Writing, Clear and Simple

So you want to get started on some writing project—doesn’t matter what kind: essay, memoir, book, article, whitepaper, whatever. You know that you need to, or want to, write about some topic.

How do you begin?

There’s no single “right” way to begin; there are at least as many ways to begin as there are writers (and possibly as many ways as there are writing projects). For example, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley likes to use a journal to get started:

Some days journal writing is a kick-start. I circle around a subject, working out what it is that I actually want to say. My ideas do a freefall on paper—quotes, concepts, opinion. Usually at some point it’ll start to come together and I’ll find that I have a starting point (and if I’m really lucky, I might even have an idea for an end point).

I know that half the battle is just getting my butt in that chair—getting started. Part of it is working through the angles until I have some specific viewpoint that I can run with. I’ve been known to write as if it were a letter to a friend—I know I’ve found my subject when I suddenly resent the slowness of the pen. Nothing is fast enough to grab these ideas. That’s when I start to type.

Here are some more ideas to help you make that first step:

• Do a brain dump. Take a blank piece of paper and just start writing down everything you know about the topic. Grammar doesn’t matter, spelling doesn’t matter, organization doesn’t matter. At this point, all that matters is capturing whatever you have in your head on the topic. (This is much like Wrigley’s journal method.)
• Write down all of the questions you can think of. Ask all of the Whos, Whats, Wheres, Whens, Whys, and Hows. Don’t worry about the answers at this point. You may know them, or you may know where to find the answers. That’s great, but come back later to begin filling them in.
• Create a mind map. A mind map is a diagram of an idea and all of the words, ideas, concepts, and so forth, that are related to that idea. (See this Wikipedia article on mind maps for more information.) Take another blank piece of paper and write your central topic in the middle of the page. Condense it down to as few words as possible. Put a circle (or square) around it. Then write down the first related concept, topic, word, or idea that pops into your mind in another, smaller circle, and connect the two with a line. If there’s a word to explain the relationship between the main topic and the related topic, label the line with that word. Continue adding ideas radially around the central topic, and add sub-topics to the sub-topics wherever they seem to fit. Don’t judge or evaluate; just toss it all out there as fast as you can.
• Think about the structure. Forget about the content for a moment, and ask yourself how you could structure the writing. When you boil it all down, there are only a few basic organizing principles for any type of information, which you can remember using the mnemonic LATCH: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy. (See my post “Structure: Choosing a different viewpoint” for more information.) When you’ve got your structure figured out, then you can begin filling things in.

What are your favorite methods for starting a writing project? Add them to the Comments.