[Tipster] How a Shift from Product to Process Changes Your Writing

It might not impress you, because I was an English (not Math or Engineering) major, but I got straight As as an undergrad.

My quest for As led to panic attacks when a paper was returned with a B+. My senior year, it was increasingly difficult to squeak out As. I was crushed by five English classes-worth of reading and writing.

Paper writing became bawling sessions, typically at 3am, as I agonized to complete each 8- to 20-page paper.

Usually, it was because I hadn’t done enough research. Or I wasn’t clear on the point I wanted to make.

Or maybe it was simply because my mission was skewed.  I wanted an “A” from the prof more than I wanted to actually learn through writing.

It was debilitating.

As an undergrad student, how I wish I had a prof like William Zinsser, a Yale writing instructor and author of the classic On Writing Well.

It Really Is about the Process, Not the Product 

In Chapter 22 of On Writing Well, “The Tyranny of the Final Product,” Zinsser talks about the dangers of hyper-focusing on the printed piece you are working on—whether a book or an article.

He writes, “It’s a very American kind of trouble. We are a culture that worships the winning result: the league championship, the high test scores….Less glamorous gains made along the way—learning, wisdom, growth, confidence, dealing with failure—aren’t given the same respect because they can’t be given a grade.”

He goes on to say that for writers the “grade” is their writing product.

A writer’s “grade” is based on the buzz her writing creates and the money that flows from it.

Often writers are more consumed with publishing—and selling—than they are with writing.

That’s why Zinsser developed a course in which students weren’t given grades.

He wanted students to focus on the process. “If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow,” Zinsser writes.

When Zinsser eliminated grading, he was struck by how writers traveled down tangled paths of thinking to find a new, clear path where the “real “writing was meant to begin.

They relaxed even as they failed. Because failure, they learned, was an opportunity to take a new path.

Writers were liberated.

Release from Immediacy

When you have a book deal or an article deadline—and each check-in email from your editor feels like a bomb you need to diffuse—you don’t have time to dawdle.

In those cases, the dawdling, really, should have happened before the deal.

But most writers don’t have a book deal or a publication deadline. They have an opportunity to focus on the process.

They have time to fail in one way of thinking and change course in their writing.

Failure is actually the acme—not the nadir—of process.

In Roadtrippers we’ve been on a publishing journey with a writer who pitched a book to a traditional publisher and was told they wanted to publish it.

She last heard from the acquisition editor over two months ago.

It’s a moment that could create anxiety if the author was solely focused on product: Do they want to publish my book? What if they don’t want to publish my book? Is my book not sellable? Will I get it out into the world?

Instead, the writer has committed this period of unknowing to process.

She’s cutting and collapsing chapters. Rethinking stories. Clarifying her big idea. 

She’s liberated. 

I hear echoes of Zinsser in her story: If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself.

And it’s a good reminder for an achiever like me—and maybe like you—who has been hooked by the tyranny of the final product.

This week as you write, I challenge you to shift your focus from product to process—and let me know what good comes from it!

Now buckle up, shift your focus, and write!

Melissa Park