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The direct writing process is most useful if you don't have much time or if you have plenty to say about your topic. It's a kind of let's-get-this-thing-over-with writing process. I think of it for tasks like memos, reports, somewhat difficult letters, or essays where I don't want to engage in much new thinking. It's also a good approach if you are inexperienced or nervous about writing because it is simple and doesn't make as much of a mess as the other ways of getting words on paper.
The direct writing process is most useful if you don't have much time or if you have plenty to say about your topic. It's a kind of let's-get-this-thing-over-with writing process. I think of it for tasks like memos, reports, somewhat difficult letters, or essays where I don't want to engage in much new thinking. It's also a good approach if you are inexperienced or nervous about writing because it is simple and doesn't make as much of a mess as the other ways of getting words on paper I describe in Section II. Unfortunately, its most common use will be for those situations that aren't supposed to happen but do: when you have to write something you don't yet understand, but you also don't have much time. The direct writing process may not always lead to a satisfactory piece of writing when you are in this fix, but it's the best approach I know. The process is very simple. Just divide your available time in half. The first half is for fast writing without worrying about organization, language, correctness, or precision. The second half is for revising. Start off by thinking carefully about the audience (if there is one) and the purpose for this piece of writing. Doing so may help you figure out exactly what you need to say. But if it doesn't, then let yourself put them out of mind. You may find that you get the most benefit from ignoring your audience and purpose at this early stage of the writing process. (See Section IV for more about dealing with your audience.) In any event spend the first half of your time making yourself write down everything you can think of that might belong or pertain to your writing task: incidents that come to mind for your story, images for your poem, ideas and facts for your essay or report. Write fast. Don't waste any time or energy on how to organize it, what to start with, paragraphing, wording, spelling, grammar, or any other matters of presentation. Just get things down helter-skelter. If you can't find the right word just leave a blank. If you can't say it the way you want to say it, say it the wrong way. (If it makes you feel better, put a wavy line under those wrong bits to remind you to fix them.) * I'm not saying you must never pause in this writing. No need to make this a frantic process. Sometimes it is very fruitful to pause and return in your mind to some productive feeling or idea that you've lost. But don't stop to worry or criticize or correct what you've already written. While doing this helter-skelter writing, don't allow too much digression. Follow your pencil where it leads, but when you suddenly realize, "Hey, this has nothing to do with what I want to write about," just stop, drop the whole thing, skip a line or two, and get yourself back onto some aspect of the topic or theme. Similarly, don't allow too much repetition. As you write quickly, you may sometimes find yourself coming back to something you've already treated. Perhaps you are saying it better or in a better context the second or third time. But once you realize you've done it before, stop and go on to something else. When you are trying to put down everything quickly, it often happens that a new or tangentially related thought comes to mind while you are just in the middle of some train of thought. Sometimes two or three new thoughts crowd in on you. This can be confusing: you don't want to interrupt what you are on, but you fear you'll forget the intruding thoughts if you don't write them down. I've found it helpful to note them without spending much time on them. I stop right at the moment they arrive -- wherever I am in my writing -- and jot down a couple of words or phrases to remind me of them, and then I continue on with what I am writing. Sometimes I jot the reminder on a separate piece of paper. When I write at the typewriter I often just put the reminder in caps inside double parentheses ((LIKE THIS)) in the middle of my sentence. Or I simply start a new line LIKE THIS and then start another new line to continue my old train of thought. But sometimes the intruding idea seems so important or fragile that I really want to go to work on it right away so I don't lose it. If so, I drop what I'm engaged in and start working on the new item. I know I can later recapture the original thought because I've already written part of it. The important point here is that what you produce during this first half of the writing cycle can be very fragmented and incoherent without any damage at all. There is a small detail about the physical process of writing down words that I have found important. Gradually I have learned not to stop and cross out something I've just written when I change my mind. I just leave it there and write my new word or phrase on a new line. So my page is likely to have lots of passages that look like Many of my pages Still I don't mean that you should stop and rewrite every passage till you are happy with it. This kind of appearance. What is involved here is developing an increased tolerance for letting mistakes show. If you find yourself crumpling up your sheet of paper and throwing it away and starting with a new one every time you change your mind, you are really saying, I must destroy all evidence of mistakes." Not quite so extreme is the person who scribbles over every mistake so avidly that not even the tail of the "y" is visible. Stopping to cross out mistakes doesn't just waste psychic energy, it distracts you from full concentration on what you are trying to say. What's more, I've found that leaving mistakes uncrossed out somehow makes it easier for me to revise. When I cross out all my mistakes I end up with a draft. And a draft is hard to revise because it is a complete whole. But when I leave my first choices there littering my page along with some second and third choices, I don't have a draft, I just have a succession of ingredients. Often it is easier to whip that succession of ingredients into something usuable than, as it were, to undo that completed draft and turn it into a better draft. It turns out I can just trundle through that pile of ingredients, slash out some words and sections, rearrange some bits, and end up with something quite usable. And quite often I discover in retrospect that my original "mistaken phrase" is really better than what I replaced it with: more lively or closer to what I end up saying. If you only have half an hour to write a memo, you have now forced yourself in fifteen minutes to cram down every hunch, insight, and train of thought that you think might belong in it. If you have only this evening to write a substantial report or paper, it is now 10:30 P.M., you have used up two or two and a half hours putting down as much as you can, and you only have two more hours to give to this thing. You must stop your raw writing now, even if you feel frustrated at not having written enough or figured out yet exactly what you mean to say. If you started out with no real understanding of your topic, you certainly won't feel satisfied with what is probably a complete mess at this point. You'll just have to accept the fact that of course you will do a poor job compared to what you could have done if you'd started yesterday. But what's more to the point now is to recognize that you'll do an even crummier job if you steal any of your revising time for more raw writing. Besides, you will have an opportunity during the revising process to figure out what you want to say -- what all these ingredients add up to -- and to add a few missing pieces. It's important to note that when. I talk about revising in this book I mean something much more substantial than just tidying up your sentences. So if your total time is half gone, stop now no matter how frustrated you are and change to the revising process. That means changing gears into an entirely different consciousness. You must transform yourself from a fast-and-loose-thinking person who is open to every whim and feeling into a ruthless, toughminded, rigorously logical editor. Since you are working under time pressure, you will probably use quick revising or cut-and-paste revising. (See the next chapter and Chapter 14.) Direct writing and quick revising are probably good processes to start with if you have an especially hard time writing. They help you prove to yourself that you can get things written quickly and acceptably. The results may not be the very best you can do, but they work, they get you by. Once you've proved you can get the job done you will be more willing to use other processes for getting words down on paper and for revising -- processes that make greater demands on your time and energy and emotions. And if writing is usually a great struggle, you have probably been thrown off balance many times by getting into too much chaos. The direct writing process is a way to allow a limited amount of chaos to occur in a very controlled fashion.It's easiest to explain the direct writing process in terms of pragmatic writing: you are in a hurry, you know most of what you want to say, you aren't trying for much creativity or brilliance. But I also want to stress that the direct writing process can work well for very important pieces of writing and ones where you haven't yet worked out your thinking at all. But one condition is crucial: you must be confident that you'll have no trouble finding lots to say once you start writing. (Otherwise, use the open-ended or loop writing processes described in Section II.)As I wrote many parts of this book, for example, I didn't have my thinking clear or worked out by any means, I couldn't have made an outline at gunpoint, and I cared deeply about the results. But I knew that there was lots of stuff there swirling around in my head ready to go down on paper. I used the direct process. I just wrote down everything that came to mind and went on to revise.But if you want to use the direct writing process for important pieces of writing, you need plenty of time. You probably won't be able to get them the way you want them with just quick revising. You'll need thorough revising or revising with feedback (see Section III). For important writing I invariably spend more time revising than I do getting my thoughts down on paper the first time. |