Drafting part 2: Calming the chaos
Last week, I was away from my desk driving back West from the East. I had an amazing few weeks with my family—I love them so much—and I’m happy to be back in this special place in the mountains. Thanks for waiting! Thank you also to those writing in with stories of your changes and progress through this newsletter, I’m so so so delighted to read them, please keep sharing :)
In our last two posts we introduced the practice of “free writing,” leaning in to chaos and learning to write wherever the wind takes you. But what do you do with the mess the madman makes? In today’s post, I’ll define free writing and explain when it is helpful in your process, then show you how to move from free write to the next stage—either an outline or a first draft—by reviewing your free write carefully and wisely.
This is also the beginning of a new series, so let me tell you more about that first.
A new series and looking ahead
Our first process series was writing a book /, which took us from ‘what’s my book?’ to ‘I have a purpose, plan, and structure!’
Today, we’re starting our second process series. Buckle up. Arrive Alive. It’s drafting /.
What are we drafting? What’s that?
Great questions, my guy. In this series, we’re getting you from point of chaos to what you’d call “a solid draft.” It is not “first to final draft”—it is ideation, drafting prep, reader discovery, sketching and outlining, and first pages. To return to Betty Flowers’ language, in the drafting / stage you are the architect—standing at your drafting table, big blue pages floating through the room like waves.
We are drafting a blog post, a newsletter or dispatch, an essay, or whatever your writing project might be. This series will be most helpful for shorter-form nonfiction; drafting parts of a book is a much more bespoke process that considers timeline, research components, and many other elements that need to be integrated to sustain a long-term writing project—I’ll cover all that some time down the line. But the concepts and exercises here will still be useful, no matter what you’re working on. It’s all arrows in your quiver, stuff you can use whenever it’s useful to you.
This series gets you a piece of writing, and in the next series we’ll learn how to work in detail on the writing we have—that series will be on the craft of editing /. Teaching writers my editing strategies from developmental to line editing, how to hear themselves, and how to be better self-editors is the work that led me into the deeper coaching I’m now so lucky to be doing. I’m really excited to share more of those lessons with you here! It’s going to be quite a summer.
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Let’s begin by backtracking a little.
What’s free writing for?
Sometimes to prepare for a piece of writing, you want to start by developing a thesis and creating an outline (coming up in this series!). Other times you might totally know what you’re heading for and you know you’re writing a first draft, or a close-to-final draft, depending on your aims.
But often you want to start by free writing. When you create that madman scribbling, you’re free writing, ‘doing a free write,’ or as my writer André says, “writing draft 0.” You’re writing without editing, stream-of-consciousness without reading back, without wondering, without worrying, just writing it out and carving up the page.
Free writing is specifically helpful in a few cases:
If you have a big topic and you’re circling what you want to write about for an essay or post—What do I want to say? How will I say it? Free writing can reveal this and more.
You have a lot to say about a topic but you’re not sure what the angle is yet. Free writing can reveal where your interest lies and energy goes, and what questions you have.
When you don’t want to wait to ‘manage’ the preparations for the piece before diving in and getting out as much as you can—if you feel urgently about a topic or idea, or feel like you have a ton to say and just want to say it, just free write it, no harm can come from this.
Any time you want! Free writing is something you can build into your practice, and is the position you take when responding to our weekly prompts—relaxed, and open. (Whether that means you’re putting down the notes breath by breath or wildly typing, you can be relaxed and open.)
By the way, I spell it free write and not freewrite because I like the helpful emphasis on each word split up, and I don’t like freewrite’s rushing, who-cares, lets-someone-get-us-out-of-this sound-alike to freeway. The free write is a free right and a free rite—a declaration, an ascertain of your right to be writing, as well as a demand, and a passage. Free write! ✊
Free write to first draft… or outline
Once you’ve got your scribbled secret notebooks, what do you do with them? First I’ll tell you what, then I’ll tell you how.
What you can do
Outline. You can build your thesis and outline from the chaos of your free write, which you’ll then use to write the first draft. This is helpful if you’ve done your free write in order to figure out what you are going to devote a post or essay to.
I’ll cover outlining in more detail next in this series, as it’s often the first stage for a piece of writing, preceding or replacing a free write. I’ll show you the shapes and forms it can take, but for now all you need to know is what you can pull out into your outline from the free write! That’s below.
Rewrite. You can move straight from a ‘draft 0’ to a draft 1 by rewriting based on the elements I highlight below. You could just work in the same document you free-wrote in, but here are two cool ideas:
Blind. One strategy I love personally and often suggest writers who struggle at this stage try is blind writing, or I guess blind rewriting—just print or pull out the free write and put it right in front of you. Then open a blank document and dim the light of your screen all the way down. Now, re-write the free write into a first draft, not looking at what you’re typing! (Blind writing is an awesome strategy that you should try for free writing too!)
Side-by-side. Another version of this is to just rewrite in a new document from the original free write, with the documents next to each other. Something about rewriting—retyping the bits you like, skipping over the bits you don’t—can be much easier emotionally than deleting and micro-managing the changes you want to make in the original text.
How you can do it
Whether you’re creating an outline of your new piece from the free write or rewriting it, there are several things to look for in your free write that will help you understand what you are writing about, scope or clarify your idea, help you see how you want to say it, the structure or form of the piece, and how far along you are in your storytelling or argumentation.
As you review your free write, pull things in to your outline either wholly or in bullet form, copy or retype them in to your new draft, or mark things in your current draft with a comment, color, symbol, or underline.
Here’s what you’re looking for to take your free write into a draft 1 or outline:
Repetition. What am I coming back to, whether a question, conclusion, or turn of phrase? Looking for repetition reveals where your interest or the piece’s tension is. This can help you hone in on a thesis or angle, or locate where your energy is.
Language. Keep or mark the words, turns of phrase, or whole paragraphs you like and want to keep using.
Logic. Mark or comment on stuff that doesn’t make sense—does it need to be made sense of in the next draft or cut? Does it actually reveal the main question I have and should be writing about? Does it negate my argument? Has a central tension been revealed?
Explanations. Look for areas in draft 0 that will need to be explained in draft 1 — who is that person you mentioned, what was that reference, what does this word mean?
Research. What’s missing in terms of the research or ‘proof’ or argumentation I need to provide? Do I need numbers, or to bring in other works?
Story. Where would storytelling or examples help me explain something or reach my reader?
Citations. Look for moments where you make a statement that needs to be sourced or fact-checked. Don’t wait to do this till the final draft, you will forget what you made up or gestured to when you were free writing.
Elements. As you read through your free write, pay attention to what the intro and conclusion to your piece will require. They may already be there! Did you find it yet or is it needed?
Questions. Locate places where a question needs to be answered—where have you introduced an idea that needs more space or attention paid?
Points well made. Bring these well-made points into your rewrite, or add them to your outline.
Points unmade. Now consider what you haven’t said yet. Add these points to the outline or start working them into your new draft.
Things my reader needs. I will share a lot about reader consideration in this series, so you can get to know your reader better and answer these questions from a place of empathy and information. As you review your free write, it is very helpful to read from the perspective of your reader:
What will they notice that I need to address?
What will my reader wonder about in what I’ve written or how I’ve written it?
What language should I explain? Did I lean on jargon or references that people won’t know?
Where would a story or example help get this better across?
What will they want to know?
Have I made the stakes clear?
Have I given necessary context?
This free write review will help you learn how to read your own work. You can build these questions into your process at many stages of drafting and editing as well. Next in the series I’ll walk you through outlining, so you can start to put the pieces together into your own sustainable process.
See you on Friday for a fun creative prompt. I thought of a great one earlier but I forgot it because the sunset was so beautiful.
☮ :)
p.s. all of these posts are first drafts from free writes!
