Writing is like wet cement.

Writing is like wet cement. I begin by putting out some forms. I pound some stakes in the ground and nail up some cheap boards, not the best material in the world you understand, in a shape that appears somewhat like the outline of a finished product. (Mind you, I've only watched cement workers do this, I've never actually done it myself, so my metaphor may have holes.) Sometimes these forms are in the form of a real outline. For example, when I wrote my dissertation as a graduate student, I worked from an outline that my adviser and I had put together. It was not detailed but gave me a fairly general sense of the material to be included in each of the five chapters. Then, at the beginning of each chapter, I wrote another outline that showed the material to be covered there. On most days though, when I'm just writing for my work, or writing something like this, my form/outline is much sketchier and hardly ever written down. It exists more as a mental framework.

After I've gotten all the forms laid out, I start pouring in the cement. As I understand it, cement is a mixture of a powdery substance, some sand, and some water. Depending on how much of each of these elements you add, your consistency varies. My writing is exactly like that. Sometimes, I pour out words like the back of that cement truck has been turned on "high." I am prolific! I love these days. It seems like my fingers can't type quickly enough for the words, thoughts, phrases, ideas that are pouring out of my brain.

Timeout: let me interject that I do normally type what I write, on my laptop. Particularly at work, my writing consists basically of e-mails, memos, and letters. I always type these on my desktop. I do have a handwritten journal as well. I journal almost every morning. My journal tends to be much more spiritual and full of more introspective reflections than the writing I do on my laptop or my desktop.

Back to my cement: while I enjoy the days that the material just pours forth from me, on many other days I am not so prolific. Often, what's pouring out feels like it's hardening as it rolls down the chute. It just doesn't work. It feels bulky and lacks any flow. It's hardening by the second, and I feel like I'm trapped in it. I try to switch words around. I erase a bunch of lines, then start over. It's just a struggle. Normally when this happens, I quit. I just set the whole project/assignment/memo aside and leave it for a while. Unlike true cement, in my writing, leaving the work for later actually seems to soften it up.

Once I've poured all of the cement into the forms, I leave it for a while. I save it or close my journal and just let it set. I try to wait at least 24 hours before I return to it. When I come back, I read through it word by word. This too is sometimes like walking through cement that is hardening, even as I step. I sometimes hate to read my writing. I feel embarrassed, ashamed, even though most of the time, I'm the only one who has seen it. I almost always feel like I should have done a better job from the beginning. Anyway, I read through it and I begin to use those boards, like concrete workers do, to smooth it out, to put lines in it, to carve my initials in it. I bump it up against the forms, and I slide some of it from this corner over to that corner, so that it becomes more and more level and more and more serviceable for its intended purpose.

After I've finished this process, I remove the forms and inspect my work. I read back through it once more, this time to check for spelling errors, punctuation, citations, all of the surface issues that I've pretty much ignored until now.

I must qualify that in my opinion, my writing is ALWAYS wet cement. There is always more that could be done. I could continue day after day after day, reshaping it, revising it, but at some point, I've just got to move on.