stages of writing
Each post here goes through several stages:
Seeding
The idea is almost never born when I am sitting down in front of the screen for the purpose of writing here. It is born either in an irrelevant context completely spontaneously or while I am reading or talking about something related. At this stage, I quickly jot down something on Simplenote without paying attention to form or grammar. I often mix Turkish and English and let everything pour out with minimal friction. This allows me to have maximum linguistic access to the initial raw and fluid idea.
Maturating
I let these drafts mature for weeks and sometimes for months. (I can do this because most of the material I write here is not based on current events.) As I mentioned in a previous post, test of time is the best way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
Pruning
At random intervals I go back to the pipeline of drafts and delete those that no longer seem original, insightful, useful or sensical.
Harvesting
This is the most painful stage for me since I am not terribly good with words. First, I select some drafts that are ready to be harvested. Second, I decide on a single language for each draft. (For some reason, I find myself choosing Turkish for dirty, emotional and passionate stuff, and English for clean, logical and calm stuff.) Third, I flesh out the draft in the most readable and minimal form. While writing the post, I start interacting with the text itself. Things get deleted, new insights get born. This is a truly chaotic process which can be mastered only through repeated practice. (As you get better at it, you find yourself being lured away by anti-theses and enlightened by missing symmetries lurking inside the textual structure.)
Polishing
I return to the published posts a few days later to see if they can be improved further. I often end up modifying, adding and deleting a few sentences here and there.
‘Why am I putting this idea here?’ ‘Might it not be better in an earlier section of the piece?’ ‘Should I be giving a definition here rather than simply an illustration?’ Such questions can help craft a compelling and coherent piece of text, though they can be tiresome and even painful. This is why, unlike being in flow, writing is not particularly autotelic. One writes not because writing is rewarding, but rather because one feels compelled, or one has something one needs to say, or even, because it will feel so good when it’s done. As Billy Joel told The New York Times in 2013: ‘I love having written; but I hate writing.’
- Against Flow (Barbara Gail Montero)
