The Four Stages of Writing Almost Everyone Hits

Just about everyone who decides to write on a regular basis hits four stages along the way. I will not claim that every single person hits them, or hits all four in the same order. You may hit only three, or whatever, but as someone who has been writing and editing prose for money for about twenty years now I can tell you that the majority of folks hit these four stages in this specific order.

Stage One: You have an idea. It’s your idea. Often it is a giant idea and too big for a new writer to take on. But you love it, and want it and will chase it for a long time. You may finish it, or you may bail and shelve it for a long time. A lot of people end up cannibalizing parts for twenty other things later. The important part though is that you have this burning idea that spurs you to actually dig in and give writing your all for the first time.

Stage Two: After you work on your first idea for a while (and a bunch of times I’ll see people think “This is my only idea I just need to get this one out”) you suddenly find more ideas. Then more. Then a flood of them. And you feel like you have so many ideas you’ll never be able to do them, you’re an idea machine! More ideas than anyone else has ever had!

This is because the idea generator in your head is like a muscle. Start to really flex it and it will be able to generate more. The trick, that you generally don’t get at this stage, is the ability to quickly know, on instinct, the ideas that are worth chasing and the ones that are just fun toys for a few minutes. That takes experience.

I’ve seen people think they have that down super early, but no, it really does take experience, I’m sorry to say. And you may even fight back against me saying this, because there are times it takes the fall to see the cause of what you fell over.

Stage Three: You’re suddenly a whirlwind who can write at blazing speed. It’s so easy for you. It just flows. You got this. You can write anything. The words just happen. Now, yes there are people who naturally write faster than others and there are some folks who are blazingly fast. But there’s a special sense of it at this time.

You feel like it is almost too easy, and that you must be great at this because it is so easy. You can just make the magic happen, and it’s great.

Stage Four: Finally, you settle down. You find your actual writing speed to produce your best work, and learn to weed out ideas without getting lost in too many of them. You’ve built up experience and then it hits you one day:

You know less about writing than you ever have. You don’t really know what you’re doing at all. I mean sure you can discuss writing, you can write things that people enjoy, all of that. But you also know you know nothing. You realize you will spend the rest of your life learning more about your craft, and never actually know a fraction of what you will need.

And that’s ok. That’s good and healthy, because it keeps you learning, and searching, and pushing to get better. That moment, when you cross over into knowing you don’t know, but still capable of pulling off the work, that’s when you settle into a mature writing state.

And it only sort of annoys you forever, when you look directly at it.

Enjoy!