Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

6Follow a Writing GPS

At times, writing can feel like birthing a Volkswagen to me (I've even used that metaphor on occasion to describe writing this book). The writer Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) has described writing as inching your way along a very dark, very long tunnel: you can make out the next few feet in front of you, but you're not quite certain where you'll end up or when you'll get there.

What helps with the uncertainty and enormity of the task is to start with some kind of process to guide the way.

When I was in middle school and learning to be a better writer, though, the focus was purely on the end product. My teachers emphasized the final paper versus the rough drafts and scratch notes that preceded it. In other words, they were more interested in seventh-grade Ann's delivering an essay on The Red Badge of Courage's Henry Fleming than they were in how that essay came to be sitting on their desk at all.

Or so it seemed at that time. Maybe process was part of the curriculum (Ms. Dolan, if you are reading this now, please clarify for me). But I don't recall much emphasis on the necessary checkpoints along the way to that final piece—the beacons that guide the entire effort.

Process is one of those things that in many parts of life I consider hopelessly boring and mind-numbing. Like peeling the skins of raw tomatoes. Or scrubbing dirt from beets. But in writing, process is necessary, because you need a road map to get you to where you need to be.

Essentially, ...