Writing Process D1

Journal Mining

I’ve been thinking lots about how I draft a piece of writing. This document is my current process, written in “writing prompt” format.

Maybe no one ever uses it as such (a literal prompt), but I thought that it might be worth documenting my process even just for personal tracking and development purposes. If a random stranger stumbles upon this post, (you?) maybe it’ll also have some outside value.

Because I love little ciphers and unnecessary bureaucratic meanings, I titled this “D1”. I didn’t wanna call it “diary”. That felt trite. This is probably still trite. If I write another one of these someday, that’ll be D2, D3, etc. (This whole paragraph is basically a note to my future self.) maxie.rodeo is quickly becoming a thousand single page white pages for projects with no part two.

Journal Mining:

Look over an old journal. Flip to a random page, or just walk it backwards or forwards. Find some lines that stick out, marking with highlighter, or just take a whole page. Now rewrite it all (by hand!) on a new page. Practice direct copying, and going from memory. Let new words creep in. New motifs, new stanzas. Perhaps an arc is forming where previously you just had enjoyable lines. It can still be gibberish. Don’t feel pressured to develop anything cohesive (yet or ever! But especially at this point).

Okay! You should now have a whole page. Look it over. Either highlighting again the best lines, or just aiming at the whole thing; rewrite it again, still by hand. Rinse lather repeat. Do this a couple times. When it stops feeling productive, digitize! Now it’s time to make the leap from paper to PC. Format a google doc with your preferred typeset and copy the last draft to the computer. Again! Don’t hold yourself to perfection! Things can and will and should change in the transfer. Maybe you scrap half and find a whole new flow/direction. Maybe you just directly copy. Whatever happens, happens. But now you’re digitized.

At this point, you should have something. Maybe it’s just an exercise, but maybe it’s something enticing and delectable. Cohesive is not the name of the game, ever. (But it might happen!) Maybe the piece lingers and lounges in your google drive for three minutes, months, or years (if the internet survives three more years…) And then maybe you open the tab and wanna edit it some more… COPY IT BACK TO PAPER! It’s tedious and silly, but you might find that the document that tumbles back into your notebook takes on a whole other form than it originally took on the world wide web… again, maybe new things trickle in and old things trickle out.

This cycle can eb and flow at will. Maybe the piece dies in your notebook, and maybe it finds its way back to your google drive hellscape… The only other part to stress in this exercise is the importance of multiple copies within the internet. When you seriously revise the piece, or return back to the internet from paper form, MAKE ANOTHER COPY, label it draft 2, 3, 4, etc. Don’t just copy and paste the old piece, fully retype it. This is an exercise in building familiarity and seeing what sticks. Practice adding other sensory elements to this practice. Read it aloud to yourself in the park, in your bathroom, to three friends to 10 friends… See what you like and don’t like when you read it. Listen to other people’s feedback. Reading aloud can be a verbal form of editing. Let slip-ups and mispronunciations feed back into the literal page. Let someone else read it out loud and see where they stumble and giggle. Just keep working through your lines and reiterating ad-nauseum!