During my 20 years of coaching student and professional writers, I've come to believe that most problems boil down to three errors that all writers, including this one, can make:
- faulty template analysis
- head writing
- closing off feedback
Faulty Template Analysis
For virtually everything you can think of writing--including assignments you get from teachers in school--a template for it already exists: characteristics shared by other pieces of writing in that category. When a teacher gives an assignment, you can bet that the teacher has in mind the perfect response to it. In other words, she or he already has a template in mind.Some other examples of template types you probably know: a newspaper obituary, a thank-you note, a company's annual report, an incident report, a rejection letter, a Shakespearian love sonnet--you name it and there's a template for it. Producing a piece of writing that fully meets your audience's expectations requires that you know and employ a template's major features.
Does that sound artificial to you? Whatever happened to individual creativity?
In writing, don't confuse a template with a formula. Formulas are used to produce mass quantities of similar items, from Hallmark cards to prescription drugs.
Templates, on
the other hand, provide only a container, the same way that a wine
glass provides a pre-shaped container. What you pour in can be
wonderfully unique, just as Shakespeare produced some mighty fine
poetry using the rigid template of 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter
verse.
One of your first jobs as a writer is to envision and
then employ the accepted template for the type of writing your boss or
professor is expecting.
And if you still don't beleive me, just ask yourself this: Have you even gotten a poor grade because you "didn't follow directions"? That's teacher-speak for not giving back something written in the template the teacher had in mind.
Head Writing
The most common mistake in the drafting/composing stage is, head writing: the attempt to compose and edit a sentence or paragraph in your head before writing it down.
Ding dong, that's wrong.
During the process of creation, our mind and fingers should work as one to get down in rough form the thoughts racing through our minds. Our goal should be to initiate a flowing stream of thought and expression, to connect word and thought while recording it with our fingers.
Have you ever watched a sculptor work? Or a painter? During the initial creation stage, there is often a non-stop fluidity to their work, a sense that they become lost in the act of creation.
Like a sculptor's fingers or a painter's brush, our fingers and keyboard are our tools for creating. Like the sculptor and painter, we need a process that helps us lose ourselves in that moment of creation, when thoughts, feelings and words come together. Later, we can touch up (revising). Later, we can get out the sharp knife and, like a sculptor, shave away until the details are in sharp relief (editing/proofing).
But first must come creation.
"Speed writing" is my antidote to head writing. Speed writing is simply a way of inserting into the writing process a time when that sort of unfiltered creation can take place without some gray-haired grammarian sitting on your shoulder. How does speed writing work? Very simply:
When composing your first draft, after all your prewriting activities, set a specific timer. Start modestly with 2-3 minutes. Then you begin writing as fast as you can. Do not stop writing until the set period of time ends.
Other rules include:
- Do not interrupt the flow of words upon the screen, even
if it means typing things like "OK, I've run out of ideas, now I will
hit return twice and start a new section, let me think, what if I
called it . . . . " Or: "I can't remember the quote/fact I want to use
here so I'll just type in XXX . . . ."
- Your goal should be to get from the beginning of the
session to the end without stopping, no matter what short cuts you take
or how many XXX's you have to type in. Just get to the end.
- You must not stop to reread or edit what you've written until the speed session is over.
Some writers, including Stephen King, like to listen
to loud rock music. Some, including Ernest Hemingway, write standing
up. Some like the feel of a number two pencil, some love the sight of a
yellow legal pad. Some drink coffee, some drink that miracle of modern
marketing: bottled water.
Whatever. Suck on a pacifier, if you
want. Just start writing and don't stop. Don't edit. Don't second
guess. Don't evaluate. Don't do anything but listen to that little
voice inside your head and write down everything it says.
Failure to Get Feedback
The most common error in this stage is not soliciting feedback from
others before submitting a piece. The longer we spend on a piece of
writing, the more we lose our ability to be objective about it. In some
cases, we've looked at the writing so much that we have the sentences
memorized, which prevents us from seeing mechanical errors as we try to
proof them. As we read, we listen to the memorized sentence in our head
instead of actually seeing what's on the page.
Our choices are to leave the piece alone for a long time
so that it gets frosty and we regain our objectivity (rarely an option
in a world of school deadlines) or to get others to provide us
feedback. Successful writers rely on their favorite editors--be they
spouses, friends, colleagues or hired guns--to help them shape the
final product.
Why should you or I be any different?
Your Assignment:
In
this week's DB-1, compare your previous writing process to the model
process as outlined in this lecture and accompanying videos., What are
the essential differences? Have you made these mistakes? What has been the effect of these mistakes on your writing? What are you going to do about it?
Also remember that you must also comment on at least one of your colleagues posts to receive full credit for participating in this conference.