Four strategies to help you build your writing capacity
Your laptop is ready. A cup of freshly brewed coffee sits next to you. You’re ready. You sit poised. You start. Then nothing comes out. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Sound familiar? Writing is challenging. I’d like to say that the words flow from my fingers but I would be bullshitting you. There are days where it does and there are days of tumbleweeds. The thing I have learnt over the past two months of writing every day that it does get easier to write. But those two scenarios don’t disappear. Writing is equal parts cathartic and despairing.
This post will share a few strategies that I have borrowed or concocted to build my writing capacity. The first one is the maintenance of a daily habit. I have written here about this. A daily habit is the engine room behind consistent writing. I have written some work I am proud of over the past few months and some work that may not pass Year 7 English. I liken it to my guitar playing. I have riffs I have written that I love and then a whole lot of crap. The joy of writing a great riff is what keeps me playing. Same goes for writing.
The next part is feedback. It is sad to say but in the hyper-connected world we live in, this is not as easy as pressing publish. There are a few people who I can always count on to engage with my out loud thinking (Thanks Aaron!). Medium is a great space to reach an audience that lives outside the world of my PLN. To get feedback on my writing structure I use an app called Hemingway app. This has helped to improve the clarity of what I’m trying to say.
The hardest part is figuring out what to say in a post. This is where we battle ourselves for original ideas. Don’t. Austin Kleon says it best in his book “Steal like an Artist”,
“What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.”
The Beatles and Rolling Stones began as cover bands. Be inspired by the work of others. If we continue with the music analogy, most of my blog posts riff off of the original ideas of others. I write to understand them further. I write to engage with the opinions of others. I attribute their work but in essence, I’m borrowing their ideas. I’m intrigued by their work. Kleon also says that “if we copy from one artist, it is plagiarism. If you copy from many, it is research. Copying is reverse-engineering”. The key is to connect with a multitude of angles and ideas. Be a cover band of many artists!
The next strategy I use I have borrowed from a multitude of people. In “How To Come Up With Great Ideas and Actually Make Them Happen”, Ewan McIntosh calls it the “Bug list and Idea Wallet”. Kleon calls it the “Swipe File”. McIntosh’s Bug list is a space (digital or physical) where you gather “things you notice that just don’t work as well as they could do.” The Ideas wallet is a space to capture inspiration as it happens. This is similar to Kleon’s Swipe file. A Swipe file is where you swipe ideas you connect with. To achieve this, I use a Trello board. Trello is a huge part of my daily workflow and it works with so many modes of media. I like that I can send items via email. I can copy links via the browser. I can type ideas straight in. It provides me with a great space to revisit to find an item to riff off. Often this leads to a rabbit hole of inspiration and then I’m off.
I also read and read and read (a post coming shortly discussing some my recent favs). As I read, I sticky note the heck out of the book. Quotes, research, other books to check, important facts, interesting stories, anything that jumps out at me. I then revisit these notes once I have finished the book and type them up in OneNote. I started this practice for two reasons. Firstly because I wanted to continue to connect with these thoughts and insights. I wanted access to these thoughts when I was writing. Secondly, I didn’t own the books, having borrowed them from my awesome local library. It is a practice I wasn’t sure I would sustain but I have. I enjoy it because it is like compiling a mixed tape of my favourite parts of the book. I often find myself jumping back into the book to continue to explore. I then revisit these ideas long after I have returned the book. It is an interesting way to connect with the ideas. Typing them out connects me physically to them. The ideas roll out around in my head as my fingers pound the keyboard. While it may appear a mundane process, it does work.
Having these strategies in place helps with the conditioning required for regular writing. Like stretching and eating right work for exercise, these strategies work for my writing. For the regular writers out there, I would love to know what you use to help you with your conditioning. As always, thoughts and feedback welcome.
Originally published at stevebrophy.com.au on May 28, 2017.
