I've seen so many articles posted and shared across all social media platforms about the creative writing process. But there's another side of writing. Writers who contribute to online platforms like Odyssey, or to their school's newspaper, or to any other publication with any frequency, go through their own routines when sitting down to actually write.
I write weekly articles both here and for my college's newspaper, and coming up with topics to write about is by far the hardest part. So, for my fellow Odyssey contributors, here at last is a piece about our kind of writing process. And for those who are just readers, here's a peek into the weekly struggle of those who create the content you laugh over, connect with and share.
Phase one: Sitting down Tuesday night to plan out your article
Phase two: Scrolling hopelessly deep into Facebook, BuzzFeed, Tumblr, etc.
You may have opened social media to get a sense of what people are talking about and sharing that week, but soon enough you find yourself sucked into quizzes, cat memes and the like. Let's face it, none of these are what you're going to write your article about, so now you're just wasting time.
Phase three: Texting all your friends for ideas...
...And getting back responses like, "Top 10 Lip Sticks For Making Out." You know, the kind of stuff you could never actually submit.
Phase four: Pretending you have your life together
You play it cool and pretend like you know exactly what you're writing about when your friends ask the next day. But inside you're silently screaming.
Phase five: Racking your brain for anything interesting that happened in the last week...
...Then wondering if you have a memory problem when you can't think of any.
Phase six: Realizing you lead a boring life
Soon enough you decide your memory is fine. The problem is that you never do anything worth writing about. The introverted-writer stereotype exists for a reason, even though it makes our job a heck of a lot harder!
Phase seven: Taking a nap
Because as long as you're not busy having an interesting life, you might as well sleep. Plus, inspiration can happen in your sleep, right?
Phase eight: Coffee!
Because once you wake up from your nap, it's time to get down to business. And coffee is every writer's life blood.
Phase nine: Turning to an actual news source for ideas
If you can't think of anything funny, poignant or otherwise relevant to pop culture and the people around you, you turn to the news. Because that's always relevant. Plus, it's new every day.
Phase 10: Planning out an entire article...
...Then realizing it is inherently flawed. Maybe it involves too much research that you don't have the time to do. Maybe it's a controversial topic, and you want to be able to devote more than just the time you have before your deadline to do it justice. So you scrap the whole thing.
Phase 11: Contemplating throwing in the towel
The stress levels run high if you get to Thursday, or god forbid Friday night, mere hours before your deadline, and you still don't know what you're writing about. You might start to think about skipping the week, but at Odyssey we're only allowed a certain number of skipped weeks per semester to remain a member of the team. You certainly start to wish you could just republish one of your more popular articles from the past.
Phase 12: You turn to your backup list of article ideas to save you
Eventually, you learn to make a list of all the article ideas you have at random moments. Like in the shower. Or the middle of class. Or when you're talking to your mom. You might not write about them right away, but they're there to save your butt on weeks when you can think of nothing else salient to write about.
Contributing to a weekly publication is no easy task, but it's well worth it. If communications or writing is what you want to do with your life, being published every week is a great place to start. You hone your writing skills, learn how to create content people are interested in and get your voice heard. So I guess the final phase of writing is learning to appreciate and even look forward to the process of coming up with an article every single week.
