How to Make a Decision While Writing

Because you get to decide.

Every day most of us have to make hundreds of decisions. Most of them matter little more than a few minutes of disappointment. “I should have ordered a reuben not an egg salad.”

My History

I have never been good at making decisions. If you plumb the journals I’ve kept, starting in junior high school, you find pages where I’ve drawn a line down the middle. One side will say, “Reasons To Do It” and the other side will say, “Reasons Not.”

“It” could be anything. Reasons to order a coffee, reasons to order tea. Reasons to go to a conference, reasons not. Reasons to have a surgery, reasons not.

I made a huge creative pivot in July 2022 when I decided to independently publish a book. Before that, I’d been traditionally published, but it wasn’t working for me. (I’ll be fair and say that in some ways it was working, but in the most important ways it was decidedly not working.) I asked many people what they thought I should do.

The decision threw me into distress. Actually it threw me into a deep existential despair as I came to terms with the way artists can get treated in our society.

What Cecil Said

During that time I asked my friend Cecil how he made decisions.

The question confused him. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s say you are thinking of renting a new office that’s more expensive. Who helps you make the decision?”

“Nobody,” he said. “I decide.”

Women & Choice

There is a huge cultural divide between the sexes when it comes to making decisions. Men make decisions. Most women are not taught to make decisions. They’re not given permission to have a choice. Women do what men decide.

Every day I see examples of this—a woman doing what a man decides.

Learning How

I’ve been training myself to make my own decisions. In situations where I would normally ask my husband or a friend what they think, I’m forcing myself to stay quiet.

It is wretched. I hate it.

I would much rather make a decision cooperatively. Unilateralism has always sucked.

But I’ve got to learn sometime. Somehow.

While Writing

Every word you put on the page is a decision.

• Is this the best word?

• Is this word appropriate in this usage?

• Is the word spelled correctly?

• Am I using it correctly?

This week I finished editing the pages from my last cohort of Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction. Two of the writers, both women, turned in essays spotted with indecision. Both these women are well-educated, experienced, even wise—a flipping joy to know—and both their essays are creative and imminently publishable if that’s what they’re after.

Here’s what I mean by indecision in their essays. One sentence read:

It did (indeed) (Indeed, it did) resemble your description.

That flummoxed me as an editor for a minute, until I realized that the writer needed to know which construction works better.

• It did resemble your description.

• It did indeed resemble your description.

• Indeed, it did resemble your description.

All three of those choices are good ones. I can’t say that one choice would be more clear than the others.

I addressed indecision in my comments to her.

Despite your skills as a writer, you’re very unsure of yourself. I see this in the way you put in options for a word or phrase, asking “Should I say it like this or like this?” I want to lovingly encourage you to pick one—give yourself the authority to make that decision, even if it turns out to be the wrong decision. You can always change it later. Even after a piece publishes you usually have a chance to change things. If nothing else, you can republish somewhere else with a new version.

You Decide

I want to make four points about decision making. Let me first acknowledge that my audience here is free American adult writers, mostly women.

1. We hesitate to make decisions out of fear. We’re afraid of doing the wrong thing. When you find yourself undecided, ask yourself, What’s the worst that could happen?

2. Whenever you can’t make a decision, you don’t have enough information. Keep studying, keep comparing, and keep learning, and the answer will become clear. Not every time, but often. Sometimes the answer is that one way is equally good as another. Most of the time there will be a more clear path. When you find yourself undecided, keep casting about for more info.

3. Get certain on your big goals. Where are you headed? Then make the little decisions based on the big plan. When you find yourself undecided, ask yourself which choice moves you the farthest the fastest toward your big goal?

4. Make a decision based on what you want, not what someone else wants or wants for you, unless you owe them a favor. You don’t need anybody’s permission. When you find yourself undecided, ask yourself what you’d do if X weren’t around?

Photo by @crumbstarz.

So Get Practicing

Don’t ask what somebody else thinks. Just make the decision.