As a designer & illustrator, I always do the sketch first before doing the final design or render. Sketching is my favorite part. I can play with my ideas, like a kid, and once I am satisfied then I move to the rendering step. I do clean-up, coloring, etc. It depends on the project that I’m working on.

Now, I challenged myself to start writing more often. Even though I wrote a lot back then, those writings suck. I just wrote whatever comes to my mind, no structure, no beginning, sometimes it doesn’t have any ends. You’ll get confused reading it. My obstacle when it comes to writing is that I can’t make a good structure, I can’t make a good “bridging” from the beginning, the middle, and the end.

Turns out it’s the same creative process as designing and illustrating. I need the “sketch” step before I publish my writing. And that’s ladies and gentlemen how I start drafting all of my writings in a notebook.

I must admit, even only for blog posts, writing a draft first helps me to make a good structure to my writing, I can decide how the writing begins, what’s the problem, and how it’s gonna end with a solution. You can tell by reading my early post in this blog that those writings are confusing compared to the most recent posts.

I’m glad that I did a draft first for all my writings, at least for me I can tell that my recent writings are better, which means I’m making progress.

Also, a tip from Malcolm Gladwell on how to write is to start with the end first, then you can easily build the beginning and the middle.