Sketching Your Writing

Completing a fully formed piece of writing requires several steps.  The first is to sketch your idea from beginning to finish.  This gives you a rough outline or skeleton of what your piece will encompass.  By doing this, you're defining the scope of your story, poem or essay, and outlining its borders, beyond which you won't venture.  You're defining your focus and placing limits on your idea.  For example, you may decide your story needs to be contained within a certain time period and not go outside of that time frame.  Or you may decide your poem needs to be limited to a single image or theme and not deviate beyond that singularity of focus.  Your essay may be restricted to a single premise or thesis and not stray outside of those parameters.  To understand the breadth of your idea, you need to first sketch it out by knowing your whole story, essay or poem before you begin writing it.  This early process is far from refined and is always open to change.  Your goal is not to be perfect, but to be clear.  So your sketch may be clumsily worded and awkward, but that doesn't matter.  You just want to get your ideas down, all of your ideas, so you can begin to see the whole picture forming in your mind.  Then you can go back and start filling in the details and do the hard composing and refining work that is necessary to achieve a polished piece.  Much like an artist would first make a sketch on the canvas before applying paint in order to produce a better painting, a writer can make good use of a preliminary sketch before applying creativity and talent in order to produce better writing.  The sketching can be thought of as a guide or plan to help you stay on track, focus your writing, and supply the kinds of layering and details needed to fully flesh out your idea.  Rather than jumping into a blank writing canvas with only a vague notion of what you expect to accomplish, try taking the time to sketch out your ideas first, get a feel for what you're about to embark on, and create a reference point you can rely on consistently as you begin the hard work of composing.  It may not be the most glamorous writing task you will perform, but it is well worth your time.  At the very least, it will make your writing process easier and more likely to be completed.