It's a truth universally acknowledged that first drafts are too long. Even in conversation, working through an idea for the first time usually requires a meandering recipe of spontaneous seasoning and invented methodology--you respond to your listener, divert into interesting tangents, and hem and haw until you risk losing their interest entirely. In the process … Continue reading How to Stew your Mess
Category: Wading through it
How to Start Turning Mess Into Magic
It's really common to hear marination as a metaphor for the thinking work of writing: most of us need some amount of time to consider what we're going to say and how we're going to say it. I prefer stewing. Thinking is hot and exhausting work; pulling the last bits of substance out of your … Continue reading How to Start Turning Mess Into Magic
How to Mess en Place
While the initial writing is necessary, and accepting its imperfection is the first step, this is not the best-writer face that we want to share with the world. The next part of the process is arranging that mess into prepared parts, ready for assembly and development into what will eventually become the final piece. Most … Continue reading How to Mess en Place
Make Some Mess
None of us is just good at writing, the first time or even the thousandth time: getting to the good stuff takes wading through an awful lot of mess on the way. And we can't do that unless we're willing to sit down and get our hands dirty. It's a lot harder to wade in … Continue reading Make Some Mess
Something Polished 