When I cook, which is fairly rarely, I try to follow the French concept of mise en place, where you have everything prepped and ready to go before you actually start. Given my weak cooking skills, it’s very helpful to do that.
I’m finding that writing works best for me when I follow the same idea. I’ve said before that I have a hard time when faced with a blank page, so the more prep that I do for each post, the easier it is for me. I broke down each step of my process in this post last month, and it shows how my mise en place comes together.
Processing
If you read that post, the key for me is the processing step in the middle. During that step I pull in relevant quotes, thoughts, photos, ideas, etc so that all of my ingredients are laid out in front of me.
When it’s time to write, I have all of the core pieces at my fingertips, and it’s just a matter of assembling them in the right order and putting words around them.
Some of my meals come out better than others, but they’re all easier to produce when I follow the right steps.
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