🔤 That To-Do List of Yours Could Be the First Step Toward Writing a Best-Seller

From ‘To-Do’ to ‘Done’: A List-Maker’s Trick for Getting Words on the Page

A former colleague in another department asked me before I retired for advice on helping a staff member with writing projects. Below is my response, updated a bit.

Here’s a method that’s worked for me at times and when I’ve been advising and teaching others—when it’s tough to get started and keep going.

Begin With a List

Think of lists you already make:

• To-do lists

• Shopping lists

• How-to-do-it lists

• Travel packing lists

• Party invitation lists

• Thank-you card lists

• Christmas present lists

• That honey-do list taped to the fridge

Each item on those lists might have a lot of meaning, but just writing down the key words helps you figure out what you need, like, and want to do.

Apply It to Your Writing

Apply that type of list-making to whatever you need to write about. Start with the simple:

• What’s important to you about the topic?

• What’s important to your boss?

• What’s important to the project?

• What’s vital in the research?

And importantly, answer questions about your intended reader:

• What do you want your reader to do, not do, or let you do?

• What might your reader already know, think, or feel?

• What does your reader not know?

• What matters most to your reader?

You might not need to write down the answers about your reader, but keep them in mind as you continue through this process.

Don’t rank or explain list items yet; just start listing short answers to your questions. Do not worry about writing complete sentences either. Think of topic headings or book titles or just words with symbolic or deeper meaning to you.

And don’t think of writing the list items in some dreaded outline, as you may have been taught to do in school. In other words, don’t worry about the structure of the list—and all those numbers and letters and Roman numerals. Instead, think of it as a bulleted list (the bullets can help separate items from one another).

What’s useful about this step is that you’re not confined to a computer to do it unless you want to. You can also do it with a pen or pencil—using dots or stars or checkmarks for the bullets:

• In a notebook

• On a scrap of paper

• On a napkin in a restaurant

• On the back of a magazine or envelope

• On the back of your hand

Transfer the list later to your computer—before you wash your hands!

Expand the List

And once you’re exhausted doing that, think about list items that could be sub-bullets below some of those original list topics:

• More info about each original bullet

• Your brief thoughts or feelings about those original bullets

• Reference sources for more information about those bullets

Perhaps you’ll find that some of those new sub-bullets need to stand alone. Pull them out and add them to the original list.

Rank the List

Then start choosing and ranking the list items that you consider most important or interesting. If you’re writing this list on a piece of paper, simply circle the most critical list items—or start numbering them (in pencil—so you can change the order if necessary). If you’re using a computer, save the original list—unchanged—and start moving things around on a copy of that list.

Circle or number the bullets in an order that makes sense to you, even if it might change later:

• What’s the highest priority for your project?

• What’s most meaningful to you and your reader?

• What’s most interesting to your reader?

• What’s most useful to your audience?

Also, think about what items could be scratched off the list as nonessential (or, at least, put in parentheses or brackets for future consideration).

Begin Writing

Now you can start filling in the blanks—with words that make complete sentences of the list items. Each bullet item could be a sentence, or you might combine simpler ideas into one sentence; just don’t make those sentences too long.

And then think about how to organize the sentences into paragraphs, sections, or chapters—each based on how the sentences relate to each other (and how the paragraphs relate to each other). The original bullets might be sections of a report or paper—the heading or first paragraph—and the sub-bullets could be additional paragraphs.

Heck, the bulleted or numbered bullet items could become bulleted or numbered lists in the document. But don’t overdo that. The lists can start looking tedious and uninteresting to the reader.

Try to give each item in a list the same structure:

• They’re all complete sentences.

• They’re simple phrases, or they’re single words.

• They all start with a verb.

• They’re each a question.

Also, if you ranked list items by number, think of using those numbers in the sentences: First, here’s some important information. Second, here’s some other information to explain that. Third, here’s additional evidence. And so on.

Or use transitional words between the list items, such as: “Next,” “Then,” “Later,” “Also,” “For example,” “Likewise.” That helps you, as the writer, keep things in order. But more importantly, it helps the reader follow your thought process.

Revise Later

In my original message to my former colleague, I concluded my writing advice with this statement:

I’m going to blunder and do something I’ve taught myself never to do. I’m not going to proofread or edit my words above; I need to do something else now. But there’s a lesson in this, too. Tell your colleague:

• Don’t start judging and revising what you’ve listed—or even written—until you’re done with each list or section or chapter of the document.

• Just get it out on paper or the computer.

• Then go back and start revising and editing it. That’s an essential step, but first get your thoughts down.

Start Here

Writing rarely begins with inspiration. More often, it begins with an assignment—or a request, a deadline, a problem to solve, or a message someone needs you to get across.

It begins with a scrap of paper, a few words, and the willingness to get ideas out of your head and into the world.

A list is permission to begin—without pressure, without structure, without judgment.

Once the ideas are on the page, then you can shape them.
But first, let them exist.

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Related Resources at Plainly, Garbl

🔤 Garbl’s Plain Language Writing Guide
Helping you write clearly and concisely—so your readers get what you’re saying.

🔤 Garbl’s Writing Bookshelf 2025
A lifelong editor’s favorite guides to writing, clarity, and style

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