Friday, September 18, 2009
How to Finish a Writing Project
Men With Pens: "Do you have a big writing project on the go? Perhaps it’s an ebook, a non-fiction book, a novel, a free report for your website, or a series of pillar posts for your blog. Whatever that project is, it’s probably not something you can knock out in an afternoon."
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The three needed things in this post are really interesting and helpful. Outline, Deadline, and Lifeline. The one that is really helpful to me is deadline. I know that I need to set better deadlines for my homework, more than just the day they are due forcing me to pull all nighters before the day. But also Lifeline is a good and helpful point to make. I know the people in my classes who I talk to and see every day are my lifeline and they help me stay on track and up with my homework. Especially when I see them working on things I haven't yet started, which makes me feel guilty.
This method can definitely also help in smaller writing projects, like papers for english class and stuff like that. I'm not a bad writer, but a very slow and often unmotivated writer, and it usually takes me forever to write papers because it takes me a while to come up with an idea for what exactly I want to write. The tips in this article were very interesting and will hopefully be useful in the future.
I think most of us have the idea of writing an outline and setting deadlines for ourselves, but the idea of having a lifeline, a person or group of people who you can talk to, not necessarily about grammar and things, but just bouncing off ideas of, is really useful, and good to do. The ideas this article provides is good both for the short english or history paper or the long novel as the article suggests. It's good to keep the ideas of outline, deadline, and lifelines in mind when writing a paper.
the first two things i usually do without even thinking about it, but the third one is one i never used for writing. i always use this for all my creative projects I had in my high school art classes. My best projects came from bouncing of ideas with my friends. I'll need to try it for writing.
Wow! I am blown away by this article.
I started link-jumping through the other posts and ended up with a huge collection of links added to my Writing bookmark folder.
I love writing stories; it was one of the reasons I transferred into a creative field from a technical one. Telling stories is incredibly important to me at a personal level. I do, however, have a huge difficulty finishing ANYTHING.
The concept of a "lifeline" wows me. It made me realize that most of my successful projects (finished or otherwise) have been when I shared the process with other people. Even just my roommate keeping me company is a huge boost to my sewing project productivity.
Participatory communities are GREAT with lifelines. Fanfiction is pretty much all about other people commenting on your work. Original work tends to be much trickier, though, as it's more difficult to get people to care (this is where the link for Making People Care About Your Characters comes in). I know there have been times when I've sent stories to friends and the .doc just sits in their inbox for months (I myself am guilty of this with my fellow writers). My mom, however, is part of a poetry group and I think such communities are wonderful for influencing the flow of work. Perhaps I should join a writer's circle for my writing and a stitch n' bitch circle for my sewing.
This article is actually useful! I'm definitely not planning on writing a book, but I can use this for my writing assignments for classes. I know that writing does not come automatically to me, and I think that if I keep Outline, Deadline, and Lifeline in mind it might help. I'm definitely going to try to find someone to be my lifeline, because I know that it always helps me when I get feedback on my work. Not only is this method going to be helpful with writing, but I think it could be helpful for many projects, including design!
Most of this seems like it should be common sense. one of the things that they should add is an occurrence that someone normally does in order to get into the writing "state." I forget who did exactly what but, some of the great American writers had weird rituals that they would do before getting to write. One would lie in a coffin another, would sharpen all of the pencils he had. I'm not saying go all out but, training the body in this way can only help the mind.
These skills are applicable not only in writing, but in almost any project you work on. Brainstorm, and plan you project (materials, processes, key points, etc). Set goals and deadlines to keep things moving. And finally allow input from others (especially when you are stuck). I find when working on a difficult project, getting input from my classmates is always helpful. Even if I don't take their suggestions, it usually leads me down a different path that I missed because I had the idea so fixed in my head and I have been staring at the same pictures for 5 hours.
Good stuff! I also like the part about setting personal deadlines for the project... finishing by a birthday, vacation, or other important date helps to justify getting things accomplished, kind of like a reward! The lifeline stuff is something we forget about--we are not alone! Get out there!
I really enjoyed that the three things suggested in this article can be applied to almost any kind of project. I think the first two suggestions, outline and deadline are very helpful and more commonly used. However I find that if you can find the right person, the third suggestion, lifeline, can be extremely helpful. Even with shorter projects than the ones described in this article, sometimes I find someone who can keep me on track. I promise to work on something for three hours and the show my progress and explain to someone knowledgeable how far along i am in the process and my reasoning so far. I have found this extremely helpful, because it keeps me on track and forces me to verbalize my ideas before they are completely finalized. This way I become aware of potential problems before I am too far along to fix them and I have someone else's opinion and point of view to help me finish the project.
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