Writing and Process: how to be a technical writer without getting stuck

You may think of writing as a solitary activity. However, most high-quality writing has more than one person behind it.

Relatedly, writing is not a linear process. Some people claim that they go into the zone, type at a furious rate, and send off the result to their publisher, but this is not the way most writers work.

In this post, I take a look at how adding process to writing and introducing more people into this process can solve some problems and hopefully stimulate creativity rather than killing it.

If you're an aspiring or struggling writer, I hope that some of the concepts introduced here will help you get started or improve. You'll look at process at least slightly differently and if you make it to the end you'll find an open invitation to collaborate with me to improve your writing skills.

Can writers learn lessons from a production line?

We usually regard writing as a highly creative activity. There are an infinite number of ways to join words together and some of these combinations are universally agreed to be beautiful. Others are painful to read.

Writers are often seen as loners, sitting in thoughtful silence or furiously scribbling away. Once they get to the final page, they send off their manuscript to publisher after publisher until someone accepts it.

If we had a scale of creativity, with abstract painting on one end and assembling car parts on the other, writers would definitely fit close to Picasso in most of our mental models.

People don't talk as much about non-fiction writers, but presumably they would fit closer to the car parts assembler. How much closer? And how far left can we move along the scale before we kill creativity completely?

I take the controversial line that adding constraints and breaking problems down into well-defined sub-problems can be helpful, even in creative or abstract activities.

Before we get too controversial, let's look at standard pipeline for creating written content and then discuss what this means for creators.

The content creation pipeline

By the time you read a high quality article, it's probably gone through at least some of the following steps (and probably some that don't appear below as well). At each step, the piece of writing is passed from one person to someone else, and it can then either advance to the next stage or be pushed back for revisions.

There are usually at least two people involved. Some steps can be done by different people, depending on the structure of the writing relationship. But the roles are many:

• Topic (writer / editor)
• Topic review (editor / writer)
• Research (writer / researcher)
• Outline (writer / editor)
• Outline review (editor)
• Structural draft (writer)
• Structural draft review (editor)
• Draft (writer)
• Draft review (editor)
• Copy editing (proofreader)
• Design and layout (designer / writer / editor)
• Final check (writer / editor)
• Publication (writer / editor / publisher, this could be its own pipeline)

With the internet, it's easy enough for one person to do all of the above. This is both a blessing and a curse. There are fewer gatekeepers and anyone can get their content read by anyone else -- but there are downsides too.

Aspiring bloggers are likely to get the urge to create something, spend an evening pushing out words, and then feel disheartened when the results aren't what they were expecting. They'll judge their own work against work that has gone through The Pipeline, and it probably won't compare favourably. Or they'll suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect and assume that their work is top-notch A-grade amazing stuff and they'll be disappointed when it doesn't go viral or when their blog only has 12 readers after months of work.

Biases creative people have

Creative people, including most aspiring writers, don't like constraints. They don't like process. They definitely don't like deadlines or people telling them to iterate on existing work. And they don't like the idea that writing can be formulaic, or that following a set of predefined steps can produce creative output.

But they also don't like sitting for hours in front of an empty page wondering how to progress. They don't like it when they add yet another idea to the "things to write one day" list and know they'll probably never get around to it. They don't like writing themselves into a corner and wondering how to restructure things so that they make sense again.

Creative people do like sharing their output with the world. They enjoy being published, feeling the sense of accomplishment, and receiving compliments from their readers.

I think the bias against process and constraints is misplaced. Because of Western philosophical ideals and a focus on individualism, we have over romanticised the creative lone wolf and undersold the creativity involved in collaboration and systems. No one would criticise a writer for aiming to write a book instead of a library, so there's no reason that we should see the creation of even smaller parts as non-creative.

Problems writers face

Writers often get half way through an article before realising that the topic is slightly off. It's disheartening to start again, so they rework a few pieces, get frustrated that nothing lines up properly and give up.

Writers often get half way through an article before realising that they misunderstood a key part of the concept. They've been writing something that's factually wrong. They feel ignorant and disheartened and give up.

Writers often come close to finishing a piece before realising that it rambles and switches between different concepts. It has no clear goal and no target audience. They get disheartened and give up.

Writers often come back to an old piece and see it is full of poorly constructed sentences and typos. They get disheartened about their competency and give up.

Writers often lack knowledge in some parts of the pipeline. They use bad graphics, bad layout, bad fonts, or publish on a bad platform. These things contribute to an article not being popular, which is disheartening and causes writers to give up.

Writers often get lonely. They know they have days or weeks of work ahead of them, but it's difficult to start. Day to day, it's hard to track progress.

"What are you doing today?"

"Writing"

It's hard to be creative when you're depressed and disheartened and aren't in contact with anyone who understands what you're doing. You miss a self-imposed deadline and nothing bad happens, which makes the next one even harder to meet. You laugh about Douglas Adams:

I love deadlines. I love the sound they make when they go by

But actually you just want to be done. Finished. Published. Out of writing hell.

Using process to fix problems

Process for the sake of process is awful. Process to fix problems can be useful and effective. By breaking down writing into smaller pieces and adding more people to the mix, we can solve most of the above problems. Writing can become a fun collaborative activity, broken into manageable chunks which are passed back and forwards between at least two people.

Let's go through a quick example with two people, Bob and Alice. Bob and Alice are friends and both are interested in writing. Bob has been working with Froozles recently and hooking them up to an existing system that uses Frangles and he had trouble learning some key concepts. He'd like to write about his problems to solidify his own knowledge and help others get up to speed more easily. He asks Alice to take on the role of editor and they decide to follow the pipeline outlined above.

Topic (Bob)

The ball starts in Bob's court, as it was his idea. In more commercial contexts, the editor or publisher might request a specific topic from the writer, but here Bob is going to start things off with his existing idea about Froozles and Frangles. He adds a brief description of the topic to a doc and shares it with Alice.

Topic Review (Alice)

Alice looks at the topic and suggests that it might be a bit too niche. Most people who are interested in learning about Froozles don't have the existing Frangle system. She adds a comment to the doc that Bob focus more on the Froozles and also mentions that they can easily be hooked up with any *angle sytem, not only Frangles. She tags Bob to let him know she's taken a look.

Research (Bob)

Before Bob starts writing, he reads more about other *angle systems. He sees that they are all pretty similar to the Frangle system he is familiar with, and he learns how to integrate Froozles into the three main alternatives to Frangles. He can now make the topic more general, as Alice suggested, and help a wider audience achieve their goals. He pings Alice to let he know he's made progress.

Outline (Bob)

Bob writes two paragraphs outlining the article. He describes the target audience and what they should already know. He describes how he'll show how to integrate Froozles into any *angle system. He tags Alice to ask her to look over the outline.

Outline review (Alice)

Alice reads the outline and comments that Bob might want to spend some more time at the start of the article talking about why someone would want to integrate Froozles and *angles. It's super obvious to Bob because he had a specific problem that needed solving, but it might not be obvious to readers. She tags Bob to let him know she's done with the review.

Bob updates the outline and tags Alice. She gives a thumbs up.

Structural draft (Bob)

Bob writes out the level 1 headings for his article. He has an introduction section, a short list of prerequisites, a longer section on why it might be good to integrate Froozles and *angles, an introduction to setting up Froozles with Angle systems, and a subheading for each of the four major angle alternatives. He fills out bullet point comments or short sentences in each subsection, showing where content will go and providing links to external resources that he'll refer to. He tags Alice.

The process continues over several days or weeks, with the article being passed from Bob to Alice, slowly growing into its final form. It takes longer to get from idea to publication than it would have if Bob had just sat for an evening mashing at his keyboard, but there are fewer points to get stuck at too. Bob and Alice enjoy working together, value what they learn from each other, and ping each other with friendly reminders when they fail to meet deadlines.

Is there still room for creativity with this amount of process?

If you're a box-ticking kind of person, the above probably sounds fine to you. If you're not, it might sound like some form of punishment. Either way, if you want to write or want to write more and have experienced any of the problems described above, I'd recommend giving it a try and seeing if you can still find creativity in the smaller pieces.

Even though I definitely don't identify as a box-ticker, I think creativity can be guided by the constraints. For example, when you now you're in "topic finding mode", it's easier to dive deeper and try find topics that you really want to write about than when you're half writing, half researching, and half wondering if you should switch topics.

The process isn't fixed and shouldn't be used blindly (I wrote this entire post in one sitting and without any of the process). It should be adapted to your needs and used as a tool when the problems described set in and when it looks like it might be useful. Add steps or people, skip steps. Whatever floats your boat.

How can I start?

If you want to try it out, this is an open invitation to take on either the role of Bob or Alice while I take the other part (in the unlikely event that this post gets too many internet points and everyone takes me up on this invite, I'll help match you up with each other accordingly). I usually use Trello to facilitate the passing back and forth of content, so the easiest way to take me up on the offer is to ping me on Twitter, find me on ZA Tech slack, or email me by using my first name at my last name .co.za and I'll invite you to a Trello board to get things moving.

Whether your goal is to publish more frequently, improve your writing competency, or both, I hope a content pipeline might help you. If you're interested in more specific resources that can help you become a better writer or help you get published (and paid!) for your work, I keep a small list of my favourites on GitHub and would love to see pull requests to add more.