Kurt Vonnegut said there are two types of writers: Swoopers, who dive in, get it all down, and then go back and painstakingly fix whatever doesn’t work; and Bashers, who go slowly, trying to get it right, one sentence at a time.
I’ve worked both ways. But, for longer pieces, I’m primarily a Leaf Raker—from the research phase to the final draft.
I discovered this when we lived in a house in the country with two large fields. One was so rocky it barely needed mowing. The other was larger and wide open; bordered on three sides by sugar maples, along with a few oaks and a beech or two that had snuck in while the maples weren’t looking.
The maple leaves began to fall in late summer. At first, I’d just watch as they collected in little clusters under the largest trees.
During one of those late summers, I began working on a large project—a documentary. My colleagues were more familiar with the subject than I was, so they began suggesting books and articles for me to read and sharing their preliminary ideas for the script. I’d listen, print out key emails and documents, pick up random books, read a few pages, and jot notes on the pads scattered around my office. After a few weeks, however, it was time to get serious. (I.e., I got a signed contract.)
The key to raking a large area is to create small piles and rake them together into increasingly larger piles. It sounds simple but there’s some strategy involved—where to place each pile on the field, how close they should be to each other, and how big they should be before starting a new one.
There are many ways to organize large projects. I’ve used most of them—starting with the index cards on which I wrote notes during Junior High School and organized in a small gray metal box with carefully labeled dividers. Since then, I’ve used multi-level outlines, multi-sized index cards, and multi-colored sticky notes arranged and rearranged on walls or whiteboards. Nowadays, many people use scrawled collections of boxes, arrows, doodles, and charts called “mind maps.” They don’t work for me. I’m trying to organize all that chaos in my brain, not turn it into a work of art.
Rakes come in a surprising number of sizes and materials. I prefer old-fashioned bamboo rakes. That’s what I used when I raked my parents’ lawn 50+ years ago, so they’re nostalgic as well as natural. Plastic ones are more practical—they tend to be wider but the leaves don’t come off as easily. Metal rakes are great for scratching every last leaf bit out of the grass, but that feels a little obsessively suburban.
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