The first phase is the planning phase. This is where you sit down and think about what you're going to write. In the case of my articles, I often just write a few keywords. Or maybe a sentence that I want to include in the article kind of captures the gist for me, if you're writing an essay, and might be figuring out what your arguments are going to be, if it's like a scientific paper, you might be researching your sources and writing out your sources and getting some great quotes to use from from those sources. The point is that this is just the idea phase. This is the brainstorming phase.

This is where you make a note of what you will be writing later. Now, this is important to do on its own separate phase. And the reason why is because it's a very, very open sort of way of thinking. It's very creative. It's very spontaneous. It's about experimenting with ideas and, and really just seeing what works for you.

This is not the sort of frame of mind you want to be having when you're writing. This is purely about research, brainstorming creativity, coming up with something cool. And once you know you have something worth writing about, you can put that idea to the side. And you can know when you come back to write later. You don't have to think about what to write. You can just get started writing, trust me, it makes a huge difference.