003 · Why Writing Is Hard, and the Trick to Making It Easier
Wily writers redefine "writing"...
We often use the verb to write as if it’s one action, but writing is a multi-stage process that includes daydreaming, thinking, collecting, deciding, polishing, and other tasks and sub-tasks. We might not be naturally awesome at every single stage of the process—nor must we be. Knowing and leveraging our starring roles in the multifaceted journey we call writing gives us strategic options for writing easier.
Some writers I know can’t spell. Some love to generate raw material or conceptualize a final product, but bog down in trying to organize their material. Some writers have epic battles with commas or debilitating love affairs with exclamation points. Others enjoy polishing final drafts, but have trouble deciding what topics to write about.
I’ve never met a writer who is aces at every sub-part of the writing process. I have met writers who know exactly which steps stump them and who’ve taken the time to figure out support around those steps.
If it takes a lot more effort to do something that doesn’t come naturally than to do something that’s automatically easy, why not make the most of that? You can reverse-engineer your writing experience to maximize your engagement on the stages you do best and minimize the rest.
Below is a list of steps in the writing process, simplified to help you zero in on where things might go wonky for you. Not all of the steps are required for every project or every writer, not all steps will occur exactly in the order presented for every writer or project, and each stage can be broken down into further sub-stages, some of which sub-stages you might like and some of which might repel you. Also, some steps will repeat in cycles. This is all perfectly fine and normal.
My goal here is to demonstrate a strategic perspective. You can use my list as a jumping off point to create a list of your own actual writing steps to work from.
As you read through the list below, note which steps give you any feelings of dread or avoidance, like Ugh! or If only I could skip that one. Those are the places to address to make your writing life easier. I’ve included a few examples for each stage.
The Writing Process
Come up with an idea of what to write about – Brainstorming, daydreaming, getting an class assignment, etc.
Record the initial inspiration – Get the ideas out of your head and into words you can work with, like into a spiral notebook, computer, or voice recorder.
Make some format decisions – Fiction, non-fiction? Novel, novella, short story? Poem, essay, blog post, letter?
Fumble toward organization – Identify themes, play with the order of the pieces, tune in to your voice, research the topic, etc. Use index cards or copy-and-paste or sticky notes or multiple printed versions or keep it all in your head. Experiment, circle back, respond.
Come up with a first draft – Even if it’s still super rough and unfinished.
Repeat the steps above, as needed, to get to a conceptually gelled draft – Read through the whole, cut or add. Set the draft aside for a while then come back to it with fresh vision. Get to a point of enough satisfaction you’re ready to move on.
Move into tighter editing stages – With the whole conceptually in order, shift focus to increasing the clarity of what you’ve written and removing reading impediments. Evaluate sections, chapters, paragraphs, explanations, scenes that are not pertinent for the final version. Then examine sentences and so on, down to spelling, punctuation, and basic formatting.
Get feedback and revise – If you want feedback, pick someone you trust to give you the type of feedback you need (for example: “I want you to be kind, evaluate my themes, and give me pointers to strengthen the main characters”).
Format the project for delivery – Publish it (ebook, print, bound report, audio), hand it in (class assignments, articles), mail it (letter, college admission essay).
Let it go – I consider this a discrete step in the writing process. Accept that what you’ve written will have a life of its own out in the world. Whether here or at a different writing stage, the grief of separation may make an appearance.
Notify your audience that your work is available – Send the announcement, organize the launch party, manage the marketing.
Notice the results. What worked and what didn’t? Your conscious and subconscious decisions about how you managed the steps for your project will inform your future writing process.
What did you discover?
Maybe you stop being interested in writing once the concepts are clarified; after that, things get exponentially more difficult. Or maybe you only start being interested when all the paragraphs are in place and it’s time to polish. One of the steps could be a huge problem, or a few steps in a row may irk you. There are all sorts of variations.
The jackpot comes when you tailor solutions to ease your passage through the ugh bits. Exactly how you do this depends on which step you’re hacking, what types of solutions appeal to you, your willingness to experiment until you find something that works or to gain enough skills in that area to no longer dread it, and your willingness to ask for help. As you get better at learning to navigate your difficult steps, you’ll create long-term solutions and your writing confidence will grow.
Some of the most successful writers and book authors I know couldn’t do certain steps in the writing process if their life depended on it, but they persisted in figuring out how to minimize their involvement in those steps. And we still legitimately call them writers.
Finding help can be as simple as joining an appropriate writer’s group or arranging a trade with a writer friend who has skills you don’t have (you check their commas and they help you clarify your topics). There are endless ways to avoid troublesome steps altogether, many of which are free. The trick is to know which steps you honestly want to minimize or avoid. Start there.
The reward is more energy for the aspects of writing you love best.
Previously published on Grace Kerina website in 2022.
About the Photo | Welcome Back
Horseshoe Bay, British Columbia, Canada, 2011
In first few months of 2011, my life turned upside down. I’d spent the winter holiday season in Berlin with a friend’s family, reveling in snowy cold, outdoor Christmas markets, and the traditions of a culture and a family not my own.
After touching down back home on an island off the coast of British Columbia (BC) in early January, I packed up and flew to North Carolina for the strange and intense experience of ushering my mother into her death. Part of the strangeness was that it was not (at all) wholly unpleasant. I loved being her person there at the end of days.
My friend I’d gone to Berlin with, who I lived with in BC, flew down and we spend a couple of weeks in late March driving from North Carolina to Tulsa in Mom’s car, visiting my extended family members across the Deep South along the way. My friend and his childhood in Berlin and subsequent thirty years in western Canada, provided me with constant hilarity. Now he was the fish out of water, and I got to experience the culture of my own childhood through an alien’s lens. (To be fair, I’d always felt like an alien in the Deep South myself, but our early years in a place give us sensibilities we don’t always notice until someone from “away” points them out.)
At a rest stop somewhere in southern Arkansas, my friend got out of the air-conditioned car and stared at me over the hood, a scowl of horror on his face as the unfamiliar 80-plus-degree temperature and ridiculous humidity—in March—assaulted him. “People Iive here?” He waited for my answer, as if he couldn’t believe it himself and needed a second opinion. I laughed, grateful for the relief of humor.
We flew back to BC in mid-April. Jet-lagged and weary, emotionally and physically, I snapped the photo above at the Horseshoe Bay ferry dock while we waited for the first of two ferries to take us home to Gabriola Island after a very long day of flying across the country. That moment, that photo, encapsulated my transition from the overwhelming, sticky, heated, heartfelt exertions of the previous months down South, back to the coastal mountains, evergreens, frigid seawater, ferries, and crystalline air of the southwestern edges of British Columbia.
The months of my mother dying were hard and rewarding. The trick to getting grounded afterward was arriving back in the calm, cool seascape of home.