My Writing Process

For me, writing is a painfully slow labor of love. Writing is work. But work I enjoy. I can feel the mental sweat drip down the sides of my brain. And I like it. I actually think often about my writing process. I like meta-cognition or awareness of the ways in which I learn, produce and process.

Whenever I am tasked with writing, I keep my thoughts fluid for a very long time before I write anything. I conceptualize and organize and theorize and visualize until I like my direction. Then I outline. I give my writing structure and flow and transitions. I put to paper my thoughts, giving voice to those visualizations. I like to write first on yellow legal pads. Sometimes in pen but mostly in pencil. I move things around with arrows and scribbles. I rewrite my outline to perfection and neatness. And then I write.

Each paragraph already has an exoskeleton: an idea for an opening line, noteworthy insights I wish to include, quotes that I find applicable and an idea for a closing line. I write the body of my paper first, then return to my introduction. I don't want to write my introduction first because I don't know what language and direction my paper will take and I don't want to repeat certain diction or miss concepts. My conclusion is typically written in the waning moments before I am to turn in a paper. At this point, all points of the paper are floating around in my head and I look once again at the bigger picture, trying to stretch my writing out into a greater conversation.

Some would say I procrastinate for how delayed I am in the start of writing. Some would say I am overly-organized and structured in the way I write. Is it only me who thinks "some" are contradicting themselves? There is a method to the madness that is my life and I'm okay if the only one who understands that is me.