I am going to talk about my writing process.
I’ve been getting some congratulations and some praise from various of you that appear to have read “Must Love Dice” and liked it. Which I appreciate. I’m still not 100% satisfied with the end result (and I think that is a peculiarity of writers in specific and of people who create things in general – that the editing is never done), but I think that the next few chapters will be better, and probably nerdier. So, for those of you crying ‘false modesty’ (April) – take my word for it that that isn’t the case. Even so, you might be interested in a peek into the Inner Workings of my process.
My typical writing process for fiction, and this is something that I’ve been doing since high school, so I know it works, goes like this:
1. Make an outline
2. Ignore the outline and just start writing, probably ending up with something very different from my initial plan.
3. Loud music.
4. Scotch.
(Those last two are concurrent with 2. btw)
5. Postpone writing by playing video games or reading a book.
6. Contemplate mortality and the nature of failure.
7. Call friends; tell them I am a shitty writer.
8. Start draft completely over again.
9. Repeat steps 2-7 (as many times as needed)
10. Abandon project completely. Never mention it again.
That’s strenuous and difficult. Emotionally draining. I don’t know how people churn out a book a year. It took me months to write under 7,000 words. Bear in mind that 2 of those months represented a work stoppage due to Girl Reasons, though, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. In that time, I started MLD over at least five times. The two elements that I actually like about it – the in media res intro and the segues into the back burner protagonist’s point of view – were late additions (the fourth and fifth attempts, respectively), and they’ve definitely reshaped the way the rest of the story will play out. When I think about refining the process, I often arrive at the conclusion that next time I’m going to just Go For It or Let It Happen, but I never do. I don’t think that Letting It Happen exists in the sense that there’s just some bottle of Writing you can just pop the cap off of and spray everywhere, like some writerly Juggalo painting the unassuming masses with Faygo. And, really, thank God for that.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I still don’t buy your self deprecation. ;)
As one of the falculty at Wilkes, Kevin Oderman, says: Write two pages a day. dont stress out about writing as much as you can in one day, just focuse on two pages. If you can do more fine, but the goal is two. rewrite thos pages if nessicary, but at the end of the day two. Then set those pages next to your computer. Eventually you will see the stack start to grow and that will give you motivation.
“The blank page is God’s way of showing a writer how hard it is to be God”