For today’s post, I want to talk to you about the writing process, because if you are here, you either like my writing and want to know more, or you are interested in improving your own technique.
If you are thinking about writing a book, or if you are thinking about writing a term paper, the first step in the process is what we call the Prewriting Phase.
This deceptively simple term can be anything but.
In fact, this is where most writers from students to professionals get bogged down. Minds rebel when people become frustrated, don’t they? No sooner do they sit down to write than they often begin to fidget. I know that happens to everybody.
This happens to all of us.
We start to look for other things to occupy our attentions. The temptation to turn to the Internet grows large. Facebook calls you. Within the space of twenty minutes you’ve gone from on task to fifteen likes, four cute animal videos, and you’ve unfriended your ex because you just found out they’re in a wonderful new relationship.
So stay off the Facebook.
You’re supposed to be bogged down. Be jealous later.
Why did I say you’re supposed to be bogged down? The answer to that lies in biology. Blame God or Charles Darwin. Seriously. The difficulty with the Prewriting Phase comes from the fact that hundreds of thousands of years ago many challenging activities involved danger for your ancestors.
We’ll call them Ogg and Thagg.
And I don’t mean these were the modern kinds of dangers we face today, like watching a repeat of Miley Cyrus’s VMA performance. No. These were far more personal and existential.
Every time Ogg and Thagg thought about climbing down from their trees and leaving their caves, they had to face a bewildering array of threats. Ferocious Lions. Hungry saber tooth tigers. Gigantic bears the size of horses. Dishonest journalists and politicians. Those kinds of things.
Many of us would be lucky to face only the lions, tigers, and bears (Oh my), but we still have this residual fear from our far off days warning us that climbing down the tree or exiting the cave might be unwise. Better to stay in and paint on the walls. There’s less chance of failure that way. And for our ancestors, failure often meant being eviscerated and eaten alive by predatory animals.
(Ditto the journalists and politicians)
The feeling you get when you first begin to contemplate your written project is natural. Only, we’ve come a bit of a way down the dusty old road of time, haven’t we? The antediluvian portion of our brains throws us off. It is still trying to get us to stay safe inside our caves, maybe eat some mastodon with Ogg and Thagg. When we’re exposed to stress of the unknown, the primitive brain cannot make a distinction between term papers, short stories, and smilodons. It never had that luxury.
Have you ever wondered why it was sometimes sooooo hard to get working on your projects? This is why. You’re not lazy. You’re not flawed. Or stupid. Or incapable. You just have this evolutionary throwback inside your head working for (and against) you.
Remember that.
Later this week I will write more about the Prewriting Phase, and I will discuss strategies you can use to work with it. Thank you for reading this. I cannot wait to hear from you.
The Write frame of mind 