Sometimes writing isn’t really writing
Sure, some people will tell you to just write, free write to your heart’s content, and then shape it later. That might work for some ideas, but most writing requires a bit more planning than just throwing up on the page.
To produce good writing I brainstorm, outline, source my material, write, then shape all of that into coherent paragraphs. Then, once I shape them, I can finally edit them into something resembling the English language.
Brainstorms
This is at least how I free-write. I just slap ideas down in my OneNote page for whatever particular idea I have and come back to them later to shape them into my piece.
Now that sounds obvious, but sometimes I try to just write freely into my document and it never ends well. Instead, I brainstorm into a OneNote page to better conceptualize what I am doing as notes and not the piece.
Outlines
I use outlines religiously. When I first started graduate school I scoffed at the idea. Why I was smart, certainly, I could carry an idea all the way through a paper.
Hardly.
Now I outline everything, and I get as detailed as possible. Down to individual sentence sources. Paragraphs get their own line and then sometimes each sentence. Paragraphs are the basic building block of every piece of writing — large or small — and must be treated as such. To that end, the most important part of my outline is good to clear topic sentences.
Source Material
I insert source material into each paragraph. When I do this, I try to keep them in the outline format with the quote or what have you right there and the full citation directly underneath it. Now, this is literally just copied and pasted from my notes. Often my notes consist of fairly robust sets of quotes and ideas from books and archival material that I’ve read.
For me, source material often comes from my archival research, and I an entire article about my tips, tricks, and methods is in order in the future.
When I get things where I want them, I start to shape them into paragraphs.
Finally — Writing!
Shaping!
Like I said above, after getting every piece of evidence where I want throughout my outlined narrative, I then return to the top and begin shaping those sources into coherent, mostly paraphrased paragraphs. (Or “‘Grafs” I’m told they’re sometimes called)
Some direct quotes have to stay, obviously, but I mostly paraphrase and then cite. The key here is to come up with good topic sentences to set my paragraphs up for success. I move citations to where they need to be in the footnotes.
This process is where I do the most “writing” when I’m typing out my thoughts from my notes and quotes and piecing them together into a coherent whole.
Then the most satisfying part of the process comes — turning these outlined paragraphs into real-deal paragraphs complete with indentation and proper spacing.
Editing
Finally, after all of that, I go through it with a fine tooth comb. I tend to edit twice. Once for the big picture and big ideas, potentially moving sentences and even entire paragraphs. And then again in copyedit mode, making sure I’ve dotted all of my i’s and crossed my t’s.
Often my process doesn’t even feel like actually “writing.” It feels like I’m more of a builder — taking constituent parts and piecing them together into a whole. It’s certainly not what I always envisioned writing to be like, but that’s okay, the end product is what matters. I suppose this is part of the beauty of living in the digital age, where sliding bits and pieces around is much easier.
But, like so many other processes, we all have to find what works best for us.
