How Do You Write + Weird Old Tips

[John Brindle]

A brief discussion on Twitter has ascertained that a comparison of our individual writing methods and regimens might be of interest to posters and of use to lurkers. 

Writing is harder than it looks or sounds, I think. The experience of writing can be one of heart-clawing existential dread. And people deal with that in different ways! Several of you are obsessive re-drafters. Others vomit forth everything you can in one go. Japanese teenager Naoki Higashida wrote an autism memoir by making an alphabet grid and pointing at each letter in turn with his finger. There are probably as many different methods of writing as there are individuals on Earth. But what's yours?

The way I write:

My method is: I set things up and then I knock them down in one go.

Most articles I write start off either as a pitch paragraph (by necessity coherent) or as a bundle of notes like this: http://imgur.com/jIO8CY0

Then I take absolutely everything I know and want to say about the topic and plot it out in an obsessively detailed plan: 

https://twitter.com/john_brindle/status/306779148091801600/photo/1

or.... https://twitter.com/john_brindle/status/306779865506512896/photo/1

Then, sometimes a couple of days later, usually at least a couple hours of sleep later, I burn through the entire thing in one sitting, like smoking one extremely long cigarette. This process usually takes me right up to my deadline, and so there is rarely time to redraft. I adjust things as I go, occasionally skip back to alter things before I reach the end, and might do a quick check for any superfluous paragraphs if I'm up against a wordcount, but that's about it.

Even if I have time, though, I tend not to redraft very hard, as any problems in the original structure of the plan get worked out by necessity during the long burn. This can lead to me getting stuck halfway through writing the article, where I realise that there's a big structural hole in my plan and spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to fix it before I move on to the next part, but that's just how it goes.

This method started in high school when I had a massive history dissertation to hand in. I'd done all the research and planning but I only had one day to write the entire thing. I compiled everything I had into a computer document, ordered it all as a plan, and then just went SHWWEEEOOOOWWWWW through the entire thing. Ever since then I've found that I write easiest and best when I can just hammer something, get into a 'zone' and go for hours without stopping - and so my writing process now centres around giving me the tools and preparation to do just that. My writing process also includes stocking up on snacks and energy drinks. In this manner I wrote my 8,000 word MA thesis on the financial base for local journalism in the course of about two days - after a week-long cloud of research and note-taking.

Beat-em-up/Cart-racer-style character breakdown:

SPEED: Medium

ORGANISATION: High
COHERENCE: High

STRESS: High

REDRAFTS: Low

ERRORS: High

[Ethan Gach]

I thought I'd add this hear but would be more than happy to spin it off into a different thread.

Michael Agger at Slate wrote (a couple years ago) about the speed and output of essayists like Christopher Hitchens and William F. Buckley.

The anecdotes include, "Christopher Hitchens composing a Slate column in 20 minutes —after a chemo session, after a "full" dinner party, late on a Sunday night," and "'Buclkey would force himself to write 250 words per 15 minutes. Now, if at the end of 15 minutes he hadn't reached one of those little marks on his page, he would write faster.' Buckley himself was a legend of speed—writing a complete book review in crosstown cabs and the like."

That's not to say that any of this work they procuded was necessary good or anything. I'm more interested in how trying to write fast can help block out extraneous junk or attempts to filter too much. I assume a lot of us work better under strict and fast approaching deadlines than when left to our own devices with a wealth of time (though perhaps not).

He also touches on some research about how writing environments, multitasking, and the cognitive stuff that happens when many people write.

I know that personally, the Internet and especially twitter and RSS feeds have had a big effect on how my thinking about a topic gets structured. I'll come to a concept, insight or point I want to make through a bread crumb like trail of links, tweets, and other blog posts. That's not to say that interviewing, editing, and extra research don't follow, but that I wonder if the writing isn't restricted in some way because of inudated the entire process is with secondary sources and commentary.

On the form/style side of things, I've been thinking a lot recently about those writers who did most of their work on typwriters. Then there are stories about people like Ray Bradbury and Jonathan Franzen retyping entire works by Henry James or Herman Melville in order to get a particular style, or inhabit something they thought was special in those works.

Then there's the fact that on a typewriter you need to literally go through and retype everything for new drafts. Maddy mentioned that she usually rereads an entire piece at least 4-6 times before submitting to an editor. But I wonder if the physical act of tryping the entire thing would change how we edit, whether the rhythm would come out differently, or different places to pause and stop would present themselves.

And for how many of you does the ease of capturing copy lead to a lot of left over junk that if it actually had to be rewritten/retyped several times would have been trashed long ago--i.e. how much more chop-chop would the prose be?

Show trimmed content

 

[Cara Ellison]

I think I am unusual, as I've heard people on here before barely comprehend anyone who might not 'draft'.

Here is how things work for me:

I think and think and think and think. I write the whole article in my brain, just in my head, and I plot out subjects, topics I want to touch on in the ether. I discuss them with other people as much as I can. When my brain is absolutely bursting full of the words, when I get The Fear that I won't be able to remember it all and all the ideas I could possibly discuss and the gags I've thought of and the dumb outlandish structure of it all, I sit down to transmit it to a Gdoc before I lose it forever.

Then it spills out of me like cheap wine, all over my keyboard. The first paragraph has to be a punch to the face, something that will absolutely assault you and then grab you by the scruff of your neck and eat you whole, and then I run and run and run until the thing is finished.

Sometimes I hit a hard spot in the middle, think a while, sometimes get something alcoholic. But it's just running.

The end paragraph is an exhausted look back at everything I ran through, and an elated cross over the finish line, and it's usually 3am. I tweak it to remove it of some edges the commenters will hate. And then I send it straight to John before its existence can injure me or he can stop me publishing it. (I hate everything I write with an intense passion about 2 days after it is published.) I try to never look at it again.

[Ethan Gach]

John, I find I'm very similar.

 

Especially when it comes to more feature/reportage type writing, I usually have each paragraph mapped out ahead of time, so that the logical order is there from the start, with research to be filled in where it makes sense.

 

Of course, when trying to take a narrative approach, I find it almost impossible to plan ahead of time. I just write from one paragraph to the next and then go back at the end to see if there isn't a cleaner way to hit all the same beats.

[Nate Andrews]

My initial drafts usually run long and sloppy; I take a lot of time to gather any and all pieces, facts, thoughts, etc. that I've encountered during the process of mentally assembling the article, then sort those into somewhat logical chunks (which may get reworded, moved around, or excised entirely, depending on how I feel it reads later). The rest of my time is spent doing multiple close readings, often sentence by sentence, to compact, clarify, and find the right rhythm. What I end up with is basically a more concise, whittled down version of the absolute mess of thoughts I start with.

[Cara Ellison]

See that is the difference between me and everyone else: I publish the huge, sprawling thought process and then somehow still get paid for it?

Sometimes I read RPS and PC Gamer and think, wow. They let me put words in this? This is embarrassing for them. I hope it carries on happening though because I am fairly poor right now

[Maddy Myers]

Cara, I don't think you're unusual. That's more or less what I do. I spend a long, long time thinking before I write. Merlin Mann once mentioned on his podcast Back to Work that he also writes like this (lots and lots of thinking beforehand), and that some other writers do, although I can't remember who he mentioned. I spend so much time thinking about the piece that by the time I sit down to write, I already know everything I'm going to say.

Before I spend all the time thinking, I tend to jot down a paragraph or two with the basic idea so I don't forget about the piece entirely. I often have many ideas percolating at once. I put these paragraphs in my email account under "Drafts". This is so that I always have the idea concept with me everywhere I go, across multiple computers. (I realize there is probably an app for this, like, say, Dropbox? But my weird "Drafts" system works for me.) I can go in and look at the idea or add more "Drafts" for myself later on if I have more ideas. That's how outlining happens for me.

I used to write entire pieces in my "Drafts" of email, too, but these days I'm more likely to use 750words.com because it tells me how much I'm writing as I go. Once I'm done, I immediately go back and re-read, usually more than once, before copying and pasting out of 750words and into Microsoft Word. Then I reread it a bunch more ... then format it according to wherever I'm going to post it, and send it to an editor or I post it on the blog in question. I usually re-read until I find myself making almost no changes at all. Then it's time. I can never re-read without making at least one change, though, because I'm finicky and like moving words around and obsessing about it. So, really, I just know it's "done" when I'm not rewriting huge sections anymore. It's never perfect, only good enough.

So, I spend a lot of time thinking before I write, and a lot of time editing after I write. The actual writing bit takes me very little time, strangely. Maybe an hour, maybe a few hours, depending on how long the piece is, but it's usually not bad. It just feels like the hardest part.

[Javy]

I don't think that's unusual, actually. I've got three drafts for various pieces floating around in my head right now, slowly taking shape. I usually write them down on paper when I'm afraid I'm going to lose details, but our methods sound pretty much the same in that regard (including the "Ugh, I don't want to look at this thing. BURN IT" post-submission phase).

As far as writing quirks go, I do try and make it a point to go somewhere else besides my home office when I'm heavily drafting a piece. It's fine for me to be cozy and have a beer or cup of coffee nearby when I'm editing my piece, grading, or looking over a piece for somebody else. However, when I actually want to write down those details or begin to organize them, I usually take refuge in the Sbucks down the street or in my office at school. There's a level of discomfort I need to have while writing those first drafts.

On Wednesday, February 27, 2013 10:31:26 AM UTC-5, Cara Ellison wrote:

[Brian Taylor]

I don't.

[Nick Capozzoli]

My approach is pretty flexible. If a piece clicks in my brain and I get fired up, I can put together something legible in just a few minutes. That's a really rare occasion, though. I don't have much in the way of deadlines right now, beyond a monthly review or the odd submission to put out. There's a lot of room for me to stretch out my legs, so to speak, and I tend to take it all.

I like to have a lot of irons in the fire. I get bored of any one piece after a little time, so it helps to have a variety of other drafts to jump to. As a consequence, they all come about more slowly, but I'm working on getting a nice drip feed of published articles going.

I usually start writing once I've built just enough in my head to form a strong paragraph, then tack on random thoughts or sentence ideas as they come over the next few days. When I re-approach the draft, try to assemble it all in a natural cadence from beginning to end - I try to make doubly sure each idea presented flows naturally into the next; full stops between points bother me a lot, for some reason.

I like to use the conclusion for my most salient point, whether it's a unifying theme, or just a turn-of-phrase that I'm particularly proud of (here's an example that I'm quite fond of). If I can't quite make it work, I'll usually shelve the piece until I have some kind of revelatory moment about it. I think I really like to define my writing through a strong closer, and I'll rework a lot of the rest of my drafts solely to get to that particular end.

[Bryant Francis]

It depends. For work stuff, I go onto a whiteboard and brainstorm all the thoughts I have around whatever it is I'm writing about, then try to harness that energy as I sit down and go through the concept. It winds up feeling like trekking through a jungle, trying to hit specific checkpoints as I make my way through the piece. Sometimes they become questions that I need to research and find the answers to.

For personal critiques/essays, it's a very different approach. I usually have a thousand ideas spinning around in my head, but they're similarly united around a single premise. In this case, the premise is so strong, I know where to go and how to explain everything I want to explain, and just charge right through it. It's a lot faster, and to put it bluntly, feels like I'm just shooting ideas out onto the page and for some reason it actually works.

The former often feels more conducive to subjects I have to research, like previews or analysis on game industry news, and the latter feels like explaining what I already know, like talking about a game I just finished or a film I just watched, and citing evidence is slightly easier since much of it is already stored in my head. This isn't just talking about the game or work of media. I usually wind up citing other works, theories, references, and binding multiple elements together of concepts I already understand. 

I like the latter a lot more, but through the former, I wind up learning and understanding more about things I thought I knew about, but wind up getting a bigger picture of a subject matter. 

[psepho]

Another really interesting thread -- I'm glad I found out about this group.

I have a weird perspective on this. In my professional legal work I do a ton of different types of writing that are all characterised by a very different functional goals: so a 400 word article for the legal press needs to be really concise and informative while also selling my point of view on the issue and most importantly making me seem smart. In contrast advice for a client needs to focus their mind on key decisions/issues while also providing reassurance and support. Legal submissions need to persuade, first and foremost. Also, in all cases timing is usually very tight. So I guess my method in these kinds of writing is all about identifying essential points as quickly as possible and then dressing them in a way most appropriate to the function.

By contrast, writing about games is something I have started doing as a contrast to my professional work and as a way of developing intellectually outside of my very niche discipline. So although I hope I bring some transferable skills in a sense I want to avoid being to driven by function in my writing.

In so far as I have any traits yet in games writing (I've only written half a dozen things) I would say that I am always keen to start off from a personal reaction or thought of my own and then go from there in a rather impressionistic way until I find some ideas that seem more general. At that point, I seem to go back to the beginning and water down the personal starting point and impressionistic rambling to make it into an introduction or illustration for the more general points. I then try and find a way to finish it that isn't too abrupt. From a practical point of view, I mostly write on the train with my netbook -- which provides focus and healthy discomfort.

[M.H. Williams]

Like John, I sit down with a basic outline of the points I want to hit. Then I spend an entire day/night randomly filling in these points, deleting ones that aren't working, and adding new ones.

Then I get utterly disgusted with everything I've just written, save it in GDocs, and close the computer.  Then I go do something else: sleep, play my current game, drink.

I return 24 hours later to begin cutting and adding. Then I turn it in, still disgusted with how it looks.

Really, the only takeaway is I hate my writing and do it anyways.

On Wednesday, February 27, 2013 10:20:09 AM UTC-5, John Brindle wrote:

[TheGameCritique]

My personal method for writing is realizing I have a deadline the next day, sit down and hammer out a piece as fast as possible. Honestly, my best work is when I didn't have a clue where I was going to go with my piece until I had finished writing it, thinking about the next logical step as I was writing it. This method doesn't always work however. Other times I will do like many of you and thinking on a subject for a long time and mull it over in my mind, sometimes reciting thoughts out loud and edit lines that way long before I ever put a word to page. The problem is that I often lose those words before I can sit down and type them out. It's a hazard.

The biggest problem is coming up with ideas that I think are worthwhile writing about or have enough meat on them to get a post out of it. I've gotten really excited about an idea and started writing only to find about 200 words in that I've expressed it and have no where to go. Lately this has caused me to start a new method. I have a word document that is just a list of paragraphs, each describing a different post I want to write. It's basically a mini outline in 2-4 sentences and from there I can better judge if there's a enough content to actually get a post out of it.