As I move forward with my writing challenge, I wanted to write about my writing process itself. By carefully reviewing my action, I’m hoping to make more deliberate practice possible. 

“What gets measured, gets improved,” people often say but I’m not measuring the number of words I write or hours I spent writing because I believe developing a writing regimen that works for me is much more important than numerically comparing my result with others. Just like making any routines stick, I need to keep making a conscious effort in the early stage. 

As of now, my writing process has 9 steps.

1. Question it
2. Journal it with a pencil and paper
3. Transcribe it
4. Outline it
5. Write it
6. Revise it
7. Proofread it with Grammarly
8. Design it
9. Distribute it

Now that it’s been listed above, I can see where my undue writing stress came from. I’ve been skipping every step except 5 and 6! Becoming more aware of the other 7 steps and adopting some of them, even partially, have made my writing a lot more comfortable recently. Let me start going over one by one.

Step 1: Question

I always try to have more than a few ideas to write about. “Just write it,” as some would say, doesn’t work for me. I can’t do that kind of spontaneous generation s***. I have to have some stocks to lean on. From the pool of ideas and questions, I pick an idea that sparks most interest at the time. For instance, I have:

• Why does a writing-heavy culture exist in finance?
• Why is design not valued as much as engineering or law? 
• What makes writing more powerful than design?: coded vs. non-coded message
• Where does creativity come from?
• How come Japanese web design is so cluttered? (The ABCs of Japanese design: E=MC)

For this week, I chose to write about my writing process to better cement my new habit.

Step 2: Journal

In my last post, I wrote about how my ego has been sabotaging me for a long time. I’m on the right track toward a more peaceful coexistence but that's just a battle half won. I need to figure out concrete actions to follow through. 

The analog journaling technique is my current best solution. It’s so simple—I write with a pencil and paper. Nothing fancy. But it works. 

It works because it’s harder than the writing on more modern keyboard variety. Counterintuitive, it seems but what I needed was friction to slow down my ego.

Because it’s more cumbersome to write with a pencil, I can only write. I don’t get distracted by doing anything else like editing. When I write on a computer, the writing experience becomes too smooth. So frictionless to the point that I end up rewriting and start messing around with formatting. I can’t stop myself from falling into the endless loop of self-editing. Over and over. I have to ward off my constant urge to make it the best sentence ever written. The biggest problem is that when I haven't written anything, I have nothing to edit. With paper and a pencil, that’s not a problem. I am too concentrated on scrubbing the carbon on the paper, my ego has no place to surface. In other words, I can let myself go with the old school method. 

On a side note, I feel like there is a strange parallel between how I am trying to write more and the learning curve in foreign language acquisition. I’ve been learning and teaching foreign languages for the majority of my life, so the notion of “stop editing yourself when you speak in a foreign language,” should’ve been familiar with me. I’ve been telling my students and friends alike, “We need to let go of our shyness and just speak our mind.” There are no obvious skillsets that I can transfer from knowing other languages, but deep down, the creative process in design and writing have something in common with learning to speak another language. 

Step 3: Transcribe

Once I have my first draft on paper, it’s a transcription time. It pains me to go through my crappy writing but if I don’t do it, who would? I try not to edit much at this point. It’s difficult but I need to push forward. All I need now is a low-fidelity version of my thought translated onto my computer. That’s all.

Step 4: Outline

Technically, this is my third draft but the writing is still very cloudy at this stage. Here, my aim is to extract the main points of my loosely organized thoughts into a more coherent structure. In my previous steps, I was gathering the necessary ingredients to cook something. When I want a delicious, satisfying, and real meal, I have to know what to peel, cut, and boil in which order. Here I try to write the main sentence for each paragraph. This is going to be the general map of the article.

Step 5: Write

When the framework of the article is ready, I am finally ready to write. I have the map, so it’s time to start walking. It’s not easy and sometimes I have to backtrack but I know where I am going. I remember trying to start my writing process from here for a long time. It didn’t work well because I didn’t have enough material to build on. It’s as if I was trying to run a full marathon without the strength to run a 5K nor a course map. Not anymore.

Step 6: Revise

Then I edit my article from beginning to end. Does it make sense? Can I say it better? Compared to other writers, I know I am still very weak in this area. I think this is where a lot of writing skills come in. This is definitely something I will be working on.

Step 7: Proofread with Grammarly

Along with the analog journaling technique, revising with Grammarly was the second biggest change in my writing process as a whole. 

Let’s say if I could pick a pilot to fly my private jet: Would I pick a pilot who knows how to use all necessary flight instruments or a pilot who solely relies on his/her experience? I’ve been writing my recent posts with Grammarly and very happy with it. But my regret is that I should’ve begun using Grammarly or any other online writing tools much earlier. Now I realize that I’d been forcing my readers though the unsafe flights with my lack of writing skills and experience.

The root cause of all is, again, my insecurity. “Relying on the technology is cheating,” was what my ego speaking. So I’ve been trying to catch all my writing errors on my own but there was only so much I could do. I felt exhausted and hopeless. All I could do was to tell myself, “well, English isn’t my native tongue anyway.” In the end, I was stuck with an article that was frustrating for both readers and myself as an author.

Fortunately, now I know that readers don’t care about how I feel about my writing. It’s all in my head. All I need to focus on now is to write simply and clearly using anything to make readers feel as comfy as possible. It was a guy who saw my design who taught me this. When I showcased one of my projects, he reached out to me. The only problem was that he didn’t make much sense at all. I wish he had used Grammarly or had the courtesy to write a complete sentence at least. He wasn’t much of a writer but he was an excellent writing teacher who showed me the real perspective from a real reader.

Step 8: Design

Once the article is in decent condition, I start making a visual material to go with it. Having a little eye candy is not going to help me earn the Michelin star status in writing, but it won’t hurt either.

Step 9: Distribute

This is by far the biggest area in need of improvement. I’m building my design and writing portfolio from scratch now. This is going to take some serious time for sure. 

So this is it. I’m about to finish writing another article. As I write this, I’m beginning to feel some relief, and an urge to give myself a pat on the shoulder. Feeling a little proud, maybe. But not for the quality or quantity. It’s because I am already feeling the inspiration to write the next article. In that sense, this article has been successful enough. It has already generated more energy than what I spent on this one. 

See you next week!