Ease the Burden of Weekend Writing
Integrate your business writing process into your weekend writing
If you consider yourself a weekend writer, a part-time poet, or a freelancer on the side, there’s little time to waste dawdling in front of a computer screen, or scribbling in the margins of a page. Hobby writing is constrained by the clock. When you do find the time to work on a piece you want to engage with your storyline, characters, and language immediately. This is where a writing process can help.Use what you know
In hindsight, ignorance about the writing process likely cost me my first technical writing gig. I would regularly turn in roughly written drafts for review. To the reviewers, it must have appeared as if I had both an undeveloped understanding of the subject matter, and an inability to construct a sentence. Admittedly, I was a novice with little understanding of the theory behind the work I was doing. But what I lacked most was a writing process.
Experience eventually taught me to submit business documents that were as polished as submissions I sent to literary journals and periodicals. And somewhere along the line, when I made that connection, my business writing process migrated into my weekend writing and vice versa. I saw results immediately.
My hobby writing was no longer weighed down by my expectations of producing a fully-formed fictional piece the first time out and my creative work improved. In turn, using one of my creative writing techniques in my day job helped me to sort through complex concepts produced an unexpected outcome: I produced business documents more quickly.
From the discovery stage to final draft, my creative writing and business writing processes are closely matched. It works for writing the occasional freelance article, too.
Expect to write ugly, ugly drafts before the “first draft”
Notes draft. In the early stages of a freelance or fictional piece note-taking is essential. I consider it note-taking, but you can think of this as an outline. With my creative work, I have the luxury of scribbling in my writer’s notebook at my leisure. Then I transcribe these fragmented sentences as time and mood allows, something that is not possible at the office with deadlines breathing down my neck.
Once typed, I have an outline, and a rough idea of how the piece will be structured. Sure, it’s a jagged and gnarly outline, but, the gist of a story, personal essay, or article has been captured.
To compare, it’s like the technical writer’s discovery stage , but compressed measured in evenings and weekends instead of business days/hours. This content, however, is not simply bulleted lists of facts or system functionality you glean from reading technical specifications and jotted in point form. These pages are written using a stream-of-consciousness method. This isn’t the time to edit yourself.
I quickly learned that integrating freefall creative writing techniques into the first-cut draft at work—written longhand—helped me to understand new and complex concepts. This step has become the basis for every business document I write.
At work, limit yourself to 20 minutes, or three handwritten pages, to capture the information. With creative writing, allow yourself leeway in time and page count.
Rough Draft. When crafting a short story or other creative work, I use this as a jumping off point, always starting with a blank page. Writing from scratch allows me to organize my thoughts, and to work out what I am trying to say. It also allows the theme of a piece to reveal itself. Start to finish, this typed draft, which is a fleshed-out outline, is produced swiftly.
I skip this step in the workplace and go directly to writing the first draft, in part, because my communication pieces are direct messages that follow standardized procedures.
Creative writing, however, requires more rewriting. Don’t skip this step.
From an outline and a rough draft comes a ”first draft”
D1.This draft is an exploratory one, unlike business documents, where it is necessary to get straight to the task of structuring the document (and its contents based on an outline), the hardcopy from RD is a dog’s breakfast: construction is uneven, the text needs work, and there are editorial comments and writer’s notes all over the pages. This is why a break is essential: time allows perspective and an understanding of where you’re headed while still granting you freedom to explore possibilities.
For fictional work, moreso than for non-fiction pieces, time away from your creative writing project seems crucial where other forms such as non-fiction articles or creative non-fiction do not.
When I’m ready, I start rewriting the text of the rough draft by following the notes I made after printing the pages. I remove chunks of type—repetitious text unrelated to the central idea. I rewrite oddly constructed sentences. I puzzle over half-finished sentences. Years at the keyboard have taught me that the physical act of keystrokes shifts my left brain into gear. The tough-minded critic who slashes unnecessary exposition and telling dialogue, and cuts whole paragraphs without remorse shows herself. Bless her ruthlessness.
This is my third stab at writing, but officially, it’s my first draft. I set the printed pages aside and after a substantial break, I read them in one sitting, noting the weaknesses in structure and wording.
If I were at my office job, I would use this version to identify gaps of information and concepts that require further investigation and clarification.
D2. In the face revision and edits to D1, I let the piece cool for as long as my self-imposed timetable allows. When I start making edits I follow the basic flow of the previous draft, paying close attention to word usage, grammar and the finer points, in the same way I would check a business document for accuracy and completeness. This is a fairly easy, but sustained pass. The resulting piece is different in word choice and sentence structure, but I’m still finding my footing in the stanzas, or with the storyline, so it’s in this stage where I find out if a piece is working, or not. (Fiction and poetry can remain here in my personal slush pile; sometimes that means the work is abandoned altogether.)
Bring in an uncomprising editor for the third draft and the final draft
D3. If possible, I will again add distance between this and the previous draft: One or two weeks for an article like the one you’re reading, several more for creative non-fiction, months for poetry.
The uncompromising editor with her critical eye and love of red ink returns. I ask for her best work. She marks up the pages with comments about word choice, questionable grammar and plot cohesion.
In this third draft, revisions are specific to the objective of the piece. Does the piece fulfill its promise to entertain, to educate? Is the writing clear, engaging? Does the piece offer something to the reader?
In my technical writing life, this is the document distributed to reviewers. It’s good, but it’s not as polished as it will be when changes are incorporated in the final version.
Final. You can think of this as the editing stage. A short break between the third and final draft allows unnecessary detail, information gaps, or crevices in the storyline to show, anything I missed in the previous draft, or where the reader might become confused in extra-long sentences like the one you’ve just read. I fix those. I trim the word count. And I do all these edits onscreen as I haven’t a need to read the printed page. I am fiddling, then proofing. This is the version I will submit for publication.
At work, this is the version that is submitted to stakeholders for sign-off.
Bring your writing together
Bringing your writing process from technical writing to your personal projects helps ease a burden that is inherent in weekend writing: time. Your free time may be limited to one weekend day a month, or you may only have time to tackle your novel every other weekend. Plus, the distractions at home are innumerable, which makes the jump into your fictional world particularly challenging. And then, just as you gain momentum, the weekend ends.
To keep advancing on creative work no matter the genre, or form, an organized approach works best, just as it does in the office. Left to our own devices, we can get lost without a process to follow.
If you’re a weekend writer with as many personal writing projects underway as books on your bedside table, following a writing process allows you to pick up any work-in-progress, and know exactly where you left off no matter how long you’ve been kept from it.
This article appeared in slightly different format in the Canadian Authors Association’s (Ottawa) “Byline” Mar/Apr 2010 issue because it was rewritten for (but not accepted by) “Intercom,” the Society for Technical Communication’s monthly publication.