Do. Understand. Do Better.
Are you a learn‑then‑do person? Or a do‑then‑learn person? Whichever you are, don’t stop writing.
Pre-summary
How do you get better at writing?
When you’re learning anything new, do you need to understand it before you start—or do you only really understand it by doing it? And is this personal, or universal?
- Some skills need you to understand before you can do. Others you learn better by doing.
- The difference is complexity and risk.
- Writing is complex but low risk—so you learn best by doing.
- Treat research, thinking, and daydreaming as stages of writing (on the page).
- Practice an iterative process: do → understand → do better.
Two Key Aspects
I reckon there are two key aspects to consider:
- Complexity: Is it a single, simple step – or a multifaceted craft?
- Risk: Is failure catastrophic—or a learning opportunity?
If it’s a one-step task and failure is costly, learn first. As engineers say: RTFM – Read The Manual.
Writing is the opposite. It’s complex, but the risk is low. Unless you owe a loan shark half a million and your only chance of survival is to sell your high-concept script tomorrow, “failure” is just the price of understanding.
But make sure you fail upwards – by putting in the work. The only guaranteed way to fail is not to write at all. Or spend hours staring at a blinking cursor, telling yourself this counts as writing.
Nobody is starting from zero. We’ve all absorbed story since childhood. Books, TV, movies, the playground. We’ve learned to understand stories, and we’ve learned to tell them. Want to make sure your little brother gets the blame? Tell a story.
We’ve all got plenty enough to get started. So get started.
The real risk in writing: Perfectionism.
Pre-emptive perfectionism is the enemy of achievement. The real risk in writing is trying to go straight to the perfect finished product, which simply demoralises you when you inevitably fail. Especially if you have high expectations.
Take the pressure off yourself. Allow plenty of steps along the way. And treat them all as writing.
Research is important. Thinking and daydreaming are important. Observation is important. But they are not substitutes for writing.
They are writing, just earlier stages of writing.
Instead of treating each of these stages as a precursor to actually writing, turn them into an active part of the process of writing. Think of them as foreplay.
And yes, that means actual writing.
- When you research, write.
- When you think, write.
- When you try things out, write.
This is where that secret imagination book gets a workout. Use it as a writing playground. Be silly. Take things too far. But keep writing.
Give your Subconscious a Playground
A lesson from theatre rehearsals
If you’ve ever worked in theatre as an actor, you’ll know that rehearsals always get worse before they get better.
The first table read is wonderful. The first couple of days are inspiring. The writing’s wonderful. The other actors are wonderful. The director is a genius. Even ze orkestra is beaudiful.
But then, as you start to get to grips with the work, it all turns to brown stuff. There’ll be weeks of struggle just to get it back to where it was at the beginning. Days when you’re convinced it’ll close after one night.
Then, terrifyingly close to opening, it begins to feel nearly as good as it did on those first glorious days. But it’s actually much more solid, because you’ve done the work, and now at last you understand the play.
You’ve achieved lift off. At last the work begins to climb and soar. But you had to go through the valley of despair first. You had to do, before you could understand, so you could do better.
Two slogans for your pinboard.
When there’s no wind, row.
Writing is rewriting. It comes in four stages:
- Prewriting,
- Writing,
- Rewriting,
- More rewriting.
