The Goals

Why might you want to “re-engineer” your writing process? In my experience, authors have three different concerns that my approach can be used to address.

  1. You are not writing enough. This is perhaps the most obvious problem that writers face. They are worried about their “productivity”. They know they have to write a certain amount of papers before a certain date, or they have a deadline for the completion of their dissertation. Their concern is that they won’t finish. They worry that they won’t write enough pages to make a career.
  2. You are not writing well enough. Some writers are not worried about how much they are writing but how often they are cited, and whether they are cited for the right things. They are, in a sense, worried about their fame, or what is sometimes called their “impact”. Here the problem isn’t productivity but effectiveness. Are they getting through to their peers; are they influencing the conversation?
  3. You are unhappy when you write. Most of us know writers that are highly productive and very effective. Their many papers are often cited by their peers, often with lavish praise. When we talk to some of these writers, however, we are surprised to hear that they hate writing. It makes them miserable. Their results are achieved through a disproportionate amount of suffering. Writing Process Reengineering can fix that too.

You may have some or all of these reasons to improve your writing process. You may prioritize them however you like. If you write enough prose, well enough, and in a way that makes you happy, I’m not sure I have anything to offer. But if you want an effective way to address any of these issues, one day at a time, one paragraph at a time, then my approach may be worth trying.

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