Is there anything scarier than a blank page? If we’re being honest, the power and potential of the blinking cursor at the top of a blank page can be terrifying.
In my last post, I suggested one of the keys to accomplishing your writing goals is to write every day. I suspect I’m not the first person that has suggested that to you. I know I’ve heard that advice since I started graduate school. This always frustrated me because I thought there is no way I can sit down and tackle that blank page every day.
I have since learned that the blank page is only one kind of writing. I doubt there are many of us who could sit down and write fresh prose every day. So how do we reconcile the advice to write every day with the inability to tackle that blank page every day.
In today’s post, I am going to argue that the best way to write every day is to change your definition of writing. Below are 8 different types of writing that you can do to move a project forward.
1. Edit for content. In this type of editing, you are worried about substance not style. Do you have all the main ideas? Are they clear? Are the examples useful for your reader? Your focus should be on ensuring you are communicating the most important points to your reader.
2. Line editing. Now is the time to worry about style. You should check your grammar and make certain your have followed all the conventions of well written prose. I strongly suggest not editing for substance and style at the same time. It is very difficult to do two things at once when editing. Break these tasks into separate activities.
3. Restructure. After completing an early draft, see if the structure still makes sense. I often find I need to move paragraphs or whole sections around. A reverse outline may be useful at this stage.
4. Work on figures and tables. Don’t stop in the middle of writing to work on tables or figures. Just put in a placeholder and move on. This is a great activity when you need a little mental break from the task of creating new prose.
5. Make notes. During some writing sessions, I will go through existing text and make notes of places where I need additional discussion or more examples. I will also write myself a few notes before I get started with a new section of an article. These notes are valuable starting places when I sit down to tackle the next writing session.
6. References. I definitely encourage you to use Endnote or some other bibliographic software as this will save you tremendous amounts of time. Yet, there is still time that must be allocated for work on reference lists. This is another good activity for a day when you need a little break.
7. Brain dump. In the spirit of Anne Lamott’s shitty first draft, I like to just do a brain dump of everything I know or think about a topic. This is an excellent way to just get ideas and basic concepts down to work with later. Some of it may not get used in the final version of a document, but pieces can frequently get used in various sections.
8. Blank page. At some point, you still have to put fingers to the keyboard and write. You can’t edit or add in references if there is no text to work with in the first place. Use some of these ideas for making sure you make progress every day, but there are still some days where you have to create.
Writing takes many forms other than simply starting with a blank page. If that’s all you think about, you are probably going to have a hard time writing every day.
However, I would strongly argue that it is very possible to do at least one of these kinds of writing every day. Some of these are easier and some are harder so you can adjust your activity based on your mental energy. The bottom line is that you have to write every day in order to accomplish your writing goals.
So get started today! You’ll be amazed at how quickly your progress will add up!
