A 5-step process for prioritizing your voice & deepening your creativity

A writing strategy that I've found helpful over the years.

Earlier this week, I listened to a podcast interview with authors Glennon Doyle and Suleika Jaouad. It covered a lot of ground, including the ills of complimenting people when they’ve lost weight, the challenges artists face when promoting their work, and the barriers that can prevent us from connecting with our creativity.

I wrote down many quotable lines, but this one from Jaouad really stood out: “The second you start creating art from a place of wanting to feed whatever outside feedback you’re getting, you’ve lost the ability to actually hear your own intuition and to be in relationship with your creative work.”

Hearing this reminded me of my early years in journalism, when I would pore over the comments sections of my stories and fixate on the negative ones. After reading them, I would write my next story with fear about what potential critics might think of it. This fear was equal parts stifling and deafening. Rather than listening to my own voice, I would write what I thought others wanted to hear.

Over the years, I’ve developed a five-step process that has helped me keep potential critics in mind without letting them dictate what I want to say. It’s especially relevant for personal essays and memoir, but it can be applied to writing of all kinds.

Credit: Unsplash/Shivani

1.) First, write for your private self.

Before tackling difficult subject matters in my memoir, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, I first had to journal about them. I needed to write about hard truths privately so that I could better determine which ones I felt comfortable sharing publicly.

I would argue that all writers need to engage in private writing before pursuing a piece that will be shared publicly. This could take shape in the form of journaling or simply scribbling notes on a Post-it. When we write for our eyes only, our inner critic fades into the rearview, allowing us to write more freely. This freedom can help give us a better sense of direction.

You can also write for your private self later in the writing process. If you’ve drafted a passage that feels surface level, for instance, it may be an indication that you need to journal about it and figure out why you’re having trouble going deeper.

2.) Second, write for your public self (in your first draft).

After journaling about hard truths, ask yourself: How wide is the distance between my private self (the one I let loose in my journal) and my public self (the one I present to the world)? If the distance is noticeably wide, why is that? How can you bridge the gap?

In my own writing, I’ve bridged the gap by trying to bring my full, authentic self to the writing that I share publicly. As an example, I used to tell people that I was “fully recovered” from my eating disorder even though I was silently struggling in private. Now, I speak truth to these struggles and embrace a more vulnerable public self. By better aligning my private and public selves, I’ve been able to write with greater authenticity and honesty.

There will always be some parts of our private selves that we want to keep hidden, and that’s okay. But genres like memoir and personal essay require us to keep less and share more.

3.) Third, write for your audience (in your first draft).

Once you’ve brought your full self to the page, you can begin to more clearly see your audience. During the drafting process, picture the audience(s) you’re trying to reach.

Consider: How can you share your story in a way that makes your audience feel included, seen, and heard? How can you challenge your audience to see something in a new way? How can you open up points of relatability for them? And how might you include their voices in the piece?

If you’re only writing for yourself as an essayist or memoirist, your audience will feel left out. The best personal writing is not just about the “I,” but also the “we” and the “you” — all the people we hope to reach and touch with our writing. I like to think of the words “I, we, you” when writing personal pieces because it makes me think of the phrase “I see you.” I want my readers to know that I see them and that I’m writing for them.

Credit: Unsplash/Tariq Alsubh

4.) Fourth, write for your editor (in your final draft).

If you’re solely writing to please an editor, you run the risk of bypassing the first three stages of the process and feeling detached from your work. That said, I find it most helpful to keep my editor top of mind as I’m moving from a first draft to a final draft.

As you make this shift, consider: What questions might your editor have about your story, and what can you to do to address them now, ahead of the editing process? What does your editor typically look for (a catchy headline, a diversity of sources, a point of view, etc.), and does your writing match up? Which parts of your writing might your editor take issue with? In these cases, will you be willing to murder your darlings, or will you try to make an effective argument for saving them? The more you anticipate editors’ questions, the smoother the editing process will likely be.

Allow this stage of the process to help you put forth your best work possible.

5.) Fifth, write for your critics (in your final draft).

This last stage, which takes shape when working on your final draft, helps you to consider both your inner and outer critics. We all have an inner critic — that imaginary gremlin who sits on our shoulders and tells us we’re not good enough.

If you listen to your inner critic at the beginning of the writing process, your creativity will get stifled. Instead, try to tuck it away until this last stage, and recognize that your inner critic isn’t all bad. Sometimes it can clue you in to what you need to watch out for in your writing (wordiness, for instance, or a tendency to stray from your focus). Listen to that inner critic and be open to tweaking your copy accordingly. Then, move on to your outer critics.

When writing my book, it was helpful to think through what critics might say about some of the messages I was sharing. In many instances, this prompted me to add extra lines of context to further support my argument. In other cases, it motivated me to do additional interviews to ensure that I was including a diversity of voices that in some cases amplified my messages and in other cases challenged them. Picturing my critics helped me make my messaging more ironclad, and it made my overall writing stronger.

We risk weakening our writing when we only engage in one of these five stages. It takes time and practice to engage in all five, but I’ve found that doing so can keep us better acquainted with ourselves, our audience, our critics, and perhaps most importantly, our creativity.

I’d love to hear from you! Do you engage in some of these stages? And if so, do you follow them in this same order or a different one? Which stage is the hardest?