Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash
For the last few days, I’ve been sharing thoughts on writing practice, a timed exercise of continuous writing without stopping to edit or cross out. I’ve mentioned that we can use writing practice for any phase of any project. It helps us silence the inner critic, uncover what we really want to say, enter a flow state, and improve our ability to translate the vision we have for our story into words on a page that create an engaging experience for the reader.
Writing practice is customizable to any storytelling task by altering the setting, tools, duration, topic, or how much force we exert to stay on topic. In addition to storytelling, I use it to draft these posts and feedback for writers, to think out loud and solve problems. I even use writing practice to figure out what I want to say in an important conversation.
Think of writing practice as a unit of work. We’re applying our attention to a topic and recording what arises, which we can read, analyze, and improve.
Well, isn’t that true of any method of writing? Yes, but the constraints of writing practice—time, topic, continuous writing, no revising—keep us focused on the task at hand and keep monkey mind from derailing us. When we set up our tools and start the timer, we begin, without stopping.
We get words on the page instead of thinking about what to say. We can’t edit thoughts after we think them in the same way we can edit our words, and writing practice lets us see a progression of thought from the beginning to the end. We follow our mind and learn what we gravitate toward and avoid and where we get stuck.
So how do we apply writing practice in different contexts? Here are four essential modes: exploring, planning, drafting, revising.
Exploring
This is what we do regularly to build our practice. For a musician, this is like playing scales, for a golfer, this is like the driving or putting range. Through our exploration we get to know our minds and uncover the essence of the story we want to tell.
When we explore, we strive to uncover concrete details of whatever we write about, but we allow the mind to wander where it wants to go. For this reason, an environment away from our usual work space can be fruitful. Pen and paper tend to work better than typing. Topics similar to the ones I shared in the day 4 post are great for exploration (e.g., I remember, I’m thinking of, one afternoon in February). Time can be expansive to enable us to go deep and build stamina, or we may choose shorter, more frequent sessions to gain multiple perspectives.
Planning
Planning is what we do when we’re developing our story idea. We know the essence of we want to say, and the planning phase helps us figure out how to say it and find the details we need in order to write a solid draft.
Writing practice in the form of lists is helpful at this stage. We know the questions we need to answer (e.g., what is the external environment like, who is the antagonist and what do they want, how does the final battle unfold), and these are out prompts. We use the practice to collect lots and lots of possibilities.
The list helps works great for this task because, in this context, our first thought is often the product of our short-term memory, a cliché or stereotype. While this can lead to insight, it’s akin to grabbing a random spoon that’s handy when what we really need is a whisk. It sort of works, but it’s not very effective, not the best tool for the job. The writing practice list helps us to exhaust the easy options and get down to the bottom of our mind. It’s easier to find a gem among tens of mediocre ideas than it is to land on the best choice on the first try.
I like to use giant sheets of paper for this, like a 25-by-30-inch easel pad. This enables me to see the whole field of options and make connections between them.
We don’t assess these options right away because we want to cast a wide net. The best practice is to let them rest for a day or so (but keep a notebook handy to record ideas that arise) and return to them with fresh eyes and mind.
Drafting
Drafting is what we do when we know what we want to say and how we’re going to say it. We have a solid plan, and we’re ready to write a draft of the story. Before we begin, we briefly refresh our memory of what we’re writing away from (earlier scenes) and toward (later scenes) and what we need to accomplish. This becomes our topic for the session. With that in mind, we dive in. These units will typically be a scene, if time is short, or a series of scenes if we have more time.
It helps to sit in the same place every time we draft, but this might be different from where you do your day job. You may have a special hat or jacket you wear, or maybe a mug that you use only when drafting. All of these clues communicate that you are ready to begin.
Typing in this phase is great because you’re now drafting the story you will revise later. We still observe the rules of writing practice, but we stay focused as much as possible on the scene that’s in front of us. Ideas about other parts of the story may arise. We get those down and find a place for them at the end of our session. And if we come across something we haven’t figured out yet (e.g., the correct word to describe an engine part, the city where the protagonist meet her ex, how the detective uncovers a vital clue), we type TK (a letter combination that is uncommon, and therefor easy to search for), and keep moving. Stopping would enable monkey mind a way to enter. Instead, in another session, you’ll search for your TKs and add them to your list of tasks.
Revising
Once we have a complete draft of the story, we let it rest for days or weeks, and then we first read then analyze the story. When we analyze, we’ll uncover problems with the draft that we’ll need to solve. These problems (e.g., plot holes, inconsistencies, characters that need development, exposition that needs to be rewritten) are the topics for our revision writing. We begin with exploratory writing and direct our attention to identifying the problem and breaking it down to find its root cause. Reaching for the solution too quickly might not help us if we haven’t zeroed in on why it’s a problem. Once we have the problem and cause nailed down, we can create a list of possible solutions as we did in the planning phase. This will give us options to choose from so we find the right choice for our story.
Conclusion
The wonderful thing about writing practice is that you can adjust the constraints to suit you as a writer, your project, and the phase you’re in. I’ve offered some suggestions here, but I invite you to experiment and make it your own. Starting with exploratory writing in regular sessions will help you apply these techniques in other situations. If you follow the constraints and adapt them to your needs, writing practice will take you where you need to go.
This post is part of a 75-day writing challenge and experiment. From September 9 through November 22, I'll be posting daily thoughts on writing, storytelling, and creativity based on recent readings or reflections. While my intention was to keep them very short—250 to 400 words—I've found that this range doesn't give me enough space to cover these topics adequately. I aim to keep them brief enough to be read quickly, but they will typically be longer than 400 words.