My Writing Process
As a writer, I am frequently asked about my writing process. Surprisingly, these questions come as much from other writers as from non-writers, which I believe reflects the angst many artists have over what can be a mysterious process.
This is how the writing process works for me today. It’s different than it was last year, and I’m sure it will change over the next year or two. And that leads to my first point, which is that what works for each writer will be unique both to that person and to where that person is in their journey as an artist. The one thing I think must be true for every serious artist of any sort, is an obsessive compulsion to practice her or his craft often and regularly. Talent without practice is a rusty sword, whether it’s a katana or a bokken.
One popular topic is whether to outline or not to outline. I personally find it very difficult to effectively write without at least creating some minimal structure. When I go to the beach of my creativity, I need to at least establish some sort of sandbox. How close will it be to the water, how wet will the sand be, how large is my sandbox and what tools will I use on the sand?
I’ll blame it on my ADD but without defining some of these criteria I tend to wander aimlessly, so I create a very loose, informal bullet point list of the basic structure of the story. I recently realized that if I strung all these points together I would more or less have a synopsis, but I haven’t tried that (yet). To be sure, none of these points are written in stone, and once I begin writing I often modify, delete or add to the bullet list in the midst of a session. And as I progress and delete each completed item that gives me a sense of accomplishment as well.
When I sit down to write, I use anchor points to slip into a creative mindset. If I’m at home I have certain clothing I put on while writing and wherever I write, I listen to specific music. I have numerous playlists with titles such as ‘writing1’ and ‘writing2’ and, depending on the project, I sometimes create a custom playlist. Then I stick with that playlist for the duration of the project.
When and where I write varies. For a long time I wrote on occasion, when I could carve some private time on a weekend or evening…and I made little progress as an artist (see above point about talent without practice). When I reached a point where I decided to be serious about my craft, I made a job change that added a one-hour commute each way on a train and I bought a Macbook Air. The fact that this change came with a significant salary bump was a nice bonus.
Now I write for an hour in the morning while going to work, often for an hour during lunch and another hour on the way home. If I’m deep in the process, I will often sequester myself for two or three hours when I get home. You know you’re a writer when, while flying standby you get bumped for several hours and that’s good because you get quality writing time in the food court. So now I write when and wherever I can. Louis L’Amour once commented about being able to write on the side of a highway…I didn’t always get that but now I do.
So when I sit down with my loose list of points, how does that turn into coherent prose that carries a reader into another world? That’s where the mystery comes in. All I can say with certainty is that I don’t force it. Within that sandbox I’ve laid out, I simply start shaping sand. The emerging forms often surprise me (and hopefully the reader) because all I specified in my bullet point is ‘Sally quits her job’ but it’s not until I start shaping the story that I see that Sally did so by posting pictures online of her boss sleeping with Sally’s boyfriend and when she quit Sally decided to fulfill her lifelong dream of crewing on a starship passenger liner.
At that point, I let the creative puppy off its leash and it frolics in the sandbox until it’s eaten up all the points on my bullet list and it doesn’t come up with anything else to add. Sometimes the puppy finds some buried bones, and that ends up in there too. That’s when I have a completed rough draft.
For some writers moving into the editing and revisioning phase is onerous and dreaded, but for me it’s an equally creative process, albeit in a very different way, and pretty much all of the above points apply. I see rough drafting as digging up the gemstones and the editing/revising as turning those stones into jewels. It’s just as creative for me, and often it’s in this later phase that seemingly drab stuff I wrote earlier turn into some of the best parts of the story. More than once I’ve had that, “Damn, I didn’t realize that was in there” or “Ohhh, NOW I see why that’s there” experience.
Some writers are nervous about sending out their work but not me. By that point, the story is grown up and I’m ready to push it out of the nest so it can fly on it’s own. Sometimes it comes back to live at home again for a while, and I’ll do some additional work on it, but generally I have no shortage of nestlings waiting to be raised up in their turn.
So this is my writing process as of today. Check back in a year.