More about my personal writing process

I just posted this comment in imagines's journal:

I always have one clean file with the actual story and then a second file with stuff like title ideas, summary ideas, outline notes in approximately the correct order, phrases/lines I want to include later on, scenes I wrote out of order (because I cannot write big chunks of new words when there is text under what I'm writing, I have to work off the end of a document, I'm OCD like that), factual details I want to research, head-sorting-out exposition on characterization/motives/backstory that's too explicit to go in the final piece, etc. etc. etc.

I never used to do this, but now it's an invaluable habit. I don't actually remember when it started. I'm fairly sure I kept some sort of notes file for my NaNo novel in 2007, but I don't think I did it for shorter pieces until more recently. Now I create the notes file before the story file more often than not, and I almost always have both files open side-by-side when I'm writing, so I can refer back to my notes and modify them as needed.

The notes file usually starts out as a single vague stream-of-consciousness paragraph consisting of one or more horrifically run-on sentences, sometimes c&p'd from an e-mail or comment conversation, that outline the general idea of the story. This is not always grammatically correct and usually involves a lot of handwaving and swearing and injudicious capitalization, e.g. "and then Character A is all 'fuck that noise, I want some cake' and rushes the bakery and Character B is all like OH NO YOU DON'T YOU LITTLE SNOTRAG and whips out her katana and they have a karate duel (katanas/martial arts historical connection? research this) and while they're beating the shit out of each other they hash out the misunderstanding with the shoelace from earlier. and B realizes that with the shoelace thing out of the way there's no actual reason to deny A cake but by this point it's about PRINCIPLES and shit, except I think it'll prob be A's POV so this will have to be revealed all subtly through dialogue. So then B has A pinned down with the katana at his throat and the sweet old baker dude sticks his head out the door all 'why hello there B, would you and your friend like some cake' and B is like 'fuck it' and internally resolves her shoelace issues (hm, maybe it should be B's POV after all) and shares the cake with A, and cuts it with the katana, and that should be metaphorical but for pete's sake don't overdo it like you did with those motherfucking trees. close with them hanging out together by the pool later in the afternoon and baker dude coming out and asking why there's a shoelace in the oven."

Then I pick this apart into an outline, bulleted by scene, with notes separated at the bottom and potential titles at the top, like so:

Cake Or Death? Torte Liability?

-opening scene: baking cake, shoelace gets lost, argument, B stomps off
-epic hunt for shoelace (introduce baker dude during this scene)
-confrontation, fight, shoelace revelation, baker dude offers cake, B cuts it with katana
-pool scene, baker dude comes out and asks about shoelace

baker dude's relationship to B? family?

look up katana info

first line of last scene, before baker dude shows up: "It's called an aglet. Everyone knows that. It's the most widely known little-known fact in the history of pointless trivia."

Sometime during this process, or shortly after, I usually get an idea for a first sentence. I occasionally write a line or a snippet of a scene out of order, but those go in the notes file--the actual story is created from beginning to end, and I need a solid first line before I can get down to the business of producing words. I also need white space--not only do I have to write from the end of the document, but if I'm at the bottom of my screen, I have to add in a bunch of blank line breaks to give myself some room. If I need to go back and add in a chunk of words in a scene I'm already past, I do the same thing with the line breaks.

From there, it's a constant back-and-forth between writing from the outline and modifying the outline to fit what I'm writing. I delete scene summaries from the outline once they're written, and I delete notes as they become irrelevant, so my notes file shrinks toward the end of the story. When I'm done writing, I delete the empty notes file. I usually let the story sit for a few days before coming back to edit, but I rarely do a large-scale rewrite--as I said, I do the bulk of my rewriting before the first draft is fully complete. Most of the stories I've been writing lately are fanfic, so once I've gone over the final product a few times (and sometimes sent it to a beta-reader for comments), I post it on my fandom journal.