Old Ramblings on My Writing Process
I was reading one of my older posts the other day for translation purposes, and I stumbled on a bit I want to show again. It was a part of a longer conversation with fantasy author D.L. Lewellyn, on our respective writing processes.
This was some three years ago, and not to worry, I’ve made strides with my project since then—Seven Drifts—and I came back to the morning pages too. But I certainly do like to look back and smile. I hope you will too!
Here it is:
A few years ago, I had a good routine going on, of doing morning pages each and every day (as proposed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way: three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing without pause, no matter what comes out, first thing every day). Besides helping me catch a ton of fleeting ideas, and helping me plan ahead a bit, and find new avenues for my stories and my life in general, and allowing me to vent out many a frustration and bad feeling... the morning pages seemed to give me a kind of flow, an easiness of letting the words come out without overthinking them.
Lately, I’ve been struggling to go back to that kind of routine, and my writing has maybe become slower. But it has also improved, I hope, as I move forward with my main writing project, and as I work with my developmental editor, and rewrite, and re-think, and basically scratch my head raw and try again and again. I lose my sleep over it all the time, but I remind myself to trust the process, and that I will get there, eventually.
Also, I find it kind of helpful to remember to focus on the process itself, rather than the end result. But it’s hard to do.
My writing process so far:
Outline, whatever comes out, with what little I know about writing (next to nothing when I started). View it as draft-zero.
Write a shitty first draft for my eyes only. Shitty is the key word here, the attitude to adopt. Or nothing comes out. Also, trying not to edit too much, if at all. (This is theoretical, and I was never able to do that, by the way, so I end up compromising, but still going forward.) Viewing it as a practice round helps too (for real), and reminding myself that no one else but me is ever going to read those shitty words. Since this draft is only “a test”.
Realize that even with a lot of planning and outlining, there is still a lot of seat-of-the-pants improvisation involved. Discovery writing helps me reach for new notions and solutions. Because there’s no end to what I didn’t think of, or forgot, or to new, better ideas that just keep popping up all the time.
Keep reading and learning. A lot: books on writing, blogs, podcasts...
Re-structure. Re-outline.
Re-draft. It’s still a practice round, or at least, I try to trick my incredulous mind into believing it is, and make it feel like this is still only a test, no pressure. Because let’s be frank, it most probably is...
Or maybe, what if it’s not?
At this point, the writing should be a lot better, if not almost perfect, right? After so much reading, and learning, and practising... Besides, I’ve done some reaching out, and now I’ve got a platform on my hands, with a bunch of followers, and a couple thousand subscribers to my mailing list... So where’s my book? People are waiting, this is taking too much time!
Okay. So I want this to be the final draft.
Get tense. Experience an exquisite writer’s block. Go back to the morning pages—but now they feel like a drag. Change day jobs. Feel like an imposter. Or maybe it’s not just a feeling: I probably really am an imposter. Flirt with burnout. Get COVID-19 in 2022. Take a break. Come back to it. Tell myself it’s a practice, a test, not a performance...
I’m nearing the end of the second full draft of Seven Drifts. It won’t be the final draft, but I think it’s going to be a good stepping point to get to it without having to rewrite everything. Looking back, it feels like the fourth draft. That’s what I’ve been calling it for a while now, because I wrote the first Act four times, changed genres, shuffled sections and scenes around, and made the whole thing into a big mess, like a large, broken jigsaw puzzle. Broken, but still fascinating.
All in all, it’s a wonderful process. And I like puzzles, so I’m certainly not going to start complaining about this one!
Over the holidays, I reached the end of Act 2, the central part. It feels great to be at the end of it, because it’s a fair chunk of the story, making for half the story’s length. So I started figuring out Act 3 once again, with all the changes and new ideas and problems to resolve that came up while doing the rest.
And now, I’m tackling it. The ending payoff, the last quarter of the story. Oh yeah! That’s an encouraging, exciting place to be.
Talk of rambling!
And now, about allowing creativity to flow naturally and abundantly...
Do you consider it part of your natural talent, or do you need to culture it, and nurture it?
Do you consider yourself a fast writer (or creator), or a slow one?
Is it better to create as fast as possible without looking back, or to take our time, edit a little and smell the roses, letting the ideas bubble up and allow the work to come to life... but risk taking too much time?
I believe there are only good answers. What about you?
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