Last week, we looked at part one of the creative process, getting all your content down on paper. So now that you have all your information in a rambling — possibly incoherent — document, what do you do with it? Most likely you have far more material than you can possibly use for your assignment, so you will need to start identifying the best, most relevant information. A good way to do this is by using the highlighting feature in Microsoft Word. Read through your notes and highlight anything you want to use. As you do so, you will start to see different patterns and themes emerging; you may even want to use a different colored highlighter for each theme you identify. Or, use one color for the most pertinent information, and a secondary color for information that you will use only if space allows. As you see patterns emerging, you will probably start forming ideas and want to start writing, but try to wait until you have read through everything. Otherwise, you will risk wasting time going back and forth between your notes and your actual writing.

After you’ve finished highlighting your notes, take a look at what you didn’t highlight. Is it duplicate information? Then delete it. Is it gibberish that you wrote just to keep your thoughts flowing during the brainstorming process? Decide if it’s worth keeping for another project or if you want to just delete it. Is it information that’s relevant to your assignment, but that you don’t think you want to use or have space for? If this is the case, keep it! You may think you aren’t going to use it, but at this point, you really can’t be sure. I have deleted notes only to later wish I still had them, and then I had to repeat my research. Move this information to a separate document if you want to get it out of the way, but don’t delete it yet.

Now that you have identified the information you want to use, start putting it into an appropriate order. This is the actual construction part of the process — simply cut and paste your highlighted information into a workable form. This might be an outline, or it could be a rough framework. You are really still in the “shitty first draft” stage, so you should still not be worrying about word choice or sentence structure or transitions. That comes next. Check back next week for the final step — clarity!