I Never Write Stories In A Single Sitting
Seventy-seven. I realize that could be interpreted as eleven times the dwarfs from the fairy-tale, but that would be a very crowded and claustrophobic story. In this case, it’s the number of drafts I have sitting and waiting to be fleshed out. Not because I can’t finish things, that I absolutely can — never left a pint or burger unfinished — but rather because my writing process is a little bit perhaps unconventional.
Well, perhaps not that unique and I would presume not everybody will find my process practical, but some might, especially those who don’t yet have one and feel like picking up writing either as a hobby or a potential source of “passive” income. For a bit of context, writing is nothing new to me. While not my profession, I have been writing since the age of around 16. Blogs, articles, music critiques, and even a 400-page novel I have in draft. I do like writing a lot, it suits me well as a form of expression.
Based on the above you’d think that I can just sit down and churn out a story from top to bottom, beginning to end. Nah. My process is a lot more ad-hoc and asynchronous than that.
Titles come like magic, but they carry value
Not sure about others, but when it comes to headlines, they tend to come out of nowhere. Things I have seen or heard, music, my mood, a conversation, a frustration, a random thought, I find that all can inspire me to jot down a title into Medium, and leave it there for a couple of days or even much longer. Some thoughts are from a couple of years ago and still waiting to be expanded on.
Titles for me are also a way to categorise my stories. Essentially all stories have a shelf-life, which means they may ore may not be prioritized. It’s no rocket science, it goes something like this — and as I am writing this, I just came up with another headline so make that seventy-eight drafts!
- Ephemeral stories — these are the ones that either touch on current events or tech news. For instance, articles I write about the new MacBooks tend to have real value for just a few weeks, views and reads tend to drop dramatically after about seven days, and within a few months, they barely get any attention. These I tend to develop as soon as I can, as they’re topical, otherwise, there is not much point in writing them. These get a priority of 1 and I tend to finish them within the space of a week.
- Mid-range stories — if I write about a new programming language, it tends not to be new for more than a year or so, which means it will stay relevant for months, but never for more than two years. These, I am not rushing too much to write, but after a couple of months, I tend to go live with one or two stories. They get a priority of 2 and I take maybe a few weeks to finalize them.
- Evergreen stories — for all intents and purposes, this very story is one I would consider evergreen, simply because I can see it being relevant even five to ten years from now. These are priority 3 and I take my sweet time with them. If it takes me even a few months or a year to put it all together, then so be it, no rush.
Intros are the most fun
I absolutely love going off the reservation with my intros. Heck, a good intro will keep motivating me to keep the standard high for the rest of the article. It’s a very powerful hook to the reader and a strong motivator to the writer. I have gone nuts in these numerous times. I always think to myself, if John Oliver can do it, so can I. There are no rules saying how creative I can get with my intros. Even if it’s a tech-related article. Why be boring? That’s so boring! Everyone can do that, that’s why nobody reads technology books unless they like boring, and boring is their niche.
Asynchronous writing
Sounds fancy and made up, and that’s because it is. Made up. Not sure how else to call my process so asynchronous writing it is. Essentially I start a lot of stories and I develop them randomly within the prioritization framework I created for myself. It can be as random as writing one paragraph for a story, another two for another, adding a header image to a third, and writing the alt text for a fourth. All in the space of an hour or even less.
I know it might sound chaotic, but I find it hard to just stick to one topic and keep writing about that for an hour or two. I will most likely stop half-way through this article and jump to another one, one I haven’t touched in a while but has a defined skeleton, which conveniently brings me to…
Skeletons, besides the ones in your closet
Sometimes I embark on a journey of writing a really well-structured story. Not like the others aren’t, but rather because some stories need a very well-defined structure first to be able to keep the train of thought till the end on its track. And not just the readers’, mine too! Being an introvert, I find it easy to ramble on when writing, because it’s basically thoughts to paper, no filter whatsoever, and to stop me, there’s no one there. But I must, because if I lose myself in my thoughts and derail, the reader will be just as confused, or at the very least consider their time taken for granted.
This is where a good table of contents for the story is a life-saver. A few level two and three headings with section delimiters can do wonders. It doesn’t just make it easier to write, but also to scan and read.
Implicit recursive review
Jumping from one story to another has a hidden benefit. Whenever I get back into a story, I obviously have to re-read what I wrote. This doesn’t only enable me to correct my mistakes, but also to polish certain aspects of what has already been written. Besides the obvious benefits, it also acts as a checkpoint and a source of re-inspiration. Essentially, it gives me two options:
- If I feel “meh” about the story, I can rewrite it or delete it entirely. I would rarely do the latter, but it does happen. I simply don’t feel connected to the topic in any way, which means there’s no chance I’ll do a decent job at writing about it. Remember, I write as a hobby, it just so happens that it generates some cash.
- I re-inspire myself reading my older thoughts in which case more often than not, I get a new boost-like feeling to further work on the story and tend to come up with a few more excellent paragraphs.
Always be closing
Or not... Well, for the most part, yes, you need a good conclusion or something memorable to land on, and I find that I often tend to leave a bit of time to come up with that. I very much dislike patterns like “so, in conclusion, blah, blah”. I find them very off-putting, rigid and uncharacteristic of creative writers, the category I’d like to think I am in, even if I do write a lot about technology. Self-imposing this limitation makes my closing paragraphs always a tad more difficult to write than the body or the intro, but it’s still a great space to shine as a writer, so the more creative, the better. For readers, it’s likely the last thing they’ll remember.
Writing for me, and for a lot of us, is meant to be fun. My process may or may not fit your style, and if it doesn’t, that’s perfectly fine. I don’t wear striped pajamas either though apparently, that’s the norm for a lot of people. Some don’t wear pajamas at all, and that’s also fine. The bottom line is, everyone does what works for them, and this is what works well for me, and since it works so well, I thought I’d share so you might feel inspired to share yours, be that in the comments or another story. There. See? I might have just inspired you! If that’s the case, claps are appreciated, subscriptions even more so!
Did you know that whenever you subscribe to become a Medium Member, us writers, get a cut? You get a ton of great articles, we get a coffee. Sounds like a fair deal to me…
Attila Vago — Software engineer, editor, writer, and occasional music critic. Pragmatic doer, Lego fan, Mac user, cool nerd. JS and Flutter enthusiast. Accessibility advocate.
