My Writing Process: Manic, Chaotic, Unhindered

A look into my process, my style, and my mind.

There have been times where I have been prolific in my writing, publishing 20 or so articles in a month. Well, that’s prolific by my standards, but maybe not by Tim Denning’s standards. Either way, it’s a lot for me when I already have a day job where I write for eight hours a day already.

For anyone who has read my work, I figured I’d let you in on my process. It’s not anything special, really, but it’s an insight into my mind.

I write my articles more or less straight through in one go. Unless I put down an article midway and pick it up again later, I generally write a complete draft in one sitting. I do try to not put articles down, though, since they tend not to get finished when I have to stop writing them midway through.

My editing process consists of running it through Grammarly (and generally rejecting half of its suggestions). If I’ve picked up an article that I put down prior, I will sometimes go through what I wrote and make minor changes before I pick it up again. Other than that, I don’t edit.

Generally speaking, I can hammer out an article in a relatively short time: Anywhere between 30 minutes and a few hours depending on the length and whether or not I have to do any research for it. There are a few articles, like my socialism article, that required multiple sittings due to the research that went into it.

(That particular article also required me to not work on it for too long in a sitting because the research made me very, very angry.)

For as long as I can remember, I have written in this way. In my last article, I mentioned that I wrote a paper about Creative Commons and had something like five papers due that week. For each of them, I wrote them more or less straight through with minimal edits, researching as I went and citing sources on the fly. If memory serves, I didn’t get less than a B on any of them, and actually managed several A grades.

I don’t know or understand why I write like this. The words just flow from my brain through my fingers into the keyboard, hindered only by the speed of my typing. When I’m manic, I write more (although not necessarily productively), and the poor keyboard tends to take a pounding. However, even when I’m depressed, I can still get into this state of flow that produces my writing.

My muse is a bit of a fickle thing sometimes, as many people experience. I have to force her to cough up the goods for my day job, as I am under many, many deadlines, so I can’t afford to not write. As a result, there sometimes isn’t anything left for me to write once the workday is done.

On the flip side, sometimes she strikes me at odd times. Last week, I sat bolt upright in bed after my wife had gone to sleep because I had an idea and had to get it down before I forgot it. During some parts of my life, I’ve woken up at odd hours only to come downstairs and write on something or another. Hell, my Medium career was launched by a manic streak caused by an antidepressant I was on at the time.

There are also things that I write that never see publication. I’ve got a folder full of articles, some completed, some half-done, that haven’t been read by anyone but me. There are many reasons for this, and some of them may eventually see publication, but many will not.

I also do a bit of odd writing for the various characters in my tabletop RPGs that I play in. I’ve got a folder with a bunch of writing in it for a character that has become one of my very favorites of all time. He started his life as a sort-of Super Mook — a guy who was a low-level minion for a variety of secret societies throughout the world. Over the course of the campaign, he transitioned from a nobody with an unusually broad skillset to a reluctant hero to a magical knight with a heavenly gun. It was a blast, and I spent a lot of time writing his backstory and side stories throughout the campaign.

Honestly, part of this experiment is to try and get my muse back into fighting shape. I haven’t had a lot of inspiration lately, so this is an excuse to crack the whip on myself and see if I can get back into writing for myself again. So much of my writing is a function of trying to make money — my day job, my side hustles, pretty much everything I do to earn money is related to writing in some way. I’d like to just write something to write something.

So, here’s hoping that I can get back into the habit of doing this more often. Even if this project fails in one way or another, I am hoping that I can get something from it. And if not? C’est la vie.