The Bill Clinton Secret to Writing

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I’ve been a bit busy in wrapping up a few of my projects.A  So I’ll let my friend Daphne take over this post…

The Bill Clinton secret to writing

Last night, my 13-year-old daughter came to me complaining about her social studies homework. “I just can’t make myself do it, Mom,” she said. “It’s soooooo boring.” I squelched the urge to scream, “That’s because the school system has given you the world’s worst textbook.” (Is being dull a requirement for textbook writers? It surely seems so.) Instead, in my best and most patient writing-coach voice, I suggested that she emulate Bill Clinton.

No, it’s not what you might think. It’s just that we had recently watched him in the wonderful DVD Wordplay. If you haven’t seen this charming documentary yet, rush to your local store and rent it immediately. The movie is all about crossword puzzles and it includes interviews with, among others, the former president. He’s certainly not the most interesting or proficient puzzler of the bunch — the real fanatics brag about doing the weekend New York Times crossword in four minutes, in pen! But he does have a strategy worth emulating.

Clinton explains how he looks over the puzzle until he finds one clue he can answer easily. From there, he goes on to look for other openings. I’m paraphrasing here, but he says something like: “I just kind of chip away at it.”

You’ve probably done this with crosswords, too — but did you ever think to adopt the same strategy with writing? Remember the old joke “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: One bite at a time. Turns out this works for writing, too.

When I produce my newsletter, for example, I never do it all in one go. It takes me about two hours — but I spread it out over six days, mostly in five- to 30-minute increments. Here’s the drill:

Day 1: pick topic
Day 2: do a mindmap
Day 3: start writing
Day 4: write some more
Day 5: revise and copy edit
Day 6: enter into software and proofread

Whether you’re faced with a tricky crossword puzzle or a difficult piece of writing, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. But you can fight that feeling by doing just a little bit at a time, taking a break and then going back to it.

Just as waves gradually wear down granite, so, too, your tiny but repeated efforts will eventually show impressive results.

Daphne Gray-Grant is a writing coach with an international practice. Sign up for her fra_Tee weekly newsletter Power Writing by going to her website www.publicationcoach.comA 

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Its not necessary to stretch the work out to 6 days.A  But its a good idea to stretch it out to 2 days at least.A  What I usually do is sit down at the beginning of the month and write down ideas for about 15-20 posts.A  And create quick mindmaps or bullet points for each of them (Daphne’s day 1 & Day 2.)

And then I pick up one of those topics and write a blog post on it.A  And publish it either after a couple of hours, or the next day.A  (Daphne’s day 3 to 6.)

I never publish the post as soon as I’ve written it down. What I do is usually timestamp the post to be published after a few hours.A  So that I have time to refine and edit the post further. (Disclosure: I don’t usually proof read these posts though as Daphne suggests you should.)

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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Writing on 28 Nov 2007

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