My Creative Cycle — How I Write!
Countdown to 100 Stories: ⏱️(3 stories left)
I remember working on my very first writing project.
It was as you’d expect, not a pleasant experience.
Sure I had written before. I mean, it isn’t hard to put pen on paper or keyboard to screen. But this was different. My work would be uploaded on the internet — where millions of eyes would read it depending on how it goes.
But well, the good thing is that my first project was just a trial. It was never going to reach the web. However, knowing that didn’t make it any easier.
I can’t do this
— I really said that. Yeah, I almost quit.
But well, here I am now.
I’ve worked as a ghostwriter for years and now, I’ve almost got 100 stories to my name on this platform.
And above all, I now have what I didn’t then.
Experience aside, I now have my writing process which I’ve gained over time — a creative cycle.
Although this cycle has been erratic lately since I’ve been writing mostly reports of my 30-day coding challenge.
But despite that, there are parts of my creative cycle that are always consistent. These are:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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1. Collecting Thoughts
I won’t be discussing how I come up with topic ideas because I don’t have a fixed method. I’m sort of a whimsical writer whose ideas strike anytime and from anywhere.
So, skipping this part of my cycle that I have no control over, the first thing I do once I get a topic to work on is shut myself in my thoughts.
Ok, I don’t mean that in a depressing way. I just like imagining how the end-product of my cycle will look like — how I want the final draft to feel.
Because of this, I sometimes search for my featured image before I write to help capture my thoughts.
That’s one reason I started using an AI image tool since it allows me to convert my thoughts in the form of text (the prompt) to an image.
Sometimes, I think about an article and I don’t develop it for days. If I can’t get my head into it, I postpone it indefinitely and it suffers in my draft list:
I view this as one of my greatest challenges when writing.
2. Research
The time I spend in this phase depends on the type of article I’m writing. For my challenge reports, I don’t have to waste hours reading material since I’m simply documenting.
Although, I’m the type of person who likes to cross-check even the most basic facts. Call it a habit.
If I doubt the sky is blue, I’d crawl the internet before making that claim in my article.
3. Writing
The writing phase for me is simply taking my idea from phase 1, adding the product of my research, and entering it into the keyboard.
In many cases though, I do my research and writing simultaneously, as well as editing.
But once I’m done writing, I take my editing to the next level — criticizing.
4. Editing & Criticizing
Don’t worry, I just have a mild case of telling myself my work is trash like many writers.
Fortunately, I often win the battle with my critic. Otherwise, more articles will be in the draft list and many more won’t exist.
So while I battle my critic, I proofread and make any corrections to my article simultaneously.
Once upon a time, the editing phase for me involved setting all the formats to show correctly on Medium.
But for a while, I’ve written my articles directly with the Medium editor to get a feel of how they’ll look when published.
I also just can’t get enough of the TK function which shows a yellow symbol on the left.
If you ever need to spotlight a part of your article that needs more work, try it. It’s the best:
Medium will notify you of the paragraph if you try to publish, so you can’t forget:
5. Publishing
As expected, the last phase of my writing cycle is hitting the green “publish” button on Medium. Before that, I set my topics, meta title, description, etc.
On WordPress, the SEO settings are more. But this isn’t a how-to guide article on SEO but an article on how I write. Or at least, an article that gives you a brief insight into my creative cycle.
I’m pretty sure most writers have a similar cycle. However, I’m 100% confident that the details under each phase of their cycle will be different since each writer is unique in his/her own way.
So, if you feel up to it, tell us how you write and if there are additional phases in your cycle. Take it as a challenge, and let us know about it 👇
Thanks for reading and Till next time!
