Tag Archives: the writing process

Nutrition and Processed Writing

07 Friday Mar 2014

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“It’s a meat process.”
–Doublemeat Palace, Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Season Six

Okay, we’ve been building to this for a while now. Today I’d like to discuss the writing process. Almost every writer gets asked what their writing process is. I haven’t been asked much, but I like to joke that it involves a lot of internet porn.

I’ve been avoiding talking about it because it seems like such a big thing to talk about. “Kids, sit down. It’s time for “the talk.” When a man, or woman, feels a building urge inside them to tell a story they go to the drugstore to buy some things they’ll need…” Yeah, that type of big.

At the same time the phrase “writing process” evokes incongruous images. Such as, an assembly line where cars get built, or a recipe for baking a cake. As if a writer, because he/she is popular and making money, or is critically acclaimed, has found the right setup of ingredients and/or procedure to write.

I’d like to say right now: the writing process is not a magical formula for writing.

A colleague in my writing group finds he writes best at the Barnes & Noble Starbucks a few miles from where he lives. Another colleague writes between midnight and two in the morning. Laurie Hallse Anderson’s husband built her a cabin in the backyard where the only electronic thing out there is her computer. J.K. Rowling wrote exclusively in coffee shops.

I have a loving and understanding wife who let me have my own office. So when I write I go into my orange office with black trim (that’s right it’s Halloween all the time for me), sit at my black table (not a desk; desks are claustrophobic), turn on my Dubstep playlist entitled: Medreadation (‘cause I’m a dork), and write. Furthermore, if I’m writing on the computer I change the color of the page to black and the color of the letters (I wrote this blog post in green). Sometimes I come in, turn on the music and just can’t take it. So I turn it off, put in my ear plugs, and shut out the world. Sometimes, I can’t take looking at the computer screen, and I whip out a notebook and pen. When I write long hand I use a variety of pens and notebooks (right now I’m on a legal pad kick; but white paged legal pads, the yellow pages annoy the fuck out of me). Black or blue ink depends on my mood, and a red pen on standby for on the spot corrections.

To point out the obvious: all of these “writing processes” are different. Here’s the secret to the writing process: it’s just a way for you to feel comfortable enough to write. It’s almost anti-climactic in a way. Innit?

Clarification: When I say comfortable I don’t necessarily mean relaxed. My one piece of advice for the writing process is that you find a space/place/environment that’s stimulating without being distracting. When I say comfortable I mean: a place where you feel you can sink into the story and express it in the form of words via writing. Some people feel comfortable floating along the background noise of other people in coffee shops, others find shutting out the world so it’s just them, their brain, and the world of the story. Whatever works for you is what’s good for you.

One thing to keep in mind about the writing process is you. As I stated above: the writing process isn’t some magical formula. The writing process is a tool to help you write. It is not set in stone. If you find that you’re not writing as much, or are being distracted more, by what you were doing, try something else. Sometimes I write stories on the computer, and sometimes I write them long hand first. Sometimes I switch back and forth between the two. Don’t be afraid to change what you’re doing. You’re going to change as a person, so too will the way you write.

Turtle Soup or Rabbit Stew: the tortoise and the hare revisited

22 Saturday Feb 2014

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Alright, we’ve discussed the writing habit, or muscle if you prefer. Now I want to talk about something that is closely related to “the habit” and “your process”: output.

BA-BA-BUUUUUM!

As writers, as people really, we like to see what we have to show for our work. Being able to look at a screen/notebook/printed pages and say, “wow, this is what I got done today,” is a key part to our esteem as workers, as writers, as creators. Eventually this question might also cross your mind: “How much should I be writing?”

In his memoir of craft On Writing (2000, Pocket Books) Stephen King mentions that he does ten thousand words a day. For those of you who can’t do the conversion from words to pages in your head that’s forty (OMG!) pages a day. Author of The Phedre’s Trilogy Jacqueline Carey, in an interview with Writer’s Market, mentioned that while writing the first book in the series she made a deal with herself that she couldn’t shower until she got at least a paragraph…and some weeks she went days without one.

Recently I overheard two of my colleagues in my writers’ group talking about writing. One of them asked the other how long it takes them to write. Of course I perked up and listened doubly hard. The other one answered: “I take about three to four hours,” and I thought this was reasonable, “per page.” My mind was blown. I couldn’t believe the person takes that long for each page.

For me, if I’ve spent 3 to 4 hours on a page it’s a bad day. I’m not feeling it; I know I have to admit I’m beat and take a break. The project I’m working on with my writers’ group I wrote over the summer. I wrote it in full lit-jock mode so not only was I hitting my five page quota easily I was averaging between 12 and 20 pages most days.

There are two very different amounts of output associated with working like this. I want to stress that my colleague’s pages have beautiful language (they better), but this is a stylistic choice that wouldn’t necessarily change if he worked faster. In the writers’ group we usually deal with a couple people each week with no more than a maximum of thirty pages. The last time we looked at this colleague’s pages he turned in 10 and those were a couple days late. My pages don’t have beautiful language, but then I didn’t write that type of story, and I’m done with the whole novel, in fact I finished in the summer, I turn in 30 pages every time I’m up for the group.

Now before you think I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, or I’m condemning my colleague, I want to clarify a few things. First, I’m a 10 on the personality scale (my scale only goes up to 10) so every story I write I’m excited about. Second, I have a crazy work ethic and if I don’t get at least five pages a day I feel like I’ve wasted my time. Third, I believe in the power of editing. One of my favorite things to say is: Editing lets you craft the story you thought you wrote the first time around.

Some of you might be thinking that taking 3 to 4 hours per page means you can cut down on the editing process. Well, that’s a false premise, because the 3 to 4 hours per page factors into that. Obviously my colleague is taking the time to make each sentence perfect (or near enough) before moving on. So there’s still editing, it’s just built into the writing process. Secondly, it cuts down on the editing on a basic, sentence level, but not necessarily when it comes to the story itself. Do you know that old military saying? “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Well, no manuscript survives intact after first contact with readers (agents/editors/focus groups/what-have-you). So you still might have to change the story multiple times to clarify things or flesh things out.

Again, I’m not drawing a line in the sand and saying writing slowly is bad. I’m not even saying it’s less or more work, taking less or more time. What I want to make clear is if you write fast or you write slowly it’s roughly the same amount of work either way. I want everyone to be aware of that.

The point I want to make with this post is this: all progress is positive. It doesn’t matter if after 4 hours you have three pages or twenty, you’ve done a good job. If you’re only getting a few pages after hours of writing it doesn’t matter. Seriously, your process, your style, your output will change, should change, as you mature as a writer. The important thing is you’re writing.

And to put it simply: if you want to write more, write more.

Zen and the Art of Writing Mechanics

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

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It’s been said by better people than me (over and over again) about many, many things: you have to have a firm grasp of the fundamentals to be able to do anything well. Why people think they can ignore it about writing and language is beyond me.

I recently joined a writing group. I was shocked by myself when I started reading others’ writing. Honestly, I didn’t think I was that guy. I thought I was more concerned with the stories than the grammar rules. However, I found myself floundering to get to the story because of the misuse of the words involved.

This is not another rant about comma use. No this is much more fundamental. This is about the misuse of language.

For instance (and every writer struggles with this one), passivity. Passive verb forms keep an action from fully forming (and people could argue that they keep a character and, more importantly, a story from fully developing as well). Examples of a passive sentence: Jenna was starting to understand. Active sentence: Jenna started to understand. Even better: Jenna understood now. You need your characters doing things otherwise you have a story that might have been instead of a story that is.

Another specific example of things that can muddle the pace of the story and put off your reader is prepositional phrases. Not that you shouldn’t use these, but over using them can cause sentence to keep going well past their intended point. Example: “ It’s not my fault,” said Johnny, who had to let the ball go in order to hang on. This is a speech tag, yet the sentence doesn’t just tell us who’s talking it goes into action too…except it doesn’t, because there are three prepositional phrases strung together. This is an example of overcomplicating a sentence.

Like I said, I really didn’t want to be this guy but I found myself missing the story being told because of constant misuses like these. It’s like seeing someone with matted hair, dirty t-shirt, and ripped jeans walking down the street. Is that a person you’d randomly stop so you could talk to them? It’s entirely possible that this person is a sensitive poet who’s had a bad couple of weeks and is on the way to do laundry and a shower, but are you going to test those odds?

The story actually has it worse than the afore mentioned person. If you did take the chance and stop to talk to the person, and they did turn out to be a down on their luck poet you might be able to look past the unkempt appearance. With the story though (and this is my point), the words are the story and the story is the words you use to tell it. Make sure your story is presentable.