Three Practices useful for writing, no matter what

The Free Writing Method: Just start. Write your thoughts as they come. Don’t edit as you go. Don’t worry about periods, commas, spelling or even making sense. Just write. You’ll organize it and edit it later. If you accidentally put in punctuation, don’t stop just keep going. At this stage, you can do no wrong. That’s a great feeling.

Research: Research can be done in the library, on the Internet, or just through careful observation. It can start before you do your free writing. After you do some initial free writing however, read what you wrote: Ask yourself, “Is this what I want to say?” If not, do some more free writing until the ideas you want to communicate come out on the paper. Then ask yourself, “Do I know all I need to know to write about this idea?” If not, do more research. The biggest reason people have trouble writing is they are not sure what they want to say. If you know your subject intimately – that problem will gradually go away.

Outlining or organizing your work. It is very useful to outline your thoughts, but don’t get mired down trying to make it look like the outlines you did in school. Whether you use A. B. C. or get your roman numerals right is immaterial. The idea is to organize your thoughts. You can start by dividing it up into the beginning middle and end. Then divide these into main ideas. Remember a paragraph has one main idea and then a few supporting points, or in the case of creative writing, expanding details or actions.

Look at your free writing – how did it flow? You may want to change the order in which you present your ideas. It will depend on what kind of writing you are doing. Outlines can prevent confusion (i.e. too many ideas in one paragraph), show you where you are missing information, and prevent repetition and inconsistency.