Writing Methods & Madness (7 Different Ways of Writing)

City of Words litho by Vito Acconci

Writing, of course, isn't just one thing. (What is these days?) The bad news is you have to be pretty good at all of them. The good news is that you have at least 7 different ways of moving forward with your project:

  1. OUTLINE/RE-OUTLINE - A great way to plan your project and/or get perspective, especially if you've been slinging words down in the trees, is to take an overview look at the forest. Try to take a bird's eye view, noting major landmarks, and think about the big picture.
  2. MAKE NOTES - These are seeds for your trees. They could be bullet points to expand later, details about characters, lines of dialog or specific moments in your story. But not vague philosophical thoughts about the project.
  3. EXPAND NOTES INTO ROUGH DRAFTS - Pick one of your notes or bullet points and expand it. Think of it as getting your seeds to sprout. Of course they'll be weak and helpless at first, but if you keep sending them love they might grow into mighty oaks.
  4. REWRITE - Turn your rough draft into an acceptable first draft, or punch up your acceptable draft into something special. Of course, rewriting can easily turn into re-arranging deck chairs so be careful. Often best done in short bursts when it's harder to delude yourself.
  5. TRANSCRIBE - This is sort of the 'chop wood' of writing, usually done to avoid 'real writing'. Includes transcribing 'relevant' material from recorded performances or longhand journals. Do try to restrict yourself to directly relevant material or you're likely to get a blister. You can always come back for other stuff that might be relevant to another project.
  6. TRAWL - I guess that makes this the 'carry water' of the writing process - when you go back through previously-written material for stuff that can become part of the current project. This almost never works, except as a way of avoiding real writing, because material written for one context usually doesn't work in another context. But, hey, it's your bucket.
  7. TALK - Yes, talking can be writing. You can do it on the phone with a friend (keep a pen and paper handy, please, and write down anything good you say, just the way you said it). You can also do it onstage in public or in our writing & performance workshop, where Beth and I can listen and write down lines for you.

For an inspired rap about more ways to write, listen to Beth's audio blog.

The image, by the way, is a lithograph by a great artist named Vito Acconci, whose gallery sound installation I once had the pleasure of installing. Unfortunately, I also worked at the gallery and had to listen to it all day every day for a month.

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