Krashen (2006) identifies six habits of good writers:
- Plan before writing.
- Revise after writing.
- Delay editing while writing.
- Reread while writing.
- Write daily.
- Incubate.
So how do my habits compare?
Well, let's see. I generally do plan before writing. If it's a story, I don't even start before I have a premise. If it's an essay, I don't even start before I have a topic and theme. If it's a story, I think about how it will likely develop, how the action will progress from beginning to end. I also give some thought to the characters. If it's an essay, I consider the points I wish to touch on and how they interact.
I haven't been in the habit of revising stories. What revisions I've undertaken generally consist of little tweaks, often where tweaks were needed while writing. A good revision requires distance, anyway, so most of what I've written in the last year or two is waiting for the day I can read it critically. My essays are usually so well planned that little revision is required, but many an essay has felt the axe in places as I've adjusted for length.
Although I do tweak a bit while rereading, I don't get bogged down in editing before the piece is done.
When I get to the end of a section, or run out of ideas, or just get tired, I go back and reread what I've read. I look for inconsistencies and discontinuities, and hone in on the style and tone.
I keep daily journals for myself and three sons, write almost daily blog entries, and keep several logs related to work and study, so I most definitely write daily. I don't write stories daily, however. There isn't always time.
I work on a piece until I run out of exciting ideas for it or until a fresh piece suggests itself. After a break to look after the fresh piece, I return to the old piece, especially if I've come up with new ideas for it. For a lengthy piece, this process could be repeated numerous times.
I guess that puts me in contention for the label of good writer.
Krashen, S. D. 2006. English Fever. Crane Publishing Co., Ltd. Taipei, Taiwan. 35-36.
I don’t suppose there are any problems with taking a few days to craft ideas either, are there?
Recently in my story, the unlikely team of footpads had traversed the sands of a desert to emerge at a green and rich looking forest, at the foot of a large mountain.
That’s great, and they had reason to go there, but I had no clue what to /put/ there, in terms of both characters, events, and impressionable landscape descriptives.
Even now I’m still not solid about it, and I seem to have a difficult time putting anything together coherently in my head without having a crystal clear image of the events, characters, and environment in my head. Is this a normal thing, or am I just being difficult?
Comment by nakata — May 12, 2006 @ 12:21 pm
It happens. Planning doesn’t necessarily mean planning everything through ( all at once or at all)–or even keeping to the plan. It just means thinking a bit about what you’re up to and making sure you’ve at least got a direction, even if you lack the landmarks. Or vice versa, I suppose.
Comment by markpenny — May 12, 2006 @ 4:54 pm
What do you mean to incubate. I would like to understand the concept. Can I please have more indebt information on habits of effective writer. Thank you
Inez
Comment by Inez — September 19, 2006 @ 1:09 am
Hello, Inez. I’m moving The Online Writers’ and Illustrators’ eCollective to http://owie.targeteil.org. I’ll answer your question there, if you don’t mind.
Comment by markpenny — September 19, 2006 @ 3:57 am
Hmm. It seems you can’t view comments in my drupal installation without registering and signing in, so I’ll paste my reply here.
Thanks for your question, Inez.
Incubation, as I understand and experience it, is the process of letting ideas you’ve developed to a degree get worked on by your subconscious.
We use incubation all the time. Let’s say your faucet stops working. You might ask yourself what could possibly be causing the malfunction. You go to work, watch some TV, write a short story, walk the dog–do anything but think hard about the problem. At some some point the answer, or a possible answer, comes to you as if out of the blue.
I think that experienced incubators, people who have some control over the process, use this technique a lot. I do. An idea will come to me. I’ll take a few notes or give it some serious thought–and then go on to other things. Some time later, the idea will come back to the front of my mind with some development attached.
A specific example is a novel I started working on about ten years ago. It began as an exercise in exorcising what are called litererary extravagances. I tended to use too many too-elaborate similes and metaphors. At the time, I was reading a western by Louis L’amour and a science-fiction anthology by Arthur C. Clarke, so I chose to write a sci-fi western narrated in the first person by a cowboy. Somehow I had the notion that cowboys used a lot of similes and metaphors. I was right. I even bought a thick book of so-called “salty expressions” to supplement my notion with.
The idea was that my narrator would use tons of these expressions (many made up rather than traditional) and that I would get the tendency to overuse them out of my system. It worked admirably.
Meanwhile, I was writing a novel with some semblance of character and plot development. Yet I didn’t really know what the narrative premise was. I had a cowboy mixed up in a fight with the galactic underworld. He was an inexplicably skilled fighter. The underworld wanted him for something he had. But I didn’t know why he was such a good fighter or what he had that the underworld wanted so badly.
I worked on this novel a sentence a day for about four or five years. Then I got to a point where I just didn’t know what was next, because I didn’t even know what it was all about. So I let it incubate.
About a year ago, it came to me. Now I have my narrative premise–and it’s a good one that ties in with some other stories I’ve been working on. I won’t have to change anything I’ve already written in order to fit the premise into the plot. There’ll be some additions to keep the premise from seeming contrived once it becomes clear to the reader, but all in all the results of a four- or five-year incubation will supercharge the story in a way I wasn’t ready to imagine four or five years ago.
Comment by markpenny — September 19, 2006 @ 4:00 pm
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Comment by Idetrorce — December 16, 2007 @ 6:10 am