"Creativity and analysis are two different processes. Separate the two and you’ll do just fine."

Great advice sometimes comes from the weirdest places. The quote above wasn’t from a Creative Mornings talk or some expert talking with Fast Company, it was from a horoscope from the newspaper. (Yeah, some of us read horoscopes—deal with it.)

But the wisdom there is SOLID: You need a making process and an editing process. This is especially true for writers, many of whom glob both writing and editing into one fast and furious process.

If you’re anything like we are, you’re whizzing through thousands of words a day for a variety of different purposes and battling the shortest of the short deadlines. Most days, it feels like you are attempting to fight fire with a damp paper towel. Life isn’t going to give you the chance to sit around and stare out of a window to ruminate on every word.

In the immortal words of the Sweet Brown, circa 2012, ain’t nobody got time for that. So what do we have time for? (You are such a Scorpio for asking and we are such a Libra for telling you.) 

Write It All Down. All of it. Was that all of it? It better be.
Many writers try to capture their thoughts on paper and edit simultaneously—but that doesn’t work. You’re knocking down the potential of your writing before it gets a chance to become something. 
 
Just word vomit all your thoughts out onto the page. Do it. Go. Let loose. Shut down that part of your brain that’s trying to edit, and just write. Write for as long as you need to for all your thoughts to tumble out.
 

Edit!
Now it’s time to get critical. Really judge the hell out of yourself. Rearrange things mercilessly, take a machete to your copy and chop out what doesn’t belong. Like Michelangelo carving the David out of marble, you’re simply cutting away the pieces that aren’t what you need to tell your story. 
 
Then, step away from your piece and take a break. Work on something else. Walk to the kitchen and grab some coffee. Once you’ve had a bit of a brain break, come back and give it a good read through. Sound good? Move to step 3.

Text a Friend.
The final, and sometimes hardest step, is to ask another human to read your copy and give you feedback. A necessary step if you want your copy to sound right, enlisting an editor is a sure-fire way to make sure everything is up-to-snuff AND safeguarded against typos.  


So, text a friend. It may save your life—or, well, it will save your copy. (No need to be dramatic.)

Aside from these three steps, the only thing that will make you a better writer is actually writing. So light a fire under yourself and get some words on that paper—the only thing stopping you from being a better writer is YOU.

THE WRITE STUFF: Advice to Step Up Your Words

Regular

Marketers love to leverage holidays—both legit and invented—to generate content and create brand opportunities, and you can see that in the variety of strange holidays that have been created (mostly by marketers, we’d guess). There’s Take Your Plants for a Walk Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day, Hug a Sheep Day and Peculiar People Day, to name a few.

But why stop there? Let’s all jump on the bandwagon and make up our own holiday!

Believe it or not, someone beat us to that one. Today is actually Make Up Your Own Holiday Day. And since we’re marketers, we decided WHAT THE HELL—let’s do this. But since we’re also cause-driven, impact-motivated marketers, we decided to do something a little more meaningful.

We decided to make today about caring and giving and even submitted a proclamation to the City of Houston. We asked the City to proclaim today, Saturday, March 26th, 2016, “Give A Damn Day.”

And they said “NOPE”.*  Something about “legal concerns.”

It isn’t going to stop us. We’re still proclaiming today Give a Damn Day, and we’re still celebrating by relaunching our GIVE Murals with local artist Nicky Davis. And we’re still asking you to join us in acknowledging this because-we-said-so-it’s-official Day.

Why? Because Houston is full of passionate, enthusiastic supporters of causes we can all believe in. And, we think it’s time to give them a day to rally behind—to celebrate and further inspire our communities to Give a Damn about this city, the causes that matter and the things they are passionate about.

Instead of a day to talk like a pirate, or toot your own horn, let’s make today a day to declare our allegiance to doing good in Houston. To reach out to people and organizations that you admire. To act and to rally around Houston’s most pressing issues. To get off your ass and solve some problems.

Today—on [super official] Give a Damn Day (and every day), we challenge you to think about a meaningful way you can contribute to your community and stand up for something you’re passionate about.

Keep up with the conversation using #GiveHou! 

MARK YOUR CALENDARS: IT’S GIVE A DAMN DAY