When I went to St. John’s College, I wanted to be a writing assistant—one of the older students who people could come to with questions about their essays and assignments, for support in the writing process.
It took until my senior year, but eventually I was hired as a writing assistant.
My boss was Mr. Pastille. He was a great boss, in that he was mostly pretty hands off—we received very little training as such, and I was empowered to trust my own intuition and sense for what each student requesting assistance needed, about how to support them. I loved that.
I also got to attend some workshops that Mr. Pastille hosted, about his view on the writing process, which was very instructive and inspiring for me. What he shared in that hour-long session has been an important part of my writing process ever since.
Here’s the core of what I learned back then from Mr. Pastille about the writing process:
- Pick a topic U want to write about.
- List questions U could ask yourself about that topic.
- Order those questions in a logical sequence.
- Answer your questions.
- Make sure U include the text of the questions in your answers. (For example, if U have the question “Where did U go to college?”, start your answer “I went to college at St. John’s College…”)
- Remove the questions!
Tada! U magically have a first draft! And at no point in the writing process did U have a blank page staring back at U.
This process has been invaluable to me throughout my career as a writer. I did use it in school, but I’ve also used it in the workplace, to write blog posts and books, memos and movie reviews. It even forms the basis of how I approach interviews on my podcast.
Now is an especially good time to start using this technique. AI is incredibly helpful in this process. I like to write my own essays, but agents can generate potential questions, sequence the order, iteratively prompt U with questions, or help U make a rough first draft using your answers verbatim.
I hope that this technique helps U as a writer as much as it’s helped me!