For many people, writing involves a fair amount of wasted time and effort. Do you, for example:

• Spend long minutes staring at a blank page?
• Spend longer minutes surfing the web to avoid the blank page?
• Try to make every sentence perfect before moving to the next?
• Go back to tweak the previous paragraph when you get stuck on this one?
• Stop to look up facts and figures? (And find when you return that you don’t remember what you wanted them for?)
• Puzzle over word choices or subject-verb agreement while, once again, your focus slips away?

If so, you are in good company. Everyone wastes writing time and effort at least occasionally. (Yes, me too.)

But the five-step writing process can save us!

The five-step process can not only make writing easier and faster but also help you produce a better final product.

The five steps are simple (though not always easy).

1. Plan

2. Draft

3. Revise

4. Edit

5. Proofread

Every one of the time- and effort-wasting habits above – and a host of others – can be solved by following these five steps more or less in order. (I’ll talk another time about how they overlap.)

We get into trouble when we skip a step or try to combine steps. Many people hate writing or think they’re bad at it because they skip step 1 or try to accomplish steps 2, 3, and 4 all at the same time. No wonder they find writing inefficient and frustrating!

Each of the five steps deserves at least one e-letter, so I’ll get into each step – and how the steps go together – over the next couple of months.

For now, try just one thing: When you sit down to “write,” consider that what you’re really doing is “drafting” (step 2). You’re not producing a final product; you’re just getting your thoughts down. Drafting is messy and fast – way faster than what most people think of as “writing,” and way more fun.

Of course, before you draft (step 2), you should plan (step 1). We’ll start there next time. If you don’t get this newsletter by email, use the sign-up form below so you don’t miss a single step.