Getting (Re)Started After a Pause

I took an unintended hiatus from the blog last month. My editing projects got in the way of content creation. As I come back to the blog in June, I'm struggling to get back into the rhythm of writing a blog post. So, perhaps it is appropriate that the topic for this post is "getting started." I imagine this is something that many academic writers may grapple with as they stare down 12 weeks of summer with both hope and dread.

The idea for this post emerged probably 8 or 9 months ago when I was reading Roy Peter Clark's Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser. He described a new-to-me concept, the subzero draft:

"Think of a subzero draft as a prebeginning. It's not a story, but story dust. It occurs at the first moment that random thoughts, ideas, images turn into language. For me, the blank canvas most likely to catch them before they evaporate is the simple paper napkin."

He also described several brilliant literary works and life-changing inventions that debuted on cocktail napkins (you can read more about that in a 2018 blog post from Clark).

It sounded like a good blog post to me, and I made a sort of subzero draft in Clickup, the app I use to manage my blog and social media posts. That subzero draft consisted of a list of four different ways of getting started on a piece of writing, or maybe they are stages of getting started: (1) subzero drafts, (2) zero drafts, (3) freewriting, and (4) first drafts. After giving some thought to this and reviewing a couple of other sources, it's clear that zero drafts and freewriting are interrelated, if not the same thing.

So, in this post, I offer some thoughts on the stages of getting started on a new manuscript.

The Subzero Draft

The term Clark used to describe it was new to me, but I realized that I've been doing a version of the subzero draft for a long time now. I started in graduate school, knowing I would be required to produce a significant piece of writing by the end of each course. If a question or potential thesis occurred to me while I was reading, listening to a lecture, or participating in a class discussion, I would jot it down in my notebook. Then, when it came time to propose my paper topic or just start writing, I would review my notes to see what kinds of questions I had come up with and which interested me the most.

A couple of years ago, I was trying to conceptualize a new way of accessing the content produced by my small academic press—one that would allow us to both curate some pathways for users and give users the freedom to chart their own. So, I started jotting down ideas on different colored sticky notes—each color representing a particular theme or aspect of the process. While trying to make sense of this pile of notes, I discovered that 3M makes an app that allows you to capture notes using your smartphone's camera. Once you have uploaded the image in the app, you can organize the notes in any way you choose, add new ones, etc. Yes, I could do that with my physical sticky notes, but the digitized version was undoubtedly more transportable. The app might also make it easier to capture and share the results of a brainstorming session with a group of collaborators.

In an earlier blog post, I shared some thoughts about my first attempts at mind mapping, which can be a form of subzero drafting. I also shared some tools you can use to create a mind map.

You don't need a fancy app to create a subzero draft. Any technology that allows you to capture (and revisit) your ideas will do—that might be a notebook, a piece of scratch paper, a notetaking app on your phone, or even a recorded voice memo. I have used all of these at one time or another. The subzero draft has no set form; it might be a list, several phrases, or a hastily sketched idea. It simply holds the promise of something more.

The Zero Draft

The zero draft is very informal writing, where you try to figure out what you know or what you have to say about the nascent ideas present in the subzero draft. For example, the focus might be expanding on the ideas of your bulleted list, expounding on a phrase you jotted down, detailing how you could support a proposed thesis, or noting possible objections or questions you may need to answer. In short, you are simply trying to capture your ideas, though they may not be fully refined at this point.

Freewriting is one way to approach the creation of a zero draft. Peter Elbow described this strategy in Writing Without Teachers, suggesting that writers develop a draft through a series of timed writing experiences. The only rule is to keep writing without concern for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or any of the niceties that we frequently try to impose on our writing before it is ready. After each session, writers review what they have written, underlining, highlighting, or circling ideas that resonate with them. One or more of these ideas might form the basis of the next freewriting session. Elbow suggested this cycle of writing, reviewing, and then writing again allows a center of gravity to emerge in the piece. It helps bring your ideas into focus.

I'm not sure I see freewriting as a helpful way to write an entire draft as Elbow suggested, but I see how it might be useful for approaching specific sections of a research manuscript (e.g., defining your research problem or mapping out the discussion section). It could certainly be a valuable tool for developing the overview portion of a book proposal. For longer projects, several freewriting sessions might help writers get unstuck or begin thinking about the next section.

The First Draft

Roy Peter Clark describes the first draft as "writing in traditional sentences, your butt in the chair, your mind and hands searching for the right words." It's slow and painful at times (this blog post has felt like that), but I find that spending time in the zero drafting stage can prime the pump and make this phase move more quickly. Sometimes, I can lift whole sections from that early writing and put them in the draft. That isn't the goal, of course, but it's incredibly affirming when it works out that way.

I'd love to hear about your strategies for capturing subzero drafts and how those move you forward to a working draft.