Adam Luke

When doing writing tasks (essays or creative pieces) during high school and university, it’s always been reinforced that we carefully plan everything that we are going to write. I’ve never ascribed to this “principle” of writing. I’ve tried to plan in the past, but it’s only ever worked out to my detriment. It’s not that I’m lazy and can’t be bothered with planning; it’s just not my preferred strategy.

A few nights ago, I was listening to an interview with author Seth Harwood. He has a novel called Jack Wakes Up, which is written in the present tense. I’ve not read it, but the concept seems interesting. The following is a quote of Harwood in the interview:

I don’t write with an outline; I basically believe that writing is like paddling a boat across an ocean…and that you basically have to do one good stroke at a time, and have faith that your boat will get to the other side of the ocean. So you might not even know what the shore looks like on the other side, or where you’re going to wind up, or in writing terms, what the ending will look like, or what’s going to happen, but if you just follow each piece that you put down, make sure to write each sentence carefully, and as best you can, I believe in that process to carry you through to the other side, ultimately.

Hearing this actually made me rather excited, as this is how I like to write. Rather than pre-planning each detail, and what’s going to happen in each point of the piece (the chronology for creative pieces; body paragraphs for essays), I prefer to have a vague idea of what will be written, but decide what to do as I go.

This was, for example, the strategy I used for my 2008 NaNoWriMo attempt. Perhaps my novel didn’t have the most original storyline (it was a teen drama), but I felt that writing as it came to me was the best way to go. In the end, it was a failed attempt, but planning each chapter meticulously would have been worse.

The downside to this method, is that it involves a lot of editing. For instance, this method will put me far over a word limit for an essay (and now, I always have one set), and removing parts makes me feel like I’m butchering it. For creative pieces, Harwood articulates it a lot better than I can:

After I’ve written a book, and I’ve figured out the beginning, middle, and end…I know so much more about the book at the end, than I did at the beginning…at that point I can put in foreshadowing or heighten the themes that are going to come into play and be the most important in the novel.

This can actually act as a good piece of advice for me. I no longer write creatively, but when I did, I wouldn’t use methods such as this. I’d go back and edit, of course, but it would mainly involve restructuring sentences.

But anyway, the main message I got from the above quote, was that you can really end up with the same end product either way. Whether your preferred method of writing is to plan it meticulously, or just doing it “as you go” and putting in major edits later, a piece of writing will be just as good either way.

Note for those thinking “this post didn’t really have a ‘point’, did it?”: well, no it didn’t, but that’s precisely what my new “Thoughts” category is for!

September 6th, 2009 · Thoughts · Respond