Anne Janzer

Author

Process

The Key To Becoming a Better Writer

Process is reliableWant to be a better writer?

Inspiration is fickle. Talent is out of our control.

What’s left to us?

Our effort. Our actions. Those become our process.

Process is consistent and reliable. Process brings writing into the world.

What’s Your Writing Process?

That question surfaces in nearly every author interview: Tell us about your typical day. How do you write? What’s your writing process?

It’s as if we (the interviewer, the listener or reader) are waiting to hear some secret recipe that we might replicate.

It’s almost comforting when an author describes a schedule that we could not possible keep – waking early, retreating to a sun-filled office overlooking Central Park, watching the birds outside the window, and spending all day crafting a masterpiece.

Whew. We don’t have time for that. We live in the real world, and can be excused for not doing the same thing.

Process doesn’t have to be all-consuming or perfect. It only has to work for you, in the life you live today.

To become a better writer, follow a better process. 

You Already Have a Process – Can You Make It Better?

You already have a writing process, but it may not be serving you as well as it could.

Think carefully about how you write. Observe yourself:

  • How much time do you spend researching or outlining before drafting?
  • What happens if you skip those phases?
  • How does the work feel when it’s rushed? When you have a lot of time? Do you delay getting started, or work up until the last moment?
  • What does it feel like when the writing is fun and fluid? What did you do to get to this state?
  • How about those days it feels like pulling teeth? Did you do something different?
  • What do you do instead of writing, when you know you should be writing?

Start answering those questions, and your unique process will begin to emerge. You’ll spot the ways that you work best, and the times that you sabotage your efforts.

Invest In Your Own Process

Look at what you’re doing, and make sense of how you operate when writing, then find ways to make it better, or stick to what works.

Yes, I know, you’d rather spend the time actually writing than examining the way that you work. Perhaps you love the burst of creativity in drafting, but get bored with outlining and research.

The effort invested in understanding, tuning, and then following your best process pays off over the long run. Borrow some of the time you currently spend searching for the perfect word or brilliant post title, and try perfecting the way you work.

Polish the prose, and you have a better piece of written work.

Polish the process, and you become a better writer.

For the complete discussion of process, see the book The Writer’s Process.

Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors [Review]

Do great writers occupy a unique subspecies of the human race? Are their brains wired differently, or are they people who manage to work through the barriers that stump others?

In the course of working on my upcoming book on optimizing the writing process, I discovered Sarah Stodola’s wonderful book Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors. If writing is your thing, read this book to take a tour through the behind-the-scenes activities of the authors of classic works of literature.

Stodola sorts famous authors into creative categories: the nine-to-fivers, productive procrastinators, autodidacts, author as protagonist, etc. She has reconstructed the work habits of luminaries no longer with us such as George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf. Contemporary authors weigh in as well; did you know that Margaret Atwood loves Twitter?

The result is a surprisingly touching assortment of stories of the habits, routines, and strange things people do to work productively and summon creativity.

As foreign and distant as the greats like Kafka and Joyce seem, their problems and demons are familiar. Famous authors often adopt unique and highly personal strategies for dealing with those issues. George Orwell banished himself to a remote Scottish island while writing 1984. Some plan everything painstakingly in advance, others discover as they write. Many rise early to write, while others work into the late hours.

Despite the wild variations, the universality of the quest makes the book compelling.

If you write, it’s comforting to know that even these famous authors faced the same problems you do. You may find inspiration from others’ dedication to process.