These past four weeks I've thought a lot about the different phases/modes of writing. Currently I'm focused on three of them:
Notebooking / Journaling
Notebooking / Journaling
- No defined goal or direction
- Jotting down observations
- No rules
Freewriting
- There is a direction (write about idea Z)
- No scoped form. You don't know yet if it will be a novel or something else.
- No external audience
- You don't need to worry about polish or even structure. At this point you're not writing for an audience, you're writing for yourself as creator to figure out what the actual thing you're trying to say is.
Constructing
- Topic has been scoped
- From freewriting you've figured out what you're trying to say. You've discovered your message. If you don't know this yet then it's probably best to return to an earlier phase to discover it.
- Form has been scoped
- You now know what type of project this is. Essay? Novella?
- Audience exists.
- You write to please this audience.
- Polish isn't so important yet
- You're just constructing the project right now. You can worry about things like grammar, wording in the revision stages.
I've rarely liked the writing I do in the Constructing mode. I have had the most fun writing in the first two phases. And yet I've never sustained the habit of Notebooking and Freewriting. Just after I find myself establishing a habit of doing both I convince myself I'm now on easy street. I think I can exclusively write within the constructing mode. I've been burned by this enough that I've even said to myself multiple times that I wouldn't get tunnel vision on one phase. That I would make sure to honor the earlier modes. That I'd keep the feedback loop between these three modes tight. But here I am again.
Abe's Glog is an attempt to short circuit my motivation system to get myself notebooking again.
Actionable Takeaway
If you can't seem to produce consistently within the constructing phase, then do more notebooking.
If you struggle to notebook, try notebooking in public.
If you struggle to notebook in public, just write what is in your head at that given moment. At first it might just be you literally thinking about looking at your writing tool, but eventually you'll get to more personal stuff.
If you struggle to notebook, try notebooking in public.
If you struggle to notebook in public, just write what is in your head at that given moment. At first it might just be you literally thinking about looking at your writing tool, but eventually you'll get to more personal stuff.
I do wish to write projects still. But I realize now that the top-down manner doesn't work. It's bottom up.
There are many other modes, but these three are ones that I'm comfortable writing about because I've been in and through them enough times now.