My Writing Process

A few people have asked me about my writing process. Good question. But, the thing is that I don’t really have a writing process. I don’t have an elaborate approach for writing fiction. And, I don’t have a tried and trusted way of doing things that I’m sure to duplicate in the future. That said, I don’t really have any advice, but in the hope that it might be useful to someone, I will tell you the things I did do.

1. The Idea: I don’t know if anyone ever has an answer to the question of where their ideas come from. I don’t know where the idea for Haley’s story came from exactly, but I can tell you a little bit about how it evolved. I was writing this other story, and I needed the character (Haley) to have some tragedy in her past that was making her act a certain way in the present. I came up with the idea that her cousin, who she was really close to, died. I was writing this story in 2002. The back story became more elaborate, and at some point, I realized the back story was more interesting than the story I had been working on. In the Summer of 2005, I decided that it was Haley’s story I should write. It was the Summer of 2008 before I actually wrote it. What was I doing in the meantime? Not much related to fiction. The novel was always something I was going to write, but never something I actually sat down and worked on for long periods of time. No, it doesn’t take 6 years to write a novel. I wrote 90% of the thing in 2-3 months. But, I had known the characters that long. I thought I knew a lot about what would happen in the novel, but a great deal of it changed when I actually started writing.

2. Scenes Come Together: When I’m reading, I think of fiction as one big narrative. It starts somewhere and ends somewhere else. But, in my own fiction, I think of the story as a series of scenes. Some scenes strike me out of the blue–often when I’m in the shower or doing dishes or walking around the library collecting books. It starts with some idea, and I go over it and over it in my head until it grows into something more coherent. When I sit down to write it, I have the entire scene in my head. It feels to me as if these fully-formed scenes act as anchors in my story, and much of the rest of the writing I do is an effort to link one scene to the next. The difficult thing is when you get a beautiful or vivid scene stuck in your head, but you realize it won’t work in the story or it’s not necessary to the story. There’s this scene that I’d been thinking of for years, and it felt pivotal to me. It was the turning point. But, when I actually wrote the novel, I found it didn’t work and wasn’t necessary. You can’t know that stuff until you actually write.

3. Characters: I did do some character sketching before I started really writing. But, to be honest, I found it mostly useless. There certainly are some things that came out of it, and I think taking notes on your characters is necessary so that you don’t forget various facts about them. But, I think most of what you learn about your characters, you learn as you write. You see how they react to various situations. I’d known Haley since 2002 and Ryan since 2001, because they both existed already in earlier novels I’d written, but they became very different people when I actually started writing.

4. Outlines: I am a very big outliner when it comes to my academic writing, and I find them even more necessary in fiction. I think of outlines as very fluid plans. They give me an idea of where I’m going or how one scene leads into the next, but I don’t consider them limiting. Even though the narrative of my novel is quite simple, there are so many different threads of emotion, so many different relationship dynamics, and so many various points I want to make, that I find outlining essential. But, when I’m actually writing, I find out what works and what doesn’t. That means changing the outline. It took me about 10 outlines to get through the novel. By the time I’d reached the final chapters, I was outlining constantly, because I had to fit everything in before the end.

5. Notes: I have pages and pages, some type-written and some hand-written, of notes about the novel. As much as I find them 100% necessary, I absolutely hate them. I hate them because they are everywhere and they are so hard to organize and get a handle on. When I don’t have time to write, I will sometimes plot out scenes that have been haunting me. I’m worried I’ll forget them, and I want to take notes while they’re still so vivid in my mind. The notes on scenes are very helpful when I actually write the scenes. But, mostly, the notes are about character motivation. Character motivation is something I have to get right in my mind, but it very rarely makes it directly into writing. So, I have to just reread these notes all the time and try to keep everything straight in my head as I write.

6. Writing: This is it. It’s the only point I’m making here that really matters. I was hesitant to write at all about process, because all anyone really needs to hear is that you have to put your butt in the chair and write. Most of my good ideas come to me while I’m actually writing. And, even the ideas that comes to me at other times are a result of the time I’ve spent writing. There’s no other way to get where you want to go. You have to just sit down and write, even when it’s painful, even when you’re not sure where to go. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only step.

For a little more detail, except for the occasional note, I type everything. I use a Mac application called Scrivener. Of course, you can use any word processor, but I like Scrivener, because it makes it really easy for me to keep my notes and chapters all in one place and, most importantly, jump around them quickly. For me, it’s easier to navigate than one big Word document. I wrote a lot of the novel at my old library job where there was a ton of downtime. The rest I wrote sitting at my desk or my couch.

7. Revising: This is something I’m still trying to figure out. When it comes to most of my writing, I’m not a big reviser. I write at my highest quality as I go, and then I usually make basic editing fixes and turn it in. But, that’s not enough for the novel. I really don’t think you can write anything that long that doesn’t require serious edits. I mean, even as you’re writing, it’s hard to remember what you’ve already written. In revising, I think in terms of small problems and big problems. So, I read through my entire novel, taking notes on each chapter. The small problems are things like, “add more description here” or “this dialog isn’t working.” The bigger problems have more to do with character motivation or sometimes even time line and plot. The small problems are usually easy fixes, but they’re time consuming. The bigger problems I work out in the same way I figure out scenes: I go over and over them in my mind until I figure out what needs to happen.

Okay, damn, when I spell it all out like that, it really does seem like a process. I guess everything’s a process when you break it down.  Let me explain another.   First, I take the toothbrush off the stand.  Then, I open the medicine cabinet and pull out the toothpaste.  Next, I put the toothpaste on the toothbrush.  You see where this is going.