How I write -- how about you?

[moderntimes]

I'm posting part of my website blog which I posted today about how I write and various methods and techniques that help me. I'm giving this as a starter for others here, to share our various "secrets" we use. Here's my slightly edited blog:

Writing and the requisite background

I’d like to chat a bit about writing and the general process. And for those who are interested, I highly recommend Stephen King’s excellent book on the subject, About Writing.

I don’t know how the process works for other writers. I can only speak for myself. But writing a story or a novel or whatever requires both innate talent and learned skills. The two work together. I suppose there are those few prodigies whose talent alone suffices and who can create works of literature from scratch, with little training or practice. But I’m certainly not one of these.

Yes, I have some talent with which I was born. And a fairly sharp mind overall. Like it or not, a good writer must be intelligent. And I had a good formal education, college with some time to venture into study of history, political science, journalism, and literature. As well as my major in chemistry and strong background in the other sciences. And being a voracious reader, I bolstered my education with personal explorations that include quantum physics, astrophysics, general science, biography, and history with a special interest in the Imperial Roman era. That together with many novels, including genre mystery, thrillers, and SF, and of course mainstream.

This is important because I think that a broad education and personal exploration into many fields, both literary and otherwise, better prepare a writer for being able to delve into these areas while creating a fictional universe with which to surround the story. Maybe not specific things, such as the atomic weight of Cesium (which is 132.9, and yeah, I had to look it up), but the general environment and texture of a book, which gains from peripheral information through which the author establishes verisimilitude.

Another benefit of reading is that the author learns how others of that genre in which the author writes handle their own stories. Not that the author copies them or even emulates them, but to better appreciate the way in which famed writers in that genre build their characters and plots, and perhaps glean a spark of inspiration.

And of course, reading is fun into itself.

How I write

For me, ideas swarm in my fevered brain always, so I guess you could say that I’m writing all the time. When I’m working on a story line I don’t try to force the issue but instead let the ideas percolate a while and then I’m able to put them down on paper (actually, into my trusty HP laptop and into MS-Word, as I never use manuscript). But the process is the same.

For example, when I was working on my most recent private detective novel, I had a plot element that kept bugging me. I won’t reveal it here (you’ll have to read the book to see what it is, ha ha) but essentially I wanted to plant a critical, game-changing clue. Now as my Mitch King novels are first person, Mitch is always witness to everything around him. And therefore, a clue must be seen by him and likely by others. I wanted the clue to be twofold, where everyone sees part one, and only Mitch sees part two, and therefore he “knows the final truth” but nobody else but Mitch has the two parts available, which of course fit into a solution.

I really didn’t know how to pull this off so I just put it aside and kept writing toward the ending, and I knew that eventually something would pop up. And one morning, it suddenly came to me in a flash! I tweaked the clue a little and then it was inserted into the story line, and it worked just fine. So apparently, my subconscious had been toiling away at the task of devising that clue for some days. I suppose the shoemaker’s elves were on strike so I had to leave the task to my inner muse.

So for me, writing is a hopscotch process, not totally linear. The procedure is just too complex and varied to proceed in a straightforward manner. For perhaps a single chapter, yes. I start writing Chapter 25 and I pretty well know the events which I’ll be relating, and so I churn ahead and type. I of course go back later and revise the text, but one or maybe two chapters are already there, in my mind, just waiting to be written out.

But not the whole book, not by a long shot. The process of writing a novel is, at least for me, piecework in which I will work on two or three chapters, break off and develop a character description or locale, then go back and revise prior work, and then on to several more chapters. Eventually it all comes together but never via a straightforward process.

Getting stuck

Some authors may have writer’s block. Or tell themselves that they do. And I’ll vouch for this: If you tell yourself you’re blocked, you sure as hell will be.

I myself don’t have blocks. Not because I’m a hotshot or anything, but simply because I long ago figured out a way to avoid it. I took my advice from Monty Python & the Holy Grail: “Skip ahead, brother...”

Here’s how this works. Let’s say I’m writing Chapter 14 in which there’s a romantic scene. Or a gunfight or an interview or whatever, as the subject of the chapter doesn’t matter. If I’m temporarily stuck in creating a good scene, I just save that file and go ahead to a possible Chapter 23 (the chapter numbers being arbitrary in this example) and write about a fight or argument or love affair or anything that breaks me away from the mood of Chapter 14.

I deliberately change tone from whatever subject I’m writing about at the time and start fresh with a differently toned subject. Later, I then find that I can go back to Chapter 14 and easily finish the job.

What’s critical is that I keep writing. And this prevents me from getting stuck. I write about something completely different (borrowing again from Monty Python as I often do). And maybe I stop writing on the actual book itself for a while and work on my author’s bio or some other general sidebar topic. Or I may review previous chapters and edit them, making changes and looking for errors. I often find that going over an earlier chapter helps me gain energy for new chapters.

Saving my work

I save everything. And with modern computers, there’s plenty of room. I recommend that newbie writers get into the habit of saving everything. You never know when it will come to fruition, that little fragment of forgotten text that you hammered out last year which then becomes a pivotal plot element to your prize-winning novel.

Or at least you can tell yourself that. Because it works.

When I write a new novel I start, duh, with Chapter 1 and begin by writing something, no matter how trivial. I’ll churn out maybe 2-3 chapters and save each chapter as “ch01a” and “ch01b” and “ch01c” to denote three separate versions of the first chapter. Then I’ll have “ch03a” and “ch04a” and “ch05b” and so on.

Quite simply, I never overwrite entire tentative chapters with new versions. I save each version separately and put everything into a folder on my desktop. Now of course, if there’s a word or phrase or small paragraph which I don’t like, yeah, I’ll delete it and write anew. This is what every writer does, whether working with computer and MS-Word, a typewriter, manuscript, or quill and scroll. But whenever I’ve written a substantial chunk of a chapter, I save it as an incremental “a”, “b”, “c” MS-Word file and keep plugging away.

Then later, as I’m going through my early revisions, I’ll often find segments of each tentative chapter version which I like the best. I then compile all these into a new and more formal “Chapter 4” but I still save all those false starts as well. Ya never know.

[zeldas_lullaby]

This is a wealth of great tips. I especially like the part about circling back and editing prior chapters if you're not ready to write the next chapter. It's a win-win-win because you clean up your writing, you get clarity about the storyline so far, and you take the immediate pressure off to continue the story.

I like the "jump ahead" method too, although I tend to get confused when I do it. I think it would work for others, though. (My mind is very sequential--I can't do much of anything out of order! All the same, if I could, then I'd find that a useful technique.)

Another technique is self-motivation. All the hours of proofreading, organizing, etc., pay off when you have a physical book in your hands and you love that book!! Eye on the prize.

Timing is good too--setting a schedule and working within that frame. If writing ever feels like a chore (not because you're having the worst day ever, but because you just can't drum up the motivation), then you might want to reconsider writing--it shouldn't seem downright burdensome. If you're forcing it, then it might not be your thing. (Unfortunately, that's how I feel about dieting. But I digress.)

Writing should flow. If it's not flowing, then that doesn't mean you're a bad writer--it might very likely mean that you're overthinking it, and/or you're just taking it too seriously. To flow, it helps if you're not a perfectionist. Writing is a very sloppy task. That painstaking eye for perfection is great when you're editing or proofing, but it's not great when you're trying to create a scene. You won't get anywhere. So just throw it all out there with the attitude that you'll clean it up later.

I'm not nearly so educated as all that! But I play to my strengths. My writing strengths are emotions, dialogue, capturing realistic interactions, and insight. My writing weaknesses are knowledge-based: politics, auto mechanics, history, current events, science, different nationalities, etc. I "fudge" it by playing to my strengths. I think this goes back to what I was always told growing up: "Write what you know."

[moderntimes]

For those times when the good new writing just isn't flowing -- and we all have these times -- what I do is work on other ancillary tasks related to my principal writing task.

For example, go over emails and forum discussions, back up my files, run my antivirus checks, read a guide on editing or revision techniques, maybe do some research on topics I might want to include in my new book, update my website blog -- all sorts of other tasks which are less creative but still need to get done.

And sometimes just the act of stirring the pot, of doing this sidebar work, will stimulate the grey matter and I find that I can then get back to the main writing.