How do you write things? (a thread about writing styles and methods)

Me too. And planning. And managing too - When setting out to do something complex, I like to define a set of guiding principles, then formulate actions that fit them.

My favorite strategy is to assign other people to write bits and pieces and then bitch about the crap I get and rewrite everything myself. Still better than starting with a blank screen. I’m also fond of using similar text in another document as a model for what I’m currently drafting. (I write long research reports.)

However, if have to do a bunch of writing, I find that a glass of wine is enormously helpful. (I am currently sitting at my computer with a glass of wine avoiding the proposal I should be finishing.) Sometimes, writing on paper helps. Typing can be a problem because I can type a lot faster than I can think of the next word when precise language is important.

Sometimes, when I’m really spinning my wheels trying to develop the structure of a chapter or a report, I do the opposite. I get a bunch of post-it notes and write down the different points that I want to make and stick them on the wall. Then I stare at them for a while and start arranging them into groups. Sometimes those groups gel into sections or chapters and I can start writing.

For me it depends on what I’m being asked to put together. In general I prefer to use a pure text editor for as much actual writing that I will do. Of course writing is only filling in the structure, and so I use different tools depending on the medium, and of course on the length.

Assuming longer works and structured documents (PowerPoints, Web Pages, Help Files), then I will usually use OneNote as an outliner. Although Word’s tools are nice, OneNote keeps everything synced on Windows and Mac and iOS, with the additional capability of adding random (but pertinent) notes to any project that I’m working on.

For such projects I like to do all of my main thinking ahead of time, to know where I’m coming from, and where I’m going to, and worry about things like dangling prepositions at a later time.

When I’m reasonably satisfied with structure, I’ll use a plain text editor (BBEdit on Mac, NotePad++ on Win) to write the bulk of the text. This keeps me completely free from distractions such as how prettily the page is formatted, whether there’s a single hanging paragraph, split headers from subheaders, widows, spelling errors, etc. I kind of get “into the zone” wherein I’m very productive.

The above doesn’t apply to PPT, though, because damn it!, don’t fill PPT’s with paragraphs people have to read. However if I’m adding significant explanatory text, I do like to copy and paste from BBEdit.

Then it’s a matter of copying and pasting into Word or into individual HTML files, proofing/correcting, and formatting.

In Word I get pedantic about ensuring that the only formatting is done via styles. For example there are no blank lines between paragraphs; I add trailing space to the paragraph style if I want extra space. Widows are controlled via style, too. Keeping headers together and with the first paragraph, too. And so on.

For HTML it’s really very much the same. I don’t bother to write much HTML anymore. Markdown is an awesome, text-friendly syntax, and CSS handles everything else. With different CSS the same text file can become a Mac OS X application Help file, a webpage, or a very well formatted, printed document.

I love BBEdit, too. There are a lot of text editors for Mac OS, and I’ve tried nearly all of the big, famous ones, but they tend to focus a lot on eye candy. BBEdit is very, very powerful (I used it for coding in addition to text files), but that power is out of the way and not at all in your face.

No, that’s a matter of personal taste and personal taste doesn’t change a word’s definition (ok ok yeah I’m being prescriptivist). I’m betting you’d feel the same way about a repetition where one of the terms can be substituted (red, red becomes red, crimson) and about that one, where the easiest thing to do happens to be to remove the second “wire” (among other things, because that word happens to be a bit short on synonyms).

English accepts repetition a lot more than Spanish does, it took me a while to get used to that particular difference.

I’ve written or cowritten three books and about 100 papers. Ever since I got my first computer, I have used an editor plus the technical typesetting system TeX. When I write, I just start writing, many of the main results are on scratch paper. As I write, I think about the organization, add sections, subsections as seems appropriate and, in the case of the books, drop index anchors wherever it seems appropriate. Then I write the introduction to explain what I have done. I do not outline and I don’t write an introduction until I know what I have written (which might not be what I thought at the outset). Then TeX creates the table of contents and the index and I am finished. I do, of course, revise, sometimes heavily. But the interesting thing is that I often make new discoveries in the process of writing, which is why I don’t start with an intro or outline.

Obviously, I have never written a work of fiction (I hope), but if I did, I would follow the same procedure since I wouldn’t know where the story ended till I got there.

Interesting difference in languages! I don’t know enough about any language other than English to comprehend that difference, but I find it really remarkable that it exists.

When I write, I do exactly what you said: I’ll change red, red to red, crimson. I can accept the (approximate) synonym much more happily than the repetition.

It’s difficult, because, I have found, when I use a word, it hovers in my unconscious mind, and my mind wants to use it again. I can go over a ms with a red pen and identify clusters of the same word. Very difficult to fight against, as it is so largely unconscious.

ETA: And, as you suggested, I just took out the second use of “wire.”

I make it part of my routine – every day, usually after lunch, I make it a point to write for at least an hour. I probably average about 400-500 words per day, with occasional big bursts of more than a thousand words.

Me too - and this happens a lot in my technical writing.

Another (quite related) thing in lists is partial or inconsistent repetition, for example, this is not OK:

[ul]
[li]Check that the widget indicator lights are all green[/li][li]Check that the control interface is visible from other nodes[/li][li]Examine the connectivity logs for errors[/li][/ul]

I would normally change this to something like:
[ul]
[li]Check that the widget indicator lights are all green[/li][li]Verify that the control interface is visible from other nodes[/li][li]Examine the connectivity logs for errors[/li][/ul]

It is sometimes OK for all three items to start the same, for emphasis (particularly if I’m writing something to be read aloud).
In the case that all items on the list need to start “Check that…”, I would normally promote that to a heading/prefix for the list - i.e. “Check that:” - if for no other reason than brevity.

It depends. If you used red twice because you were being lazy (and we all are) then changing the second use to another word is good. But if you are drawing a parallel between the two things, red, red is better, and if you are distinguishing them red, crimson is much better.
And if they are differing importance to the story and the scene, you might make one just red and the other something like “crimson as a rose in bloom.”

Voyager: Agreed on both points. Repetition can have a valid role in literature. “Red, red as blood…” “It was huge, huge beyond his comprehension…” etc.

I write fiction for children, mostly selling stories, poems, and plays to magazines, but I also have books out there. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I come up with an ending first. As in, here’s a cool twist, how can I logically arrive at it? Then I do a lot of pre-writing, in which I figure out the details, telling myself the story. Only then do I start to write.

Oh, and I strongly recommend reading what you’ve written out loud. You’ll catch a lot of problems that way.

It is reported the Mozart said about his music, “I write like a goat piddles.”
Well I am the Mozart of formal writing. I once misread the syllabus for a class and discovered that I had a 5 page paper due by 10 PM that night. I found this out about 4 in the afternoon. I sat down and banged out a paper. No outline, no planning, no idea what I was going to say when I started typing. I then did a quick edit for typos, etc and then submitted it.
I got a 4.0 on it.
At other times I usually did at least an outline, but I can write pretty much anything formal just by diving straight in.

Out of 100? :slight_smile:

I write very rapidly, and have a whole series of marks I use (e.g., ~ means "not the right word) so I don’t get hung up on details. Then read, edit, read edit…

I think about what I want to write and then I lay down until the urge passes.

If I’m writing a report at work, I first ask if there’s a required or recommended template. If there isn’t one, I ask if someone else did a particularly good report of that type recently for a similar project. Not only is there no need to re-invent the wheel, the new report is going to be reviewed by the same people who reviewed the last report. If the new report sounds familiar, it will sound right.

Other kinds of writing are different. But this works for basic reports and some grant applications.