Once you get some practice with this kind of activity, you may be surprised at how straightforward the next parts of writing can feel. Mind map and outlining apps make it easy to move ideas around in chunks, so you can quickly reorder topic ideas or add some structure, making one idea a main category and another an example that fits into that category.
That’s why it can be more efficient to use a mind map or outlining app rather than just a notes app where you can type. Often, these ideas don’t come to mind in any particular order and they might not always even be relevant. The more you can capture these throughout the day into your notes, the more ideas your mind will serve up. By creating a planning document you tell a part of your mind to get to work coming up with ideas and then you can just go about your day while it keeps churning things out. If you use an app on your smartphone, you can do this wherever you carry it–in line at the cafeteria, walking to class, on the bus. Every so often you take out your mind map or your notebook of ideas and add a few things that just popped into your head. This guide is based on the idea that most of the work of planning is done while you’re doing other things–walking around, eating a meal, talking with friends. If doing a little planning now could be made easy, and make things easier down the line, maybe that makes sense too. Or maybe a better idea for the middle section of the paper will come to you after you’ve written the whole paper, and it will seem like too much work to change things around to add it in. Maybe an idea for the next paragraph will come to you when you reach the end of the one you’re writing, but maybe it won’t. However, if you’re writing a longer essay or research paper, it’s likely that you don’t know what you want to say in every part yet. You probably know exactly what you want to say when you open up the email app. When writing an email to a friend, it would seem silly to brainstorm a bunch of ideas first. You may have already dismissed activities like mind mapping and outlining as inefficient–why bother with extra tasks when you can just get started writing? For some writing tasks, this instinct makes sense. Luckily, there are a long list of activities one can try that help make the process feel more manageable. Getting started with a larger writing task can often feel like trying to climb a mountain in one step. Generating Ideas, Plans, and First Drafts
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