Using the Writing Process Effectively, Part 1: Knowing When to Plan

Challenging work-related writing requires three steps:

• Step 1: Planning – brainstorming and organizing ideas. In this step, you are listing thoughts from your notes research, or off the top of your head, on or offscreen, that need to appear in your draft. 
• Step 2: Drafting – writing a rough copy. When drafting, you are prizing volume of content over quality of expression because you'll have time to make necessary changes in the third step.
• Step 3: Quality Controlling – revising, editing, proofreading. In this three-part step, you protect your REP (Revise, Edit, Proofread): revise by moving, adding, and deleting ideas; edit for tone, clarity, conciseness, and correctness of grammar, diction, punctuation, and mechanics; and proofreading for overlooked errors. 

If you can skip planning and start drafting, go right ahead. Why waste your time planning if you know what to write? 

But you'll know you need to plan—to generate and structure ideas for the first draft—in any of the following situations:

• Writer's Block – You get stuck, your eyes fixated on the blinking cursor, your fingers paralyzed, your mind locked on the last idea.
• Premature Perfectionism – You spend more time revising, editing, and proofreading one idea than you do moving ahead to the second, third, and fourth ones.
• Procrastination – You find yourself wanting to do anything other than finish that darn draft.
• Stress – You feel the whole writing experience is too painful, either mental exhausting or emotionally taxing.

The beauty of the planning step is its low expectations of perfectionists. By definition, you are not experiencing writer's block or stress in the planning step because you are just dropping on a page or the screen ideas as they pop in your head. You'll write single words, short phrases, or even as pictures to represent those ideas with no attention to quality language. In fact, you don't even need to use English. I often encourage nonnative speakers to use their first language in the planning step if it helps them. 

So how do we plan a draft? Stay tuned for the next post.