I admire organized people. I really do. They have planners and charts and spreadsheets and pay their bills on time, and generally seem to have their stuff together. That\u2019s probably pretty cool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am not an organized person, so I wouldn\u2019t know.\u00a0 I spend a lot of my time at the ragged edge of disaster, staring into the abyss.\u00a0 Some of this is just because life (or my life, at least) tends to laugh at neatly organized plans and go pear-shaped at the least convenient times.\u00a0 Some of it, though, is because forcing myself to use planners and charts and spreadsheets makes me feel like little pieces of my soul are dying\u2014I get that they’re useful tools, they\u2019re just not something that work well with my personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What does this have to do with writing? Here\u2019s the fun part: I am not an organized person, and I don\u2019t particularly want to be an organized person, but I recognize that a well-organized essay is more effective (and more likely to get a good grade) than a poorly-organized one. So to organize my thoughts and get an idea of how to structure an essay without using charts or outlines or other more rigid organizational tools that feel like they\u2019re trying to narrow my thoughts in unproductive ways, sometimes I make lists. Just lists: lists of words I might want to use, lists of concepts I might or should cover, lists of partial thoughts and sentences, lists of questions, lists of ways I could argue or support a point. Sometimes my lists end up with sub-lists and turn into informal outlines, but they\u2019re still loose enough that I feel like I have room for my thoughts to flow and change direction if necessary. I can start organizing my ideas without feeling like I\u2019m strangling them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut wait!\u201d you say. \u201cI love charts!\u00a0 I can\u2019t write unless I have my ideas in a spreadsheet!\u00a0 What are you saying, you monster<\/em>!?\u201d\u00a0 Chillax, friends!\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying you should burn your outlines and dance on the ashes\u2014if outlines or charts or spreadsheets work for you, that\u2019s awesome.\u00a0 Keep up the good writing!\u00a0 But the more I work with writers, the more I realize that there are a<\/em> lot<\/em> of different ways to come at writing, and that what works for one writer, or even the majority of writers, might not work for all writers.\u00a0 So if you have tried the charts and spreadsheets and outlines and sometimes feel, like me, that it\u2019s like trying to force a square peg into a round hole, then I offer you list-making: organization for the organization-phobic.\u00a0 It\u2019s just one more tool to put into your writing toolbox. Maybe you’ll find it more useful than the hammer you’ve been trying to write with. Or maybe you’ll pick it up, try it once, and say “nah, not for me. I’m going back to the hammer.” It’s all good.\u00a0 Find what works for you! Writing is a big wide world, and you have lots of options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I admire organized people. I really do. They have planners and charts and spreadsheets and pay their bills on time, and generally seem to have their stuff together. That\u2019s probably pretty cool. I am not an organized person, so I wouldn\u2019t know.\u00a0 I spend a lot of my time at the ragged edge of disaster, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":447,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}