How Writing is like a Crayon Box

By Samantha Lopez

Let me describe a scene to you: You’ve finished your reading, research, and preparation for your written assignment; you have ideas or at least knowledge about the subject you have to write about. You sit down to knock out your assignment in one rapid fire writing session, motivational music in the background, and drink in hand. 

… And you stare at the screen for an hour with no idea where to start. You sit frozen, facing the blank page whilst your information and thoughts cycle in your mind in a whirlwind too fast to pin down. 

Don’t worry! This is a common experience amongst writers and students at one time or another (or all the time). Whether this problem stems from perfectionism, lack of confidence, or difficulty expressing thoughts into words, I have a process that may help. I call it The Crayon Box Method. 

Why a Crayon Box? 

Imagine for a moment a large, well-used crayon box (I’m talking the 120 pack!): disorganized, jumbled, and a flurry of colors in random places. There’s no pattern to the madness, but every color is present. Can you picture it? 

That’s your paper. 

It’s all there in your head. All the details, all the facts and opinions you formed, all the pieces of information your paper needs are sitting in your head, but all of it is unorganized and chaotic. Writing your paper will take steps similar to organizing that crayon box into a lovely rainbow display. 

Step One: Dump the Box 

When organizing a large crayon box, what is the most efficient first step? 

Dump the box out. 

The most effective first step is to get all the colors out on the table, allowing you to easily see what you have and organize quickly. You cannot organize what isn’t in front of you. It is the same with writing the information in your head. 

Open a document or notebook. Don’t think of it as a draft. Drafts resemble papers, and the perfectionism or editor’s voice in your mind may complain about how it looks. 

This isn’t a draft. This is an information dump. 

Give the document a wacky name. Allow yourself to be messy or funny or motivational or purely honest. For example, I titled my “dump” document for this blog post: “Okay, i want to write this totally awesome blog post and I don’t know where to start, well wait that’s a lie i have ideas let’s see what are the ideas.” 

Unload every thought and idea you have, every bit of information or research whether you think it’ll be useful or not. It doesn’t have to look organized or pretty or even be full sentences yet. Just dump out the crayon box. Here is an example using my process while writing this blog post! 

Notice there is no real concern for sentence structure, style, or punctuation here. It is simply a place for me to unload my thoughts. If this concept is difficult, some useful tools I use for this step are: 

• Voice to text. Most notes apps and word processors have a voice to text feature. It may not be the most accurate, but it accomplishes the brain dump if you’re still having trouble typing or picking up the pen.
• Written Kitten. This is a fun tool I use all the time to motivate me to write. You simply type in a textbox, and for every 100 words you write, you are rewarded with a picture of a kitten! Try it here! 
• Changing your font color. Most word processors allow you to change the color of your font. If you’re prone to self-editing, you can change the font color to white, effectively creating an invisible ink in which to type your thoughts. This prevents you from editing as you go. 

Remember, the point isn’t organization or order yet. This step is all about dumping the information from your mind to the page. 

Step Two: Group the Colors 

Once you’ve dumped out your ideas, it is time to begin the organization process. Going back to our crayon box analogy, this involves gathering the reds, blues, greens, etc., in their own piles on the table. When we’re writing, this step is done by looking at all the thoughts you’ve put down on the paper, opening a new document, and organizing those thoughts into groups. 

Some people complete this step by writing headers that they can either keep or delete later. Others arrange their thoughts by topic or by events. How you organize depends on your preference and the type of assignment you are working on. 

For this blog post, I took all those thoughts from my idea dump document and grouped each topic under different headings, but I didn’t concern myself with getting everything in the correct order yet. In this step, we’re still not worrying about details. You can flesh out those fragments into whole sentences, but don’t worry about all the finer points yet. We’re taking our crayons and making piles of similar colors. We’re not arranging them to look pretty. 

Step Three: Sort the Colors

Now that you have your ideas dump and your organized thoughts draft, it’s time to get more detailed. In this step, we are sorting those piles of colors and making sure they blend together. Just like with crayons, grabbing the pinks that blend into the reds, into the purples, into the blues into the greens— we do the same thing with our writing. How? Well, you’ve already done most of the hard work. Your information is already grouped by topic. Now, it’s time to sort those paragraphs into logical order and work on your transitions to create a paper that flows. 

At this stage, the paper is beginning to look like a paper with a coherent and logical structure. This state is where the most time and revision will happen. It may take you one draft; or it could take two or three. However many tweaks you need to make are perfectly fine, but don’t worry about the formatting just yet. The content and writing is still the focus with this step. 

Step Four: Arrange the Box 

Alright! You’ve made it! 

Your thoughts are out of your head. You’ve grouped them and organized them. Everything flows logically, and you’ve developed your controlling idea. Your crayons are making a beautiful rainbow on the table. The only thing left is to put them back in the box. 

This step is the final proofread. It is where you build and make sure your citations are correct. It is where you double check your grammar and spelling, and make sure your formatting is right. Give your mind a break before this step. It will be easier to come back to it with a clear head than to press on in a rush to finish.

Once you’re done, your paper should be complete! Congratulations! 

Final Tips 

Now that we’ve learned how writing is like a crayon box, here are some final tips! 

• Remember not to rush yourself. Procrastination is a struggle, but take these little steps one at a time. Let your mind quiet down and relax.
• Remember that any writing is better than no writing. It doesn’t have to be perfect, that comes later. It doesn’t have to be formatted in the first draft. 
• Use your voice! If you have your ideas all up there, ask a friend to listen to you talk about your paper and record what you say. You’d be surprised how much information you have!

You’ve got this; and if you really do need that clock counting down for you, here’s a resource that I like: Writing Timer. It is a timer that will allow you to set a specific goal. 

Writing doesn’t have to be a struggle. You’ve got so much potential. Remember to have fun with the process and boldly write! 

Happy Writing!