So you have conducted your interviews. You have hundreds of pages of material stacked on your desk.

Now it is time to write. Where do you start?

This is my practice.

Step 1: Review the outline.

Refresh yourself on who the ideal reader is, what the challenges are and any key market drivers.

Step 2: Review what has been written.

The next step is to read all of the documents you have received and gathered from your research.

I like to take a bright highlighter and mark all the juicy nuggets I find.

Then I write a note on the cover of each document: such as “excellent,” “poor,” “did not fully read…”

Step 3: Reexamine your notes.

If you are like me, you have conducted a series of interviews (maybe 5 or more).

For one project I was recently on, I conducted 14 interviews (yikes!).

Scan your notes.

Step 4: Pause and percolate.

After reading the outline, the research and your notes, you have essentially transferred concepts and ideas from the long term storage of your brain to the short term processing area.

Call it a day and let those concepts and ideas bake.

Often what occurs are some new connections between ideas.

These prepare you to rapidly write the next day.

Step 5: Return and conquer page 1 ONLY.

Draft a well refined first page of your white paper (or other project). Continue to refine that first page over a day.

Be sure the first page:

• Identifies the intended reader
• Discusses a few of their problems at a high level
• Introduces the solution very lightly
• Describes what the white paper will provide/accomplish

Bonus: Read the opening page to your client or boss and make sure you are on the right track.

Once these five steps have been implemented over a few days, the rest of the writing project will fall in place. Your writing will progressively speed forward towards the goal.

Do you have any tips to speed the start of a writing project?

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 6:57 am and is filed under Writing White Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.