Most of the clients that come to me know how to do the later stages of drafting pretty well - taking a skeleton of ideas and expanding it into something more complete. But what is harder to wrap grasp is how to do something earlier in the process - how to write messy, write sloppy, write on purpose even when you aren’t quite sure what you want to say yet. I find that the earlier in the process you start to write, the more you can work with something concrete, instead of wrestling with it all in your head.
One of the most powerful tools in my writing arsenal is free-writing. Even after years (and honestly more than a few therapy sessions) digging in to why I feel anxious about writing, I've discovered that lowering the stakes helps me be much more productive. The more I focus on writing well, writing clearly, writing academically, the more I freeze up and don't write anything. But if I just commit to writing a sh*tty first draft, if the only thing I have to do is get words onto the page, then I feel much (but not totally) more comfortable with the whole endeavor. I used to be able to write very good first drafts of undergraduate, and even MA level papers - just a read through and they were ready. That isn't true of my PhD writing, and it isn't true of my professional writing. My first draft is usually one of four or five total drafts, with lots of feedback from other people along the way. So the first draft doesn't have to be 95% of the way there, just 20 or 25% of the way!
But making that switch in my mind was different than actually teaching myself to write a sh*tty first draft. It was a skill I had to develop, to let myself write more freely without editing as I go, without judging the work as it develops. Here's where free-writing comes in. This looks one of two ways for me:
1) I open up a blank Google doc, Scrivner file or Word doc and just start typing. When I'm in this flow, I type stream of consciousness thoughts, usually starting with how much I hate writing and how bad I am at it and how it will never end and I'll be working on this stupid draft for the rest of my life. Eventually, even my brain tires of writing about that, and I switch to narrating the task I'm setting down to do:
Today I'm going to write about how this newspaper article from 1934 records the unsanctioned screening of amateur footage taken from near the JESSE JAMES set. This is important because this proves that people saw the footage of the accident on set, and that it really did contribute to the backlash against the film, despite the studio's assurances that it was a non-event.
I usually don't use this writing directly in my draft but it does help me clarify my plan for the day, limit the scope, and transition my brain from "kicking and screaming tantrum about the idea of writing" to "slightly more willing participant in the writing process."
2) If I'm already feeling pretty warmed up, or if I've completed step 1), I move on to some of these writing prompt questions. Again, the text of these don't always make it through directly into the draft, but sometimes it does! But starting from these high-level, authorial reflection questions definitely helps me narrow down my contribution, instead of just narrating my research or my findings.
What is the most interesting thing about the research?
What was my most unexpected finding?
If I was teaching this source/study to an undergraduate, what context would they need to understand it?
How are my ideas different from the scholars who have looked at this topic/phenomenon before me? How are they similar?
Who will benefit from the research I've done?
What was the most difficult question to answer? What was the easiest question?
What Big Ideas in my field does this relate to?
What made me decide on this topic in the first place? What's interesting to me about it even still?
What questions do I still have about my work so far?
A pom or two answering these questions, and I'm usually ready to start working more formally on my writing: expanding my outline, filling in sentences, editing what I've previously written. But giving myself a chance to write in a low-stakes way, play with the ideas, and then move on to a first, or fifth, draft gives me a chance to get used to the physical action of typing, the headspace of writing, and sometimes even lets me tap into the fun and excitement of generating new ideas and putting them in a place where people can read them.