Writing and the Art of Doodling

By Marie Gill, PhD, MSN, MS, RN

Writer’s Camp Counselor

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I am a doodler. Are you?

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Look at the illustration that accompanies this article. It is the outline that I scribbled when I was getting started. Yes, I am doodler. Are you? I think I am in good company with Queen Victoria, Josephine Baker, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.¹ While I enjoy writing, getting started can be a challenge. That’s why I like to doodle first. My doodle is far from the finished product, but for me, it is an important stepping stone for getting to the final paper or article.

Writing and the Professional Nurse

All nurses, whether they like it or not, will be expected to write in some form or fashion throughout their careers. Writing is one way we communicate our thoughts and ideas to others logically and concisely. It has a permanence that doesn’t exist with verbal communication, and for much of what nurses do, this is important. Writing may be an informal text, email, or even a progress note to document patient care. Other nurses may write more formally, such as a letter to a legislator or an article for a newspaper, magazine, or scholarly journal.

Blogging is another form of writing for nurses that is becoming popular. Writing for a blog can be informal or formal, depending on the content and purpose of the site. No matter how you look at it, writing requires thinking and organizing your thoughts into clear and concise messages. Therefore, nurses need to embrace their role as authors as part of their professional identity.

All Nurses are Authors

Even with these examples, many nurses may not consider themselves authors or writers. “Professional authors” like you see on television make writing look simple and spend most of their time working at it. They are great at their craft. I cannot imagine having a job that depended on my ability to produce volumes of written work for me to pay my bills and survive! In movies, professional writers always seem to have an exciting life, clacking away on their typewriters effortlessly in beautiful places. Even when they stumble with a bout of writer’s block, they find easy and clear solutions to resolve their issues and resume writing fervently. Okay, I realize this is the Hollywood version of professional writers, and not all of those stories turn out to have happy endings—think of Sunset Boulevard! (Spoiler: the writer ends up dead in the swimming pool.)

There are similarities for nurses, however. All authors, including nurses, will spend hours writing, editing, polishing, and revising before the final product is ready. We all need to realize that writing is not a one and done effort, but a process—a journey. Every journey begins with a single step and for every author, writing begins with the first page. That’s where the intimidating, blank page comes in.

Getting Started with Doodling

A blank page or a blank screen on your computer can be demotivating. I will be honest and say that I find that just getting started on a writing project can be an effort. This is why, before writing the first word of a manuscript, I doodle to express my thoughts and ideas without any pressure. Doodling is a warm-up for brain calisthenics, much like gentle stretching prepares bones and muscles for exercise. I find that doodling is quite liberating and unlocks my brain for thinking, creating, and eventually writing. Sometimes my doodles are linear and process-oriented, while other times the doodles look like concept maps or like a child’s first attempt to color outside the lines and without boundaries. Doodling frees my mind to write with no commitment, no worries of misspelled words, no punctuation, no APA or other writing styles, and no word counts. In other words, with doodling, no problem!

Doodling requires only a few items—a writing implement and something to write on which can be a piece of paper, paper napkin, pages in a calendar, back of a tissue box, or even the palm of your hand. I have used all these items for writing. I even have a specific preference for doodling with a mechanical pencil, #0.7 to #0.9 size lead, and equipped with an eraser. Anything smaller breaks as my grip is typically quite strong. I love the sound of a pencil scratching across paper. Using a pencil with an eraser allows me to change my mind without committing to a particular idea. Sometimes I will include colored pencils to designate different ideas or concepts and ways these concepts may or may not relate to one another.

When is a good time to doodle? Because I tend to have most of my best ideas during the morning, that is typically my preferred doodling time. Morning doodling allows my mind to subconsciously examine and reflect on new ideas to capture and preserve in the moment. I can return to doodling later, with a fresh perspective to create additional doodles. As far as duration of time, unless I have scheduled meetings to attend, I try not to set a timer because doing so is limiting. I do not want to feel rushed. Once I start doodling, I do not stop until I feel like it. I pause to read my doodles and think about what else I would like to write.

My Doodling Process

Look again at the illustration that I used to write this short paper. Some of the doodles include bullet points, some are trite sayings, one mimics a Shakespearian influence, one is an acronym, a few are rhyming, and several have solid lines, dotted lines, circles, cloud shapes, and brackets. There is no particular purpose for using drawings and shapes. I just like the way I can separate ideas or have some doodles stand out on the page. If you look carefully, you can see that I used this doodle to outline this paper even though I did not include all of the ideas. You may notice that I doodled a few potential titles for this article such as “The Art of Doodling”; and “Oodles and Oodles of Doodles.”

Doodling is not just used for brain warm-up exercises to write an article. Moreover, doodling is not restricted to a particular setting. Environments do not have to be quiet and structured. Doodling can be quite effective during meetings to examine potential solutions for problem solving. It can also help me to stay focused and pay attention. I have also doodled to create a meeting agenda that looks like a concept map while waiting in an airport. I doodled meeting agenda items with larger circles to indicate greater priority to address. As a qualitative researcher, I use doodling to create categories and construct preliminary themes from research data. In this sense, doodling helps me see the bigger picture of how categories fit together.

Conclusion

If you are thinking about writing an article or you are required to write something scholarly for work or school, then I recommend that you try doodling. Doodling is an antidote for the blank page. There is no formal training or requirements for doodling. Relax, be free and just doodle-do-it!

 

 

Reference

1. Thorp C. From Da Vinci to Churchill: What our doodles can mean. BBC. August 24, 2021. Accessed May 10, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210823-from-da-vinci-to-churchill-what-our-doodles-can-mean

Author: Marie Gill

Editor: Leslie H. Nicoll

© 2025 Writer’s Camp and Marie Gill. Licensed under CC-BY-ND 4.0

Citation: Gill M. Writing and the Art of Doodling. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 1(1):7. 10.5281/zenodo.15392024