Using Natural Planning to Write

[Anonymous]

New to the forum; sorry if this is old ground...

I read David's chapter on Natural Planning and found that a writing project I had been struggling over suddenly took a giant step forward. I'm trying to replicate that experience. Any articles or advice about how to incorporate natural planning or next action thinking specifically into creative projects like writing?

Thanks for the wonderful articles and posts on this forum.

Arthur

[Jason Womack]

Arthur,

Just an observation: When people clean up by deciding next actions on everything in their in-baskets, everything on their mind, a creative outlet just "shows up."

http://www.davidco.com/coaches_corner.php?id=5&article=26

In fact, I have experienced an incredible fountain, breaking through writer's block, just by processing my desk! It seems that as a creative guy myself, the stacks of unprocessed stuff can mount up...so, I work to get through what needs to be decided on, look at an empty in basket and clear desk, then I take out my writing tools and get to work.

That's something that has served me for many years now...

[Anonymous]

Jason,

I agree about the creative potential of clear mind, and thanks for the link to the article, which was inspiring. I'm still kind of stuck on this question, though, how to break creative writing tasks into next actions? Maybe I'm seeking the holy grail, and I ought to just buckle down and write. My wife tells me I'm a perfectionist. She might be right.

So while I swear by my next action lists and index card GTD system, still it seems like all the next action lists in the world aren't actually helping me write any faster - or predict how long the writing will take. And that, my friends, is the core of my productivity problem.

all the best,
Arthur

[Anonymous]

I just want to add that I do understand your advice, process all and then tackle, and I'll certainly try that.

Arthur

[Anonymous]

Arthur

In my spare time, I am a struggling, intermittent writer. It wasn’t too bad when I wrote short stories and poems: I could retain the flavour of the piece over two or three sittings and have a really good draft ready in a week.

Then I decided to write a novel.

Many years ago.

Over those years we have had a son, and I have been promoted to management level.

Now I dream of those weekends when I could get two extensive writing sessions done on Saturday and Sunday, and have a good draft ready for writing group on Monday.

I now have maybe thirty minutes in the mornings, maybe the same at lunch, and whatever I can salvage by getting up REALLY early on Saturday or Sunday.

So, how do you get a 70,000 word novel written over these scraps of time?

The breakthrough.

I read recently that Henry James would always write a summary of his novels first. The summary could be as long as 20,000 words. When I read this I knew I was on to something – the summary would in effect be a project outline.

I took this further. I decided the novel would have twenty-five chapters. I wrote down a single line description of the main movement that would occur in each chapter.

Then, taking each chapter in turn, I wrote down ten to fifteen mini-movements in bullet point format of how the narrative in that chapter would unfold.

The result was around three hundred action-steps. “Doing some work on the novel” used to be the worst kind of “blob” for me. Now that I knew what I was going to do i.e. write about the bullet points, the whole thing became easily accessible any time I had a spare half-hour to work on it.

The bullet points were the “next actions”.

It may sound like you are writing the novel twice, but when you think of it, inspiration, story-lines etc. don’t come to you in nicely written paragraphs – they come in snippets of ideas. As David Allen would say, do the thinking up front: work though your story line and jot down the main stages. Then, organise it into the chapter and bullet point layout.

I got a lot of benefit from this in that I could see the overall novel at a glance. I was able to move key action moments closer together to get a more intensive climactic effect: also, I was able to re-sequence some events to enhance a sense of mystery.

Don’t worry, this method is not formulaic and does not stifle the creative juices. For one thing, a story depends much more on the sequence of events rather than individual sentences for its overall effect. For another, disorganised creativity got me absolutely nowhere – just a large bundle of restarts. In fact, this method positions a whole feast of creativity up front without any of the drudgery of making up new sentence after new sentence when you write out whole new paragraphs straight from your head.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[Scott_L_Lewis]

Arthur,

Another aspect of natural project planning that can be applied to writing is mind mapping. A looser version of this called "clustering" forms the basis of a writing method which is described in the book "Writing the Natural Way" by Gabriele Rico.

Just like a mind map can be used to "dump" what you need to do on a project to paper without getting bogged down in the niceties of form and sequence, you can use a cluster to "dump" what you want to say on to paper without worrying about grammar, syntax, and sequence.

I read the first edition of the book many years ago, and have been using the method to write (and plan) ever since. The second edition is now in print.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like your organization is what many people would call a "first draft."

I've bought not one but two "how to write a novel in 30 days" type guides. You CAN write that quickly, but not if you're pausing to ask "what happens next" at the end of every scene.

They count 30 days from AFTER you've plotted and outlined.

Personally, I can't outline too far in advance without some "creative writing" to keep it interesting. I find that I can scratch out a very vague outline, which serves to get the first few chapters written, which in turn provide the inspiration and deeper knowledge for a more detailed outline.

It's a bit of back and forth, but it works for me!

ds

[mochant]

Another aspect of natural project planning that can be applied to writing is mind mapping. A looser version of this called "clustering" forms the basis of a writing method which is described in the book "Writing the Natural Way" by Gabriele Rico.

<snip>Scott:

You're spot on here. I do a lot of business writing and developing two nonfiction book proposals right now. I use a mind map for every project to do just what you describe - capture as many ideas as I can generate, cluster them, and then develop an organizational strategy.

It's a powerful technique and often overcomes the inertia created by looking at a blank page.

Thanks for the tip on the book... I'll look into it.

[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

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Busydave

[ceehjay]

Hmmm. I didn't try this URL, Dave, nor did I try the two URLs in the "Note Taking Formats" thread. Three different posts, three different user-names, three different URLs, but other than the URLs, exactly the same message.

Thanks for the virus alert!

Carolyn

[Anonymous]

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[ceehjay]

Topics containing links to people's sites are unneeded and contribute nothing as a whole, much like topics containing content like this one. You could have PMed a moderator and asked this same question and received the same [advertising link deleted by Carolyn] response. Please do so in the future.

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1) They need to change the subject line for Pete's sake,
2) We can see the URL for the link, and we don't plan to go there.

Carolyn

[TesTeq]

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TesTeq

[pigpogm]

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[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

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[spirithaven]

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[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

I got a virus warning when I went to this url ....

Please read posts before you click on links! The spam posts have nothing to do with the content of the thread. If you follow one of their links, you probably have a new spybot reporting your every move back to their servers and using your computer's resources to do it.


It's not us they're spamming, really, we're just innocent bystanders - it's Google they're aiming for, and as long as their posts are allowed to stay unmoderated, they get what they want, and they'll keep coming back.

That's exactly true. :-( However, the people at Google are extremely smart and constantly trying to stay ahead of these tactics. Hopefully, it won't be too hard for them to modify the credit of these links that come from forums.

-andersons

[Anonymous]

I'm still kind of stuck on this question, though, how to break creative writing tasks into next actions? Maybe I'm seeking the holy grail, and I ought to just buckle down and write.

I think there is a time to "just buckle down and write." However, as other posts on this thread indicate, writing can be much more productive when there is a plan, traditionally known as an outline. With a good outline, one can focus on writing manageable chunks that will eventually be part of an effective whole. Writing these chunks can make great next actions.

In my years of teaching writing, I have noticed that even my most "creative" writers blossom when they must follow a strict conceptual stucture. Mozart, one of the most creative musical geniuses ever, wrote music that adhered to rigid structure of form, melody, harmony, and rhythm.

It's when you have to develop your own structure, and don't know what structure will best serve a particular piece, that writing is hardest.

I sometimes work as a writing consultant for computer scientists who are amazingly smart people, but who have difficulty expressing their ideas. One problem is that they do not start with a clear idea of the take-home message of their successful paper or proposal. This concept is analogous to the GTD question "What's the desired successful outcome?" Having a clear idea of the main point of one's writing is the first step in the outlining or planning process.

The next step is to ask, "What are the different pieces that will prove that main point (or convey that impression, or elicit that response, or whatever the successful outcome is)?" Mind mapping, outlining, natural planning -- all are techniques that should help accomplish this step. (No single technique, as far as I can see, is "magic," including mind mapping, which has big fans on this forum.) Brainstorming and organizing are both needed here.

The next step is to apply the previous step recursively at each level of the piece you are writing, right down to the paragraph level.

So when do you need to just buckle down and write? First, once you plan down to the paragraph level, you do need to express those ideas in sentences. If you try to make sentences sound good on the first try, you may paralyze your mind. I just try to get the ideas down, no matter how ugly, and revise later. Don't be a perfectionist on your first draft! Second, if your understanding of your writing goal (step one) or how to achieve it (step two) isn't crystal clear (and it often isn't), you may have to develop it through less-structured journal-type writing. You can then use this unstructured stuff to help identify areas in which you need to learn more before you can write about them, or to look for ideas which can then be structured using the steps described above.

These are my opinions based on my research and experience. Thoughts?

-andersons

[jmarkey]

[quote=rough-draft] writing can be much more productive when there is a plan, traditionally known as an outline.
-andersons

I thought you weren't supposed to write the outline until you were done writing the paper, and then you wrote the outline after the fact to fit whatever you already wrote.... :twisted: (it's a wonder I made it through school)

[Anonymous]

I thought you weren't supposed to write the outline until you were done writing the paper, and then you wrote the outline after the fact to fit whatever you already wrote.... (it's a wonder I made it through school)

:D Yes, when outlines are required, this is what students do! But if you do this reasonably effectively, when you reduce what you've already written to its underlying conceptual structure (e.g., outline), you can see if that structure is weak or inadequate. Then you need to go back and revise your essay appropriately. The worst situation -- and this happens all the time -- is that students pull out an outline that really does not exist conceptually in the essay. And not just students: the computer scientists I work with, along with others in that field, routinely "structure" their papers using section and subsection headings which are expected and required in that medium; but the actual content in the sections often has little to do with its supposed topic. Or they include sections they consider to be standard in their field, even when those sections are not relevant to the conceptual content of that paper.

Writing first, outlining later is essentially working from the bottom up, as I partially described in my earlier post. This is often the only obvious way to get started. It's fine as long as you realize that it's only a first step. But until you extract and refine the top-down logical structure, and present it to the reader top-down, your writing will not be as compelling or memorable as it could be.

-andersons