Yes, my name is Jenny

I very much enjoyed reading "The Fourth Draft" by John McPhee. I laughed out loud when he said, "If you say you see things differently and describe your efforts positively, if you tell people that you 'just love to write,' you may be delusional." The painful process he describes is a fairly accurate summary of my writing process. I greatly enjoy digging around for information, conducting research and roughly organizing my thoughts. The first draft is painful. As the drafts move along, I begin to enjoy the process again.

Two suggestions from this reading seem very helpful. First, when absolutely stuck, the "Dear Mother" approach seems worth a try. You simply write your mother a letter and complain about the topic, and then you cut out the salutation and unnecessary parts and see what’s left. Based on McPhee's example, you might be surprised how much you've written about the topic that made you draw a blank.

The second I am rather eager to try: the boxes approach. When marking up the third draft — and so preparing for the fourth draft — McPhee places boxes around words that he thinks could be better. He then searches via dictionary (not thesaurus) in the fourth draft for the right words. This final level of finessing is an attention to detail that is necessary for good writing. Instead of getting completely caught up in the big picture, it’s good to remember the impact of just the right word.