Give Your Writing Process a Boost
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify ways to start the writing process for the best chance of success.
- Evaluate your writing from multiple perspectives.
Get Ready, Get Set…
Creating great content can be challenging for even experienced writers. So before you start typing, take a few steps to lay the groundwork for a productive writing session. It starts by getting yourself in the right mental space. Your attitude while writing will show through in the content you produce. So if you want to write something that sounds enthusiastic and gets your audience excited, it helps to be enthusiastic yourself.
One way to get into the right writing mood is to visualize how your content is going to affect your readers. Maybe it’ll help them accomplish a task or guide them to a good decision. It feels good to be helpful. So let that goal guide how you write, and your content will naturally bend toward being impactful.
Also, if you have a choice of when to start writing, schedule time when you can be your most focused and fully engaged. Wait until you’ve had your coffee, had a walk outside, or whatever it takes to get into a creative state of mind. Make mental preparation part of the routine.
Finally, sometimes it helps to “warm up” a little, and just get some thoughts onto the page even if they’re not perfectly worded. Then read through what you’ve written, and look for when you really start making your point, then delete the fluff before it. This is a way to metaphorically clear your throat. It also takes some pressure off of getting started with the writing assignment itself.
Get Perspective
Writing is a very personal process. You put yourself into your writing through your knowledge, experiences, personality, and biases. Because it’s so personal, it’s difficult to be objective about your own work, especially when you’re in the moment. You may not realize that your content makes assumptions or contains redundancies. And how do you know the tone that sounds good in your own mind is actually good for the reader?
It’s hard to tell on your own, so it’s important to get some perspective from the outside. The obvious choice is to ask someone else to read your work. But before you share your work with an editor, here are a few things you can do to get some perspective.
- Read your work out loud. Sentences that are too long stand out because you need to catch your breath. Also, the effort of speaking words can make it easier to pick out the ones you don’t need.
- Have a friend read your work back to you. Hearing your words spoken by another person makes it much easier to tell when something doesn’t sound conversational. Also, if your friend stumbles over phrasing, some readers will too.
- Give yourself a cooldown period. After you finish your draft, step away for an hour if you can. Do something unrelated to your writing. When you come back and reread your draft, you’ll experience it more like a new reader. You’ll see where you’ve made assumptions, and get a better sense of whether or not you’re joking too much.
As you reread your content, take an opportunity to do a copy self-check. Ask yourself:
- Is it clear, focused, and positive?
- Have you verified facts and claims?
- Would a friend or family member understand what you wrote?
- Does it make you smile when you expect it to?
- Would you want to do whatever the next step might be?
You should answer yes to those questions before you pass your work to an editor.
To recap, get yourself in the right frame of mind so you can bring enthusiasm while writing in the moment. Then, take yourself out of the moment to get some objective feedback for yourself.
Now you’re ready to write conversationally. Starting with your next project, see how fun it can be to bring a natural, casual writing style into your content.