The COB Method: A Creative Framework for Storytellers Who Carry Too Much to Write in Straight Lines

If your brain doesn’t work in bullet points.

If your voice has been buried under shame, burnout, or other people’s expectations.

If you are carrying a story that is too layered, too messy, too painful—or too beautiful—to “just write it already”...

You are not broken. You are not behind. You are not alone. You just need a different rhythm. 

You need the COB Method.

The COB Method—short for Collect, Organize, Build—is a framework made for folks like you. It’s for the nonlinear thinkers, deep feelers, messy processors, and people who heal and create at the same time.

If any of these describe you, keep reading. If you feel like you are running with 87 tabs open and the squirrel moments on repeat, keep reading. If you want to write or tell your story but feel completely overwhelmed by the way you were taught to write, KEEP READING!

The COB Method was designed with you in mind. Unlike the writing processes you were taught in grade school, this method will allow you to fully embrace all the ideas, thoughts, memories, experiences, and emotions that make up your life story. Are you ready?

Sitting down to write your story can come with a lot of anxiety. Commonly referred to as writer’s block, it is my opinion that this is caused by the limits and boundaries created by the standard writing process.

Think back to grade school. You were likely taught some version of this process for “proper” writing: 

• Come up with a topic
• Create a main statement around that topic
• Create a title
• Create an outline
• Fill in the blanks of your outline with supporting materials
• Write an introduction and a conclusion
• Edit
• Revise

I want you to completely forget ALL of that. 

As with most other things, many of us don’t function well under such rigid structure. The structure that is meant to provide guidance in the creative process does exactly the opposite. These structural boundaries close off our creative ability. They force us to operate in a container that doesn’t fit our thinking process.

My friends, there is a better way! 

But we have a few things to discuss before we get into it.

First, we have to talk about free-writing. 

Free-writing is the only way you will be able to get all the things out of your head and onto the page. What is free-writing? Exactly what it says it is!

There’s only one rule in free-writing: THERE ARE NO RULES IN FREE-WRITING. 

Also, there is no editing allowed in free-writing because you cannot create and revise at the same time. Those are two different processes and one will pull you out of the other. We are sticking with creation in this phase. (All of the perfectionists in the room just cringed so hard…I promise you will get the chance to edit later!)

Seriously, you get to throw out all those rules and guidelines and processes you were taught as a child and simply write as you feel. When you allow your thoughts to freely flow from your head to your hand, through the pen, and onto paper, magic happens.

Free-writing doesn’t need to have a rhyme or reason to it. It doesn’t have to make sense; it doesn’t have to be chronological. Once you get your thoughts into physical existence on paper, you no longer have to carry them in your head, and you make room for new thoughts!

If you have been here a while, you know that I live and breathe by figurative language. So let me present this process a different way:

Imagine you are stumbling around in the country and you come across an old, rusty, forgotten faucet. You can tell that this faucet hasn’t been opened in at least a few decades, but you know that somewhere down deep, it has access to the clearest, sweetest water you can imagine.

You want that water, so you grab the valve, and you start to turn it. But it resists. It is stuck. Time and rust and years of buildup have sealed it tight and walled off that glorious clear water that lies below.

But you are not deterred. You know that by slowly cranking the valve open, you will allow that faucet to function as it should. So you keep trying. And ever so slowly, the years of sludge, dirt, rust, and mud make their way out of the faucet. Little by little the flow speeds up and things get clearer. And finally, you have allowed all the buildup to run out and the crystal clear water you seek runs freely through the faucet. 

This is exactly what free-writing allows you to do. 

In case metaphors aren’t your thing, the faucet represents your head and your heart. All those memories, thoughts, dreams, ideas, and experiences you have had have been locked inside for years. All you have to do to let them out is open the valve to your “thought faucet” without limitation, without boundaries, and without restrictions. 

When you free-write in this manner, you create a positive feedback loop that feeds itself – the more you write, the more you will continue to write.

Now that we know what free-writing is and why it is important, let’s get to the first step!

Step One: Collect

Let go of “getting it right.” and knowing where you are going. This phase is about capturing your thoughts before they vanish or get buried under more years of the proverbial sludge and rust.

The collection phase is where you allow your thoughts to flow free. Grab a notebook and dedicate it to this process (I have designed a book specifically for this process…find it HERE). Treat this as a conversation with yourself where you get to be brutally honest with no fear of judgment. It doesn’t have to be pretty or polished. What matters is that you are honoring what comes to mind in the moment.

This is where you gather everything—the messy, fragmented, half-said things that don’t fit neatly anywhere yet. Things like:

• That sentence you whispered to yourself at 3 AM
• A DM that cracked something open
• The song lyric that makes your chest ache
• A scent, a photo, a memory you cannot shake
• That time in middle school when you felt completely embarrassed
• That one time at band camp…
• Rage. Joy. Silence. All of it.

This is your compost pile – put everything in it. From here, your story grows.

Gentle reminder: This phase is sacred. Your mind is allowed to wander. You are allowed to take your time. I recommend spending a minimum of 10 minutes daily or every other day free-writing. Don’t force it. Write whatever is on your mind!

Step Two: Organize

Once you have been free-writing for a while (at least a few weeks), you are ready to start organizing your material. But don’t rush it. Stay in the collection phase as long as you need to!

In the organization phase, you are not imposing order—you are listening for it. Patterns and connections will begin to appear beneath the surface. Themes emerge, and so do truths you didn’t know you were carrying.

Organizing is how you start to see yourself clearly. Not all at once, but piece by piece. And the best part: you don’t have to be an organized person to do this! There are many ways you can organize your written material. 

A few ways to sort your writings:

• Emotional themes: survival, softness, betrayal, belonging
• Identity threads: queer, neurodivergent, grieving
• Story shape: essay, letter, dialogue, memoir
• Timeline or transformation

Use what works. Color code and use Post-its. Make a wall of index cards. Build a playlist. Talk it out loud. This is your method, so do what feels right!

You are not here to make sense to everyone. You are here to follow the story that is trying to make sense to you.

My personal favorite organization tip: make a voice recording of you reading your material then create a transcription and use your favorite AI to organize it.

Step Three: Build

You have spent a few weeks in the collection phase, a day or two (or more) in the organization phase, and now you finally get to build something out of this pile of material you have created. 

Ready for another metaphor?

Imagine you are embarking on an epic endeavor of building a mega-mansion out of Legos. You can’t jump right to the building phase of the process. First you have to collect all your Legos – even the ones you might not use. Once you have all the Legos, you can organize them by shape, color, size, etc. Only after that can you begin to pull together the masterpiece you envision.

Writing and telling your story is no different. This is why I tell you to throw out everything you know about the writing process. The standard writing process tells us to start by building first, then organizing, then collecting the material to put in the frame we have built. The problem is that it is hard to build something when you don’t know what materials you have at your disposal to build it with. This is why standard writing processes don’t work.

Once you have collected and then organized your materials, you have everything you need to move into the building process. Start by asking yourself:

• What story is ready to be told?
• Who am I writing for? (It’s okay to be writing for yourself…)
• What shape does this story want to take? A book? A blog? A speech? Something else?

Let the shape and framework of the story happen organically. Let it be messy and emotional. Don’t be afraid to explore different forms of the story. Remember, you are not a machine, you are a storyteller.

Pro tip: we live in the wondrous time of AI. Don’t be afraid to plug your material into your favorite AI language model and ask it to help you create a rough draft. This can really help those of us that get stuck at the start line. Once we get a draft created, we can easily reframe, revise, fine-tune, and add details!

Why COB Writing Works (Especially If You Are Neurodivergent, Marginalized, or Just Plain Tired)

Traditional writing advice ignores how trauma, identity, and neurodivergence (basically the entire human experience) shape the ways we experience, process, and create our stories. I know so many of you are tired of forcing yourselves to operate under systems that were not designed for you but that you were forced to use.

COB meets you where you are—and invites your whole self in. It allows chaos and clarity to coexist. It values intuition and your lived experiences. It lets you move forward without leaving parts of yourself behind.

This method frees you to create your narrative, your written and spoken story in ways that are grounded, personal, and sustainable.

Want help using COB to write your story?

This is the work I love most—guiding writers and speakers who carry layered stories and big emotions toward the clarity they crave and delivering the impact of their stories to the audiences who need it most.

Whether you want a quiet space to start, a group to build alongside, or a coach who gets it—I got you. Connect with me on a free call HERE!

Your story matters. Let’s make sure it is heard.