Some things you have to be taught. Others you learn largely on your own. I’ve gotten lots of feedback and editing on my writing over the years. And I got plenty of training on the mechanics of grammar in my youth. But 99% of that input came after I had produced something to react to. I can’t ever recall getting any input on how to create something in the first place.
There was a nun at some point who taught me something about preparing outlines, but I took the same lesson from that as any middle schooler, which was to produce the outline after you’d finished the piece. There’s Anne Lamott’s classic advice on “shitty first drafts.” And I did eventually learn about freewriting somewhere along the way.
For all the writing I’ve done, it isn’t at all clear how much of a process exists behind it. I’m reminded here of an observation that Peter Drucker once made that “whenever we have looked at any job – no matter how many thousands of years it has been performed – we have found that the traditional tools are wrong for the task.”
We feel our way to methods that work for us. When we succeed, we try to repeat what we think we did that worked. When we fail, we change something and try again.
For large scale, industrial, processes we’ve developed a body of knowledge and techniques for improving a process until it can reliably hit measures of performance, output, and quality. We don’t have a similar body of knowledge for creative work, although we pretend that we do. That’s because we can scarcely measure performance, output, or quality. And, whatever crude metrics we do cobble together don’t tell us which aspects of what passes for process connect to what we struggle to measure.
Once you start looking for it, you can find advice on aspects of the writing process. I can’t speak to any of the fancy programs on creative writing or what’s to be found within MFA programs. I have no aspirations to write the great American novel, so I haven’t looked in that direction. I never cracked the code of writing for academic journals. I suppose I’m an amateur writer in the sense of liking to have written.
I’m competent at something that many people find intimidating. Over time, I’ve become interested in getting better at this craft. I’ve sought out the advice and work of those who’ve demonstrated their great skill and graciously set down their thoughts on how this process works for them.
Among the other things I can claim some competence at is the analysis and design of systems and processes. The challenge here, of course, is akin to the old saw that a lawyer who represents themselves in a case has a fool for a client. It’s remarkably hard to coach yourself. How do you stand outside your process effectively enough to improve it?
I’m at a point in this draft, for example, where I’m struggling with what to do next. Do I pull back a bit to see if there is a better high level structure or flow to try? Do I push this line of thought to something that might resemble a close or conclusion of some sort? Have I found some sort of point that I can now articulate or am I about to start another cycle and wander off into the weeds?
It’s now late in the day, I’m running out of steam, and I don’t see any flashes of insight looming on the horizon. Back when I was building sets for the theater, we would sometimes encourage one another to “nail it before it rots.” Time to set the hammer down.