Everyone has their own writing process. Even if yours is the my-process-changes-everyday process. We all face slumps of writers block or bursts of fervent inspiration. Every writer has that one spot they love writing, the one environment they hate writing in. Style, genre, structure, mood, mode – all of this contributes to our Writing Process.
As a Creative Writing major and an aspiring writer I have now taken 5 semesters of writing classes that have made me get more and more familiar with my writing process. Every professor has a different method of teaching writing, gives different prompts and outline for your pieces which impacts your writing process in different ways.
Being in an academic setting I have the opportunity to also have taken classes that requite my writing to be more academic and formal. This inspired an interesting question about the writing process and how creative writers adapt the formal one and make it their own.
In my research process I found that while there was a lot of information out there for formal writing in terms of guides and tips there was barely anything for creative writing. Intuitively that makes sense, were all different and have different processes but I was curious to see if there were any similarities that could in some way be formalised to make the creative writing process sound less elusive than it seems to be.
Whether this is getting inspired by other writers, my classmates, strangers on the internet or simply self-growth, exploring and establishing my writing process has allowed me to connect with my pieces and hence my thoughts and ideas at a level that I am able to express it better to myself and others.
Since a lot of this exploring and establishing has come from external sources, I was curious to see how the writing process of a published author, a college student and a high-school student would compare to each other. I was interested in making the seemingly elusive process of writing creative pieces a little more formal.
Before we go into my findings I wanted to briefly highlight what I found out about the “typical” writing process.
Prewriting:
Publish
With formal versus creative writing you primarily follow these steps but take different things into consideration. Were in formal writing you look at information, factual accuracy, logic and reason, in creative writing you want to also focus on characterisation, tone, consistency, plot points, readability. There is a greater audience component and consideration because academic readers are limited and more similar.
Of course, it goes without saying that I am still honing my process, changing, reconfiguring and adding and subtracting elements to it, but here are some things I have learn so far that I think might be useful or thought provoking to other aspiring writers, or anyone really who wants to put their metaphorical pen to paper.
In interviewing my candidates I found several similarities between them. Some included that all three interviewees said they tend to plan prose more than they plan ahead for their poetry. They all used their little black journal to ideate and all found a writing space that balanced between familiarity and discomfort to be able to drift, and be comfortable yet focused.
Their differences included the fact that the published author had a much greater sense of his identity as a poet than the other two which leads to more purposeful process. Also, while students are writing more for assignments and school or college, the published author is writing as a job and for himself hence finds it easier to write off term time rather than in term time. I also found that the students tended to be more attached to their writing and had a harder time editing or getting rid of words and sentences that did not work. The published author tended to go back to old works and look for growth more than the students.
Of course there are many more similarities and difference to draw between all three levels of writers and even between levels. But a big take away for me was finding so many similarities in the first place. While the process of writing a poem is often looked at as unique to every person I think it is meaningful to find similarities in peoples processes. This to me makes creative writing more accessible to novices who might be intimidated by putting pen to paper and verbalising their thoughts.
The presentation attached provide visual aids to this idea of the writing process but also provides you with 3 writing prompts:
Try one of these to get you started. You might surprise yourself.
As a Creative Writing major and an aspiring writer I have now taken 5 semesters of writing classes that have made me get more and more familiar with my writing process. Every professor has a different method of teaching writing, gives different prompts and outline for your pieces which impacts your writing process in different ways.
Being in an academic setting I have the opportunity to also have taken classes that requite my writing to be more academic and formal. This inspired an interesting question about the writing process and how creative writers adapt the formal one and make it their own.
In my research process I found that while there was a lot of information out there for formal writing in terms of guides and tips there was barely anything for creative writing. Intuitively that makes sense, were all different and have different processes but I was curious to see if there were any similarities that could in some way be formalised to make the creative writing process sound less elusive than it seems to be.
Whether this is getting inspired by other writers, my classmates, strangers on the internet or simply self-growth, exploring and establishing my writing process has allowed me to connect with my pieces and hence my thoughts and ideas at a level that I am able to express it better to myself and others.
Since a lot of this exploring and establishing has come from external sources, I was curious to see how the writing process of a published author, a college student and a high-school student would compare to each other. I was interested in making the seemingly elusive process of writing creative pieces a little more formal.
Before we go into my findings I wanted to briefly highlight what I found out about the “typical” writing process.
Prewriting:
- This is anything you do before you write a draft of your document. It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information (e.g., interviewing people, researching in the library, assessing data).
- Although prewriting is the first activity you engage in, generating ideas is an activity that occurs throughout the writing process.
- Consolidating your data and making an outline including your thesis and sub ideas that you wish to cover
- Occurs when you put your ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Here you concentrate upon explaining and supporting your ideas fully. Here you also begin to connect your ideas.
- Regardless of how much thinking and planning you do, the process of putting your ideas in words changes them; often the very words you select evoke additional ideas or implications.
- Don’t pay attention to such things as spelling at this stage.
- This is more writer centric
- You bring in the intended readers perspective, workshop, ask for feedback, read it over
- Write up one or more new drafts. Kill your darlings.
- Are you getting you point across? How can you improve?
- Check for such things as grammar, mechanics, and spelling. The last thing you should do before printing your document is to spell check it.
- Don’t edit your writing until the other steps in the writing process are complete.
Publish
With formal versus creative writing you primarily follow these steps but take different things into consideration. Were in formal writing you look at information, factual accuracy, logic and reason, in creative writing you want to also focus on characterisation, tone, consistency, plot points, readability. There is a greater audience component and consideration because academic readers are limited and more similar.
Of course, it goes without saying that I am still honing my process, changing, reconfiguring and adding and subtracting elements to it, but here are some things I have learn so far that I think might be useful or thought provoking to other aspiring writers, or anyone really who wants to put their metaphorical pen to paper.
In interviewing my candidates I found several similarities between them. Some included that all three interviewees said they tend to plan prose more than they plan ahead for their poetry. They all used their little black journal to ideate and all found a writing space that balanced between familiarity and discomfort to be able to drift, and be comfortable yet focused.
Their differences included the fact that the published author had a much greater sense of his identity as a poet than the other two which leads to more purposeful process. Also, while students are writing more for assignments and school or college, the published author is writing as a job and for himself hence finds it easier to write off term time rather than in term time. I also found that the students tended to be more attached to their writing and had a harder time editing or getting rid of words and sentences that did not work. The published author tended to go back to old works and look for growth more than the students.
Of course there are many more similarities and difference to draw between all three levels of writers and even between levels. But a big take away for me was finding so many similarities in the first place. While the process of writing a poem is often looked at as unique to every person I think it is meaningful to find similarities in peoples processes. This to me makes creative writing more accessible to novices who might be intimidated by putting pen to paper and verbalising their thoughts.
The presentation attached provide visual aids to this idea of the writing process but also provides you with 3 writing prompts:
- Picture a window around a daily object around you or simply look out the window. Write down what you see and let it inspire you.
- Go to a “daily word” or “daily quote” generator and write about the word or quote that pops up. How does it make you feel?
- Create your own fantasy world.
Try one of these to get you started. You might surprise yourself.