Sometimes people ask me ‘how do you write?’ and I just stare at them like ‘-_- … what do you mean? … like … with a computer?’ But, what always surprises me, is that people who are not writers can’t fathom what it is that we do as writers. And it’s quite interesting. I have a friend who asked once about my study of writing, and he knew so little about it that he didn’t even know how to phrase his questions. Ultimately, what he was asking was ‘what do writers study?’. I said ‘uh … like how to write better? And grammar … kinda?’ The idea that he needed “editing” explained to him was just something I never expected. ‘How do you get better at it?’ things like that. He’s also not the best when it comes to those things, but it reminded me that writing is not as simple as it seems. Which is actually comforting me because sometimes I feel like a pathetic writer who could be taken over by any ordinary person at any time, and it’s things like these that remind me that it’s an art and some people have other things they’re better at.

I think they expect me to talk about how I write in a den and when a story hits me I just smash it out in one go, and it’s perfect to begin with. Sometimes they’re surprised and picture me more as a nurse or a teacher (which is really just based on them stereotyping me on being a young woman … people have admitted to it). There are way too many people that blink when I tell them I want to be a writer and I can just see the clouds of smoke and glasses of alcohol they think about as they no doubt picture someone like Stephen King. It’s an image that I can’t live up to for them. But, I’m less interested in how people think I fit in the appearance of a writer and more so interested in people who wonder about the craft.

One of the most common questions is ‘how do you write a whole story?’ and that one used to catch me off guard and my answer would be something like ‘uh, from start to finish?’ because I didn’t have the awareness to see that they really didn’t get it. ‘How do you get your ideas?’ is one of the others. That one’s easier though because most of my writing comes from my dreaming.

When they ask more in-depth about the process, I feel a little like an imposter-professor, because I only have one hand on the steering wheel that is the writing process. I try to keep a notebook (or just a folder for smaller projects) and actually take note of the process and issues and plot lines and characters so that I don’t end up with a mess and can’t remember how I got there, but I love putting up visuals, and they usually look very much like the mess I’m trying to avoid. But writing is sometimes like that for me (talking about mostly fictional). It’s a board where I put my favourite things first and then add things around them. I try to follow an order and a structure, but I’m like my own child that doesn’t listen to me. And so the process could be totally different between two projects. Writing by feeling is also not something that I always do. I normally will, but sometimes, particularly when the “creative juices” aren’t flowing, I try to go about it in a more “structured” and “theoretical” point-of-view. By that, I mean I try to pull it apart and refine it like a diorama I put together without the instructions, and now I’m looking at the manual for tips on how to improve.

I like the aesthetic of investigation boards, and a lot of my novel mapping looks like that (when I can actually put it on a board). One of my biggest productivity problems is that I work well when I can have everything in one spot but still move it around at will, and it’s hard to find a way to do that in real life, and it’s still a bother in digital form.

I used to say ‘I just do’, but that doesn’t help anyone understand, and also made me realise I hadn’t thought about it enough. My process is basically: I like the idea, I do a lot of either writing or planning, then I do a lot of the other one. By that I mean, some projects I just start writing straight away, where with others I have more fun planning everything out first. Once I exhaust myself on either, I switch them around. And then when there’s enough (if I start getting too tired before the finish line), I start refining it. That’s the simplest way I can put it really. In terms of a more in-depth look at the process, I’ll likely post something else about it.

It’s probably good to know that a Writer’s Process can be summed up either in a tweet or a 600-page novel. It varies, contain a lot of routine and a lot of ‘it depends on’. The more we talk about it, the more we discover, as if it’s a type of never-ending story. But even when I know I can write forever on it, I know that I can at least list it as: I think, I write, and then I fix.

In terms of why I write what/how I do, that can probably be another post someday.