Everyday Writing On Medium Made Easy

The Writer’s Process: Writing Made Easy (For Medium)

Guide to maintaining flow & consistency in your writing (irrespective of your busy schedule)

I love writing. It is my meditation, and so does reading. When you are a writer you can’t ignore your reading activity. The more you read, the more your words flow like a river while you write.

Stephen King says, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut…”.

I am a freelance writer, a mother of an eight-year-old, and a homemaker. I can’t tell you how busy I sometimes get with my motherly duties and household chores. There are times when I struggle to get quiet and peaceful time for my writing. If I didn’t set a proper routine and strategy for my writing I wouldn’t be able to write at all.

I know you might be in the same situation as me. The reason for your busyness might be your demanding work hours, your responsibilities as parents, the responsibility of elderly parents, or lack of focus. But I can help you with my writing process which can help you write even on your busiest day.

I have broken down my writing process into 6 key steps:

1. Collect Ideas:

The toughest job for you as a writer is to collect the ideas, so your productive hours won’t end up staring at a black screen or blank paper. An idea can strike you anytime/anywhere. Ideas may strike you in a weird place, like while taking a shower, cooking, or driving. You must have a mechanism to collect it and keep it in a safe place to work on it later.

I have my separate notebook to write the ideas when it strikes. I call it an idea book, where I keep my all ideas stored in one place. As soon as an idea strikes, I write it in my idea book. You can also use a Notion to do the same task online.

If you are outside your house and not carrying your idea book and an idea strikes you then make a habit of noting down the idea on your phone on Google Keep and later that day copy that in your physical Idea book or online Idea book.

I also make much use of sticky notes for my writing & ideas. These are my small idea bank. I use it to write my ideas on the go while they strike, and later on, note them down in my main idea book online/offline. I also use sticky notes to write lines that keep me motivated in my tough times, thus they are permanent on my writing desk wall.

2. Do Research, If Needed:

Before writing on any topic, I usually select one topic from my idea book and start researching it. For the research, I read books, blog posts, Quora, and Reddit on my writing topic. I also watch TedX videos and YouTube videos on the topic. I fill my mind with the required information on my writing topic.

If I have to write something related to my own experience then I can fully or partially skip the research step.

You can even interchange the order of Step 2 Research and Step 3 Outline as per your requirement.

3. Outline The Story/Post:

This is the best thing that I have learned from Anangsha Alammyan to outline my story/post. I have my separate notebook for the same called Outline Notebook.

Whenever I have a few points ready in my mind for the idea (or even when an idea strikes with some points), I open my Outline notebook, give it a title, and write down rough points or rough outlines in my notebook. It is like creating the very first draft of my story but in very raw form and on paper.

However, Anangsha Alammyan advises creating an outline of any 2 or 3 ideas every day in a notebook. This way you will never run out of writing topics and will never face writer’s block. She insisted on dedicating separate time for the same every day, but I tweaked it as per my convenience as every day it is difficult for me to do that in my limited time.

4. Take A Break: To Incubate The Research/Outline/Initial Draft In Your Mind:

Do you know our minds will always wander on unfinished tasks? Thus if you move to the next task without finishing the first one, then your mind has trouble focusing on the next task as it is still wandering on the first unfinished task.

As mentioned in the book The Writer’s Process: Getting Your Brain in Gear, its author Anne H Janzer, mentioned that, we can use this human’s mind flaw to our advantage. She mentions in the book that while we write there are two systems at work, Scribe (called focus attention) and Muse (called open attention). Scribe helps to write down each and every detail that is in our mind on paper with attention. Muse is responsible for creativity, and new ideas, connecting the dots between research material and coming up with new insights into the idea.

Muse can bring you ideas when you least expect them to come, like while taking a shower, driving, or cooking, and might not at the time while the scribe is at the work on writing.

So when you take a break after the research step/outline step/initial draft, the muse takes over and works on the unfinished task of material and comes up with a new fantastic perspective to write on the topic.

I highly recommend you read the book The Writers Process.

To make the scribe and muse work properly in sync and in the most effective way, I advise you to perform each mentioned step in the story on a different day. Or at least have a gap of a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes between research, outline, first draft, and edits.

I do it the best way, by doing my household work in between outline, first draft, and edits. This way while I write scribe is at work with focused attention and while I take a break of 10 to 15 minutes the muse is at work with open attention, meanwhile, I complete some or the other household chores. This way I consider myself working on my writing even if I am not actively writing. And both the tasks get done seamlessly.

5. Initial Draft:

Now, make a scribe to get to work with focused attention. If you have already outlined the ideas, then this is probably the elaboration stage. Dump whatever is in your mind on the paper or online doc. Don’t worry about the quality of the initial draft, as it is very raw work. Our task here is to empty our minds on the paper without judging ourselves and thinking about what people will say about our writing.

6. First/Second/Third Edits:

Take a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes of break before you start editing your draft. If you have privilege on time then a day gap would be the best. This will let the muse work on your draft and when you start editing you have a better and fresh perspective on the topic and your written stuff comes out polished.

Have one more round of editing (of course start it after a break), before you publish/submit your work. This will help you catch errors if any are left and sentence rephrases are required.

How can you write even if on your busy day?

These whole steps together take more time (like 2 or 3 hours depending on your story length). But you must not be doing all the steps in one go.

1. If you have 30 minutes of free time, then in that time, you might outline your one/two stories.
2. After that, you can take a break from writing and get back to other work.
3. Next, you get 30 minutes of free time, you can do research or write an initial draft.
4. Then again take a break from the writing work and get back to other work.
5. Again when you get some 30 to 40 minutes time slot free, you can do editing work on the initial draft.

This way by utilizing your 30 to 40 minutes in between your busyness, you can keep on writing your medium stories. As mentioned earlier in this post, these breaks between the initial draft, and edits, let the scribe and muse work in sync and in the most effective way.

This way, on each day, my writing work gets divided into 30 to 40-minute time pockets, and on each time pocket, I might outline, write the initial draft, and edit the draft for my stories.

As I mentioned the term time pockets, let me tell you what I mean. Time pockets are small amounts (maybe 20 to 30 minutes) of free time that you get in a day in between your tasks. Usually due to social media these time-pockets go wasted. But if you are mindful of utilizing it properly then you can achieve a lot more from it, like a reading slot of 20 to 30 minutes, a writing/editing slot of 30 minutes. However, most people are not mindful of this precious time and lose it. That could be the discussion for the other day.

Let me know in the comment if you want me to write the story on how can you preserve these time pockets. Write the word time-pockets in the comment section. Also, let me know in the comment, do you found this story helpful. Do claps for this story, as it will show me your liking towards it.

I hope this story is helpful in your writing journey!

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