When you look at the end product of colleagues’ writing it can be easy to assume that others are just good at writing – that they find it easy, and they are just better at it than you are. (Oh, hello, imposter syndrome, fancy seeing you here!)
But actually, as we know from our teaching experience, most people don’t find writing perfect prose easy – there’s a lot of false starts, procrastination and even despair of ever producing anything worthy of submission.
And then, of course, there is the totally legitimate fear of Reviewer B!
A while back, at one of our regular Friday morning Write and Shine sessions, a group of us got talking about how we motivated ourselves to start writing. We promised each other that we would write a short piece each to explain our strategies in case they were of any use to others. Here are three of those.
First, Julia Bohlmann describes her technique, which she calls messy writing.
Second, Alison McCandlish discusses her method, which she calls popcorn writing.
Third, Sarah Honeychurch shows her approach, which she calls angry writing.
What strategies do you use to help you put pen to paper? We would love to hear all about what helps you to write.
Sometimes when I cannot find a start, I talk out loud and record my thoughts, then transcribe them. Or I used MS Word Dictate which is the build in transcription software because I find thinking out loud easier. And once there is something on paper editing and structuring is easier than starting from scratch.