that comes to mind when you first open, title, and begin work on the new writing project. These small steps can have surprising benefits in getting you started.
Structuring
A writer’s next challenge is in structuring the writing. You may just launch into writing, especially if you have good ideas to get down before they disappear into the night. But generally, a writer needs a sense of the piece’s structure, in order to know where to begin with the writing and the direction in which to head. Blogs, articles, chapters, and books aren’t random collections of interesting thoughts. They are more like pointillist art, where every dot that you write gradually helps to form the piece’s whole image. Writers typically call this structuring process outlining. If you’re a skilled and eager outliner, then great. Get to work on it. Yet many of us have less confidence in our ability to precisely project where a written work is going, no less where it should end up. In that case, a good process can be to write into your titled but otherwise blank file, whatever few thoughts you have for blog or article headings and subheadings in whatever order seems at least somewhat probable. Do the same for a book, writing chapter headings and sections in the table of contents at the book file’s start. The point is not to sweat outlining. You are likely to have much better thoughts of the piece’s structure as you begin writing and continue to write. Your writing, in other words, should influence your outlining, just as your outlining influences your writing. Get quickly to work writing, with whatever spare outline your undeveloped thoughts can readily produce. Continue to modify your outline throughout your writing as better ideas arise, which they likely often will. Don’t hand wring and delay over outlining.
Research
Research, of course, is at the heart of many writing projects. The more you read, review, and research, the more thoughts and material you have for writing. If you hit a dry spell, that’s generally the signal that you need to refresh your thinking through additional research. This chapter focuses on writing methods, not research methods, which is the next chapter’s subject. The question here is how to efficiently work research into your writing. Consider simultaneous research and writing. Avoid feeling as if you must complete one-hundred percent of your research before writing your first word. If you do all your research first without writing anything, you’ll lose many good thoughts you had along the way. You’ll also have to locate again and reread whatever you first discovered and thought might be useful in your research. You end up duplicating and doubling your research efforts. Instead, the moment your research uncovers something useful, drop directly into your writing file the researched quote, citation, or summary that you think you may use, wherever in your writing file that you think it might fit in your sketchy structure. If you don’t have a location for it but know it’s important, then drop it into the writing’s end. Then, as you write gradually through your piece, you can work your research into the section where you’ve dropped it, where it should belong. When you run out of ideas, go to the research detritus at the end of your writing to process what you’ve dumped there, to work anything useful you discover into your developing piece. An organic, back-and-forth, research-and-write process may speed and improve your writing.
Flow
The organic research-and-write process just described above helps you get into the writing flow. The writer’s bane is to stare at the page or screen, without a thought to write. Call it writer’s block, or call it what you will, but a writer needs to be writing. Yes, thoughts are important, too. A writer needs to both think and write. Yet waiting for a fully formed thought to develop before attempting to record it on the screen or page isn’t the way that thinking and its expression work. Instead, thoughts form reciprocally with their expression. We don’t think of a full sentence and then speak or write it from our thought script. Instead, we begin to think and then begin to express our thought through writing or speaking, and then think about what we just began to write or speak, giving us the next thought to continue on with our writing or speaking. Writing a single sentence may take two, three, four laps or more, back and forth between thought and writing. So, to get into that magic flow of writing, writers need to encourage that reciprocal process of thought and its expression, spurring more thought and more of its expression. Researching and writing simultaneously, reciprocally, with writing stirring research and research stirring writing is simply an outward example of that writing flow that moves swiftly and endlessly back and forth between writing and thought.
Thoughts
Often, though, you’ll have more thoughts than you can quickly record in your writing. You may, for instance, want to labor over the construction of a sentence or, for another instance, may want to work out the rest of a paragraph, even though the next good thought has already popped into your head from that magical place deep in your soul where all good thoughts arise. As you grind through the careful scripting on the screen of what you want to write, in the best form you can write it, paying subtle attention to vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and grammar, your mind may generate brilliant next thoughts. Don’t lose the thoughts! If you put off the next brilliant thought, in order to finish your expert expression on the screen of your last good thought, you may well forget the new thought. Instead, as soon as that next good thought appears, hit enter for a paragraph break, write the word or few words that will remind you of the new thought, and then go back to carefully crafting the sentence or paragraph you were hoping to finish. Then, turn to processing on the screen the next great thought that you’ve recorded right there in the spot on the screen below which your cursor was laboring. You can further spur that synergetic reciprocity of thought and writing, and thus increase your writing flow, creativity, and output, with these instant, temporary notes, quickly processed into ongoing writing.
Intelligence
Writers, like so many other professionals, face the opportunity, challenge, and impact of artificial intelligence. You may, for instance, have AI applications do your writing for you. Doing so, however, may violate the terms of your employment or assignment. Do not use AI applications without disclosing that you have done so and ensuring that their use meets the terms of your employment or assignment. Writing firms and clients may use AI-detection software to discover its use, if you fraudulently deny its use or conveniently omit to disclose it. Don’t ruin your writing career. Unless your employer or client requests and encourages AI use, do your own writing rather than having a machine do it for you. Yet AI responses are increasingly unavoidable when doing quick browser searches. Those AI responses are often relatively shallow and only marginally helpful, and sometimes frankly inaccurate. But they can guide your thinking, as would any more-traditional web-browser search. You may even find those AI-supported browser responses helpful in generating quick lists, ideas, or hints for further investigation.
Schedule
You may read or hear that writers have their favorite times for writing, whether, for instance, early morning, mid day, evening, or late at night. Getting into a writing routine, and giving your day some structure, can certainly help increase your concentration and productivity. Not only do you begin to hold yourself to the schedule, but others in your household, office, or other location where you typically write may begin to recognize and respect your writing schedule. Other writers, though, write whenever the moment is available and whenever the energy and inspiration hit them. An hour here or there, or even five or ten minutes now and then, can quickly add up. You aren’t sleepy yet when everyone else in your household heads to bed? Then write for an hour or two. Woke up an hour or two earlier than usual, tossing in bed? Then write for that hour or two. Using whatever time you have, in whatever intervals are available, can keep a writing project fresh in mind and moving steadily forward.
Finishing
Finishing a writing project is also important, especially if you are writing assignments for an employer or clients, but even if you just want to have writings to publish. Of course, the writing assignment may come with its own deadline. Yet deadlines tend to stress and depress writers. For some writers, deadlines can even create a gnawing anxiety that itself slows mental processing. You may find it necessary to work backward from deadlines, in other words, to calendar each deadline and get to work on the project according to the timetable necessary to finish it by the deadline. Yet a better process can be to work forward from assignment rather than backward from deadline. When you receive a writing assignment or conceive a writing project, determine a reasonable daily writing goal of sections, pages, or words related to the assignment, while projecting when you would finish the project if adhering to that daily goal. Daily goals allow you to divide a bigger project into smaller parts, incentivizing you to complete the smaller parts. You can even divide your daily goal into morning, afternoon, and evening goals or hourly goals. Rewarding yourself with a break, short walk, snack, or refreshment for achieving each small goal further energizes, freshens, and speeds your writing. Avoid writing against deadlines, which produce only negative energy and no intermittent rewards. Instead, write from assignment or conception, within smaller intervals with frequent rewards.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how satisfied are you with your writing methods? How efficient, productive, and skilled do you feel that your writing methods make you at producing adequate quantities of higher-quality writing? Where do you lack skills? Do you have a colleague or acquaintance whom you regard as substantially more skilled with writing methods than you? If so, can you get some tips for writing methods from that individual? How do you name and where do you maintain your electronic writing files? Can you promptly locate each writing project, current or complete, in the folder system that you maintain? Are your writing files remotely accessible to you so that you can retrieve and work on them from any wifi location? Do you use templates for writing projects that you repeat? How advanced are your keyboard skills? Would a little investigation and training improve your writing ease and speed? Do you title each project as soon as you begin it, so that you can consider and revise your titles? Do you develop your writing projects’ structure organically, without obsessing over outlines? Do you research and write reciprocally rather than trying to finish all your research before you even begin to write? Do you have a way of promptly capturing thoughts as you write so that you do not lose them? Do you find yourself staring at the blank screen for longer periods, trying to formulate perfect thoughts? What is your writing schedule and routine? Are you taking due advantage of other writing intervals, when time becomes available? Do deadlines weigh you down? Can you write from each assignment rather than backward from the deadline?
Key Points
Improving your writing methods speeds and improves your writing.
Create and name a word-processing file for each new writing project.
Maintain writing files in well-organized, remotely accessible folders.
Create and use templates for writing projects you do more than once.
Improve your keyboard skills to ease and speed your writing.
Title any new project as soon as you begin it, revising frequently.
Develop a project’s structure organically without expecting perfection.
Research and write reciprocally rather than researching all at once.
Increase writing flow by capturing thoughts on the page as they occur.
Let artificial intelligence spur thought, not substitute for it.
Have a writing schedule, but use whatever time you have available.
Work from assignment, not deadline, with daily goals and rewards.