Overcoming Overwriting: The Art of Consolidating Thoughts

by

Kellyn Vale

We’ve all been there, writing a piece, drilling down thoughts as quickly as our brains will allow. Each idea seems more profound than the next until suddenly we come out of our creative haze and realize our 500-word short story has evolved into a 10-page jumble of words!

As creative writers, it can be difficult to tame all the ideas fighting to get out of our heads. There are countless ways to approach even one topic, and if you’re like me, you get personally attached to your sentences on an emotional level. You’ve created them from nothing, you see such potential for them, you desperately want them all to work, yet you have to cut something out! These can be some of the toughest times for us writers, but no need to fear! Here’s a process you could try to deal with those heart-wrenching moments when you have to *gasp* condense your precious thoughts.

Step 1: Make an Outline

Creating a basic outline of your piece before you write can help you stay on track by immediately pointing out the major details you want to focus on. It gets the wheels turning in your brain, and once you clearly identify the points you need to get across, your subconscious will already naturally be focusing on those when you begin your writing phase.

Step 2: Write Everything Out (and I mean EVERYTHING!)

When writing your piece, put every single thought you have on paper; don’t overthink it, just let it flow and blast words onto the page until you’ve drained your brain of all ideas related to your piece – key words being “related to the piece.” You want your thoughts to flow, but you also want to keep them on topic. I call this an “Objective Subject Word Splurge.” This step is similar to freewriting, but with slightly more direction. With a free write, your train of thought may make stops on several different topics. For example, you may begin free writing about experiences in nature, then shift your thoughts to forests, then to rivers, then to bodies of water, then the ocean, then the beach, then summer . . . and before you know it your mind went from nature to eating a popsicle in the sand and the content of the piece falls apart. With a free write you’re just a passenger riding the train of thought, whereas with a subject splurge you’re the conductor.

Step 3: Revise and Reread: Chop ‘til You Drop!

This probably sounds like old news to you seasoned writers, but never overlook the importance of a few quality revision sessions; read it on the computer, print it out and read it, is the whole passage in line with the theme of the work as a whole? Most editing tends to take the form of hunting for grammar errors and making sure the general organization of the piece flows. When your focus is cutting down on words, however, revising has to be a little more specific. For this step, refer back to the outline you made in step one. Revisit those key ideas that you absolutely need to include, and then go over all the content you’ve written; read it out loud – do some parts stand out as outliers that don’t really belong? They don’t fit no matter how bad you might want them to, like puzzle pieces from the wrong box. Identify those, and give them the axe; if a sentence does not directly contribute to developing those key thoughts into a masterpiece, then (you guessed it) out it goes!

Step 4: SAVE THE PASSAGES YOU CUT!

Chopping words and sentences out of your piece doesn’t mean you have to throw them in the metaphorical fire and lose them forever! After identifying what needs to go, don’t just delete it and never see it again, cut and paste it into a new document or folder and come back to it later; if it’s really that good of a thought, you’ll come back to it and create a whole new masterpiece of words, I guarantee it. Maybe even something you never imagined would come from its original purpose!

For many writers, consolidation is a brutal process. However, if you approach it with an open mind and positive outlook, it can feel cleansing and leave us feeling lighter at the end of the day; don’t be afraid to cut things out, it could benefit you more in the end.

__________

Kellyn Vale is a 22 year old student at Calumet College of St. Joseph. She has a passion for running, coffee, and writing. Kellyn is currently working as a New Media Journalist for Ideas in Motion Media and plans to continue to incorporate writing into her future career.

That doesn't--I mean does not seem right

by

Lily Rex

 

                Revision is, no doubt, the most important part of the writing process. It involves a lot of thought about what you mean to say and whether or not you can say it better as well as consideration for rhythm. Self-analysis is the key to deciding how to present the content of your poem, but careful poets should also pay special attention to the way their work sounds and flows when it is read out loud.

                Very few of us turn around and begin submitting a piece that we’ve written within a few days of finishing it—we recognize that the poem or story might not be ready for publication because it needs revisions that won’t come to us right away. When revising poems, it is a good idea to have a waiting period before you revise as well as a waiting period before you submit.

Since many of us writers have an academic background in literature, it can be hard to resist the temptation to interpret your own poems the way you would analyze a poem by Frost or Dickinson. While this can be a very valuable way to figure out what you want to say and how to say it best, beginning the process of self-analysis too early can make the elements of your poem sound forced. I like to refer to this as getting too close to the architecture of the poem. You’ve likely experienced this if you sat with one poem making revisions for too long and began to feel like you were making the poem too abstract. Setting a poem aside after you finish a first draft can be very helpful. If you give yourself enough time to forget exactly how you were trying to convey your message, you can look at your own technique with fresh perspective. This allows you to revise in a way that is friendly to readers rather than to writers (other poem architects).

            About the sound of poetry, Maya Angelou wrote in her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that reading poetry aloud helped her recover from a traumatic event in her childhood that made her scared to speak. She had a kind neighbor who introduced her to poetry, but that neighbor told her that one cannot truly love poetry unless they read it out loud.

            Reading poems out loud isn't just poem appreciation—it’s also a useful revision technique. Poems have rhythm and musicality. Even if a poet is not a spoken word artist, the way a poem sounds is a large part of the poet’s voice and the overall impact of the poem. Very often, I make small revisions in real time when I read a poem out loud. As I’m speaking, I will sometimes make changes as small as spelling out a contraction or changing "this" to "the." However, if a real-time change feels more natural in speech, it's worth considering a revision to the written version of the poem. Sometimes one extra syllable in a line of poetry can change the rhythm in a way that edits the voice that is supposed to be present and the dynamic of the whole poem.  Other times, one extra syllable can be enough to make a line seem crowded when read silently and feel crowded when read aloud.

                When the content of your poem might not be quite right, let it sit for a week or two. Next time you think a poem is perfect, read it out loud to make sure. These two tips can improve subtle elements of your writing, whether it is fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, by catering to your reader’s mind and ear.