21 April 2015

The writing process in charts & graphs

Every so often on Facebook I see someone else's clever depiction of the writing process. For example this one:



Or this one:


Or even this one:


Today I thought I'd add my own two cents to the conversation on process by drawing my own chart. A few notes about this: 1) My writing process is influenced by my time spent as a college instructor of writing; 2) The process described applies well to full-length books, essays, and short stories but does not reflect my approach to writing poems, which consists primarily of vomiting words onto paper in a fit of inspiration/emotion, tinkering with them for an hour or two, and then calling it good; 3) Unfortunately I'm more a verbal than visual artist, so my chart consists mainly of words in boxes, but I did use some pretty colors. Oh yes, and I also provided a visual representation of my emotional state(s) during each phase of my writing process. Please to enjoy:



What are the stages of your writing process?

2 comments:

  1. I enjoyed the smiley face around brainstorming. Mine is somewhat similar. Mine would be 1.) Brainstorming, 2.) Research, 3.) Write 1rst Draft, 4.) Forget about it (by reading, writing something else etc), 5.) Write final draft 6.) Revise 7.) Submit/Publish.

    I found it interesting that writing the first draft to you has a sad face. Finishing a draft is an issue for me but I always generally enjoy writing a first draft no matter what kind of project.

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    1. Each phase has several different emotions for me, but this last time, the dominant one during drafting was agony/anxiety. It takes a lot for me to break through my insecurities around writing - what if it sucks? what if what I'm writing now doesn't go with what I wrote before? what if I run out of ideas? - but once I sink into a writing head-space, it is a lot of fun. =*)

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