At the beginning of this week, a friend and I drove from Saratoga Springs to Philadelphia and then to New Milford, Connecticut from Philadelphia. In the middle of the drive back, we stopped at a Starbucks in Trenton so that I could work on blog posts. This driving time diminished my capability to actually write, so I asked my friend to transcribe for me while I was driving. To my surprise, saying what I wanted to write was much more difficult than writing normally. While talking through this problem, I learned a few things about my writing process that I need to implement more consistently.

1. Spend less time focusing on word choice, and more time eliminating unnecessary words.

I spent a huge chunk of time switching between different words, most of which I eventually deleted anyway. I think I do this every time I write, but hearing myself go through it out loud helped me understand how unnecessary it is. If I can work on kicking this habit, then I will be able to produce better writing at a faster pace.

2. Focus on refining the idea of the sentence and finding its purpose in the overall work before nitpicking its mechanics.

The most important aspect of writing is not the words you use, but the idea behind them. I spent so much time bouncing between ideas and different wordings that the result was a jumbled rant instead of what I wanted to express. In the future, it is imperative to outline the idea of each sentence and how it functions to support my overall argument instead.

3.  Find your resources and examples before you start writing, so that you can weave them in naturally instead of sticking them in afterward.

It was particularly difficult to do research while in the car, so I ended up trying to find resources for the post when I got home. It was much more difficult to include these after the post has already been completed without entirely rewriting it. In the future, I need to be more consistent in my preparation of resources during the ideation phase as opposed to afterward.

Despite the circumstances that led to it, I think writing through speech like this was a good learning experience for me. I would highly recommend this exercise to anyone who is interested in developing a greater understanding of their writing process.