I have never been a huge fan of the written language; I find it unnecessarily constricting. I have long thought that English would benefit from a series of additional symbols, akin to crescendo and decrescendo marks in music, that would indicate to readers where to place emphasis, where to add a staccato punch, where to run words and thoughts together, etc. I am also a big fan of the current trend toward simpler spelling, tho that’s sumthing for another post.

I have been told on occasion that I am an able writer, and asked how I do it. The short answer is, I usually throw a lot of material away before I create something good. I spend far more time crafting sentences and paragraphs than others may realize, because I will often rewrite something three, four, even five times. When I write, I’d say my attention is split 60/40 between trying to capture the idea on the one hand and trying to get the grammar and structure correct on the other. I will say, I spend far more time now on the concepts I am trying to communicate as opposed to the technical aspects of writing. The process I go through more or less looks like this:

The first 60%: Getting the idea onto paper

1. I start writing. I’m often not clear on what exactly I want to say at first, so the idea is to capture something–anything–on paper to use as a launching point. Even if I think I know what I want to say, I find that the act of writing often shapes my thinking as much as my thinking shapes my writing, so I never expect the final product to match my initial thoughts. Writing is a give and take process.

2. I write what I feel, not what I see. When I start writing, I try to convey feeling, not facts. Yes, I am inevitably sharing information, but so is everyone else who writes. Facts are commodities… it’s how they are presented that sets good writing apart from bad. I use facts to support my feelings, rather than using emotional reactions to emphasize facts. Good writing tells a story that’s engaging, that infuses fact with an emotional component. I find that once I capture the emotion, it’s relatively easy to go back through and edit for factual content. For instance:

My daughter played a discordant note on the piano, which made me cringe.
VERSUS
When my daughter played the wrong note during a scale exercise, I found myself transported back to a saxophone lesson from my own childhood, during which I made the same mistake. I remembered feeling so stupid for screwing up a simple scale. I could only hope she wasn’t beating herself up the same way.

3. I write too much. At this stage in the process, I’m still not worried about sentence structure or grammar. I use every punctuation mark I know–dashes, commas, semi-colons, elipses, whatever–to get the cadence of the words right; I find that by trying to control the speed at which the reader reads, I can influence the meaning the words take. I also use a thesaurus to get the right word whenever possible. If I can’t think of it, I’ll use a WORD THAT MEANS THE SAME THING / SINOSOMETHING / SIMILAR / FAMILIAR / RHYMES WITH CINNAMON as a placeholder until I have a chance to look up the real word. I also don’t delete. I don’t stop the flow–whatever comes, I get it down. If a sentence pops into my head that sounds good but doesn’t fit, I write it anyway.

The elements of happiness–objective, environment, attitude–are, surprisingly, universal across cultures.

I may have three or four versions of the same paragraph at any given moment, all very similar, but distinct in tone, style, order, or content. I may also have four or five non-sequitors like the italicized one above peppered througout. I don’t delete until later.

4. I read what I’ve written. Every once in a rare while, I nail it on the first try. More often, reading what I wrote makes me feel something other than what I originally wanted to convey. That leaves me with a decision: do I change what I wrote to match my emotions, or do I admit that maybe subconsciously, I felt I needed to convey something other than the feelings I was initially aware of? Writing provides a kind of feedback loop, and I trust it implicitly, so I take this part of the process seriously. My guess is that most people skip this step–they never stop to think about what they’ve written from the reader’s perspective, but personally, I think this is the most important part of the process. This is the step that gives me the most clarity into what I’m trying to really say. I take note of sentences, phrases, and words that capture the essence of a feeling and look to see if they match. Sometimes, I realize that I’m not feeling the flow–or that the flow I’m feeling has nothing to do with the message I need to convey–so I put my writing aside to come back to later. I keep files on my computer called “cutting room floor” that are filled with page after page of inspired but irrelevant observations, deleted paragraphs, and phrases that got cut because they didn’t match the feel of the piece.

Even if the paragraph isn’t critical, I go through all these steps. Non-critical writing gives me a chance to practice all this so I’ll have confidence in my writing skill when it does count.

The next 40%: Making it real

Capturing the emotion is not enough. My writing at this stage will be comprehensible but sloppy.

5. I get my facts in order. I use the same methodology I learned back in elementary school: BING, BANG, BONGO. Searching online, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this methodology is still being taught. True, the documents on this page are aimed at 5th graders, but then, I think many 5th graders write better than the average person in business. So there. This is the stage at which I make sure that my emotionally appealing piece is also factually relevant.

(Truth be told, I’ve been doing this so long that I actually have BING BANG BONGO in my head before I start; at this stage, it’s more like I’m double checking the format as opposed to applying it for the first time.)

To the best of my ability, I stick to two or three supporting points. (This post has two major points–the conceptual piece and the grammatical.) If I have a fourth point, I demote it and use it as support to one of the other three. This post has nine subpoints.

6. I check my grammar. Admittedly, I’m no Strunk (or White), but I do believe that the way in which I break the rules conveys meaning, so I like to decide, on purpose, where and how I will break them… which means I need to put the paragraph into proper condition first.

7. I let the writing breathe. I try not to send/post/share anything that hasn’t had a chance to sit for at least a few hours. Proofreading is never finished. This blog is full of examples of typos that missed my eye.

8. I get help. I have a small group of people with whom I will share pieces before I make them live, and I value their feedback. I go to different people with different kinds of writing, and I constantly change the group–btw, it’s informal, and I’d be shocked if anyone even knew they were one of my inner circle editors. If they did, I think it would change the way they read my stuff.

9. I stay mentally prepared to throw the whole thing away and start over. A final read through is meaningless if it’s just a formality before sending. The only way I can make sure I’m proud of what I’ve done is to be willing to trash the whole thing right up until the very end. For instance, I received feedback on the title of my book, and I think the feedback is good. Even though the title is “set,” I called the publisher and asked to put the title back up for discussion. We will be having a call on it next week. I am a big fan of the current title–and why shouldn’t I be, I came up with it!–but the feedback was valid and could lead to a big improvement. A second example is this blog: I have at least 6 entries currently parked in a “to be posted?” folder on my computer, despite my having put hours into them. They’re not ready yet and may never be.

And that’s it! I know, it’s more heady than what you probably expected. But, if you pay more attention to the idea you are trying to convey, the grammar can almost take care of itself. Put another way: there are plenty of technically perfect, yet painfully dull, pieces of writing out there. There are far fewer pieces that capture the essence of a thought in such a way that a reader is willing to look past any grammatical errors because the power of the piece is that strong. In everything I write, my aim is to be in this latter bucket.