The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York recently concluded an exhibition titled “Matisse: In search of true painting.” For me, the most interesting part of the exhibition was the insight into Matisse’s creative process. If you write frequently and you want to write well, you have to develop your own creative process.
Every good writer has a process. Every process is unique, even though they all include the same general steps.
Capture your ideas. You get ideas all the time, but you can’t do anything with them unless you capture them.
Combine and modify your ideas. Most ideas need work before they become something useful.
Turn your ideas into a piece of writing. Revision is a big part of the process at this point.
Learn from what other people do, but develop a process that works for you. Here are some resources to give you ideas.
My post: “The Robin Williams Rules”
Michael Hyatt: “Using a Blogging Template to Write Posts Faster”
Karin Abarbanel: “Beethoven’s creative system“
Wally,
Developing a process is essential. Many people really like the idea of writing and they will dabble in it a little here and there, but they never develop their own process so they never succeed. I heard proof of that recently. I don’t remember the exact percentage, but a very high percentage of people that start blogging stop after a few months because they don’t create a process that works for them. Then afterwards they wonder why they were not successful. At the root of most, if not all, successful people is a tried and true process that led to their success. Thanks for the great post!
Thanks for the kind words, Brandon. You’re right. In almost every area of life, simple, repeatable processes are a key to success.