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How Cheryl writes an article...

Cheryl's Musings: How Cheryl writes an article...

Cheryl's Musings

How to Thrive on the Writer's Road

Thursday

How Cheryl writes an article...

Here are the eight steps I use for writing a nonfiction article. Use them at your peril:

  1. Find Idea. (Mood=Ridiculously optimistic) (Actions=brainstorm a million beautiful words)

  2. Begin Research. (Mood=Wow! This is so cool!) (Actions=spend hours collecting and reading articles, get distracted by every available nuance of every available topic)

  3. Write Outline. (Mood=Man, this will be a cinch!) (Actions=daydream in tub)

  4. Write 1st Draft. (Mood=Danger! Danger! What the heck was I thinking?) (Actions=Polish nails, repaint living room, write new blog posts)

  5. Rewrite. (Mood=Man, this is really, really terrible) (Actions=Pick off nail polish, write more blog posts, check flights to Australia)

  6. Rewrite more. (Mood=Maybe this will work...probably not, but it's definitely possible) (Actions=Rearrange commas, read manuscript aloud, get excited by discovery of perfect introduction idea)

  7. Rewrite still more. (Mood=Hey, this is actually getting somewhere!) (Actions=Rewrite more)

  8. Give article final polish. (Mood=Relief) (Actions=resist sending it off before critique group review)

  9. Dream up next projects (Mood=That wasn't so bad! Hey, I should write these other 20 books and articles. Tomorrow. Before breakfast. It'll be a piece of cake!)

~Cheryl

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2 Comments:

At April 3, 2008 at 12:05 PM , Blogger Terry Stynes said...

Hey Cheryl, I will give it a go and see if it worksas well for me as it does for you.

 
At April 4, 2008 at 3:54 PM , Blogger Celeste said...

Wow, Cheryl! Sounds just like my day with a non-writer twist. Start a load of laundry, organize my desk to pay bills, oh yeah, get breakfast, OH, finish starting a load of laundry, eat breakfast, help kids with schoolwork, answer the phone, attack hordes of ladybugs in the kitchen with a vaccuum cleaner, help kids, oh yeah, start to pay bills, but there's more ladybugs!!, gee, it's time to start making dinner... Maybe one day I'll actually get something accomplished like you do.

 

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