PRE-WRITING TO BE WRITING
There’s nothing more intimidating than a blank page. The worst part is how silly most writers feel being intimidated by it. The page just sits there, staring at us, and we stare back, unable to do anything. There’s so much blank space to fill, and so little inside us to fill it up with. It doesn’t seem fair, and it’s not. So every writer needs to bring something in to help level the playing field, something called pre-writing.
WHAT IS PRE-WRITING?
As its name implies, pre-writing is something you do before you start writing to make the process easier and the quality of your writing better. For example, we all do a little bit of thinking before we write — or at least we should. Pre-writing is a way to focus our thoughts and help us through the pain of writer’s block.
Maybe we don’t have a topic. Even if we do, we might not know exactly what we want to say about it. The fun of pre-writing is that it doesn’t matter whether we know what we’re doing or not. Pre-writing is a time we can use to experiment, to jot down ideas, to try new things without having to try very hard, to take a little time to gather our thoughts, and to choose a direction before we start drafting.
WHAT CAN I DO DURING PRE-WRITING?
You can do just about anything you want. You can draw. You can make notes. You can scribble random thoughts. Anything that will help you draft more effectively qualifies as pre-writing. I’ll give you some special pre-writing strategies in the next few sections.
The great thing about pre-writing is that it doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as it involves turning on your brain and thinking about your topic. Then, just write down whatever pops into your head. As you begin to put ideas on the page, you may start to see how you can organize them. Take your time. There’s no rush. The time you spend pre-writing is time well spent.
WHY IS PRE-WRITING IMPORTANT?
If you play a sport or musical instrument, you know it’s always a good idea to warm up before you start. That’s what pre-writing is: a warmup. It gets your mind loose and limber so that by the time you’re ready to start drafting, you can push the pen around the page without straining your brain too much.
Maybe you’ve had this feeling in school: the teacher says it’s time to write about something and you just sit there thinking, “I don’t know what to write.” You’re just not warmed up. And everybody knows you can’t play your best when you’re not warmed up. So if you do a little pre-writing before you take the field, chances are your writing game will be much better for it.
