How I write

[jedusor]

I've been writing a lot more recently than I have in years, probably because I now actually have the time to get ideas down when they pop into my head. I mentioned in my end-of-year meme that I wrote over 60,000 words in 2010--probably about half of that was written during the last three months of the year. (Most of it was fanfic, although NaNoWriMo, while it didn't work out for me, did yield several original ideas I've been poking at.)

I was thinking today about the writing process, or rather my writing process, and how mentality and environment affect my ability to write. For me, there are two main aspects of writing: idea generation and first drafts. I prefer to write from the beginning to the end of a piece rather than jumping around between scenes, and I do a lot of restructuring and editing in between chunks of new words, so my first drafts tend to be pretty close to the final product. I know you're not Supposed to do that, and the whole point of NaNoWriMo is to get out of that habit, but I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that it's how I work best. Especially when I look at my '07 NaNoWriMo novel, which I have tried to revise several times without much success. So instead of fighting my urge to rewrite while writing, I'm trying to embrace it and work with it, and it's resulted in several pieces I'm pretty happy with.

Idea generation, unsurprisingly, seems to happen mostly when I'm letting my mind wander. I'm not sure why, but my best fiction ideas usually come to me while I'm falling asleep and my best academic ideas usually come to me when I'm doing boring, repetitive tasks. Several times, I've tried to generate fiction ideas while stocking merchandise at Williams-Sonoma by thinking about fanfic, and accidentally ended up writing treatises in my head on things like the neurological motivation for RPS and the connection between accuracy in social judgment and psychological health in celebrity-fan relationships.

Getting down the actual words requires different circumstances, and I'm still figuring out exactly what the right circumstances for me are. If I'm at home, I need silence for any kind of writing, and I usually need to be alone for fiction writing, although having people around can actually make academic writing easier as long as they're quiet. Considering this, it's weird that the most productive place for me to write right now is the bus. I discovered this a few months ago, when I needed to go to work right in the middle of a thought. I pulled up a notepad application on my phone, just to finish the paragraph before the right phrasing went out of my head, and wrote several hundred words during the twenty-minute ride downtown. I picked it back up on the way home, and ended up riding all the way to the end of the line and then catching another bus back to my stop because my writing was flowing so well that I didn't want to get off. I think I wrote 1300 words that day in just a couple of hours. The majority of the 10,300-word fic I spent the end of December on was written on the bus, using my Sidekick's thumb keyboard. (Which, let me tell you, ow. I tried using my laptop, but it's hard to see the screen and I get paranoid that people are looking, and I'm also wary about leaving it in the break room.)

I'm not sure why the bus is so inspirational for me. I think it's partially that the internet is available but not easy to use--cutting myself off from the web entirely doesn't work well for me because I'm the sort of person who stubbornly resists authority even when it's in my own head, but I'll happily choose not to dick around on the internet because it takes forever to load and scrolling is a pain in the ass. It also may have something to do with thalamic response to the white noise and vibrations on a bus. Maybe I should buy a massage chair.

In the end, I think writing, for me, can be broken down into creativity and focus. Idea generation requires creativity without focus, whereas pounding out the actual words requires creativity and focus. Sometimes I get focus without creativity, which usually means a lot of rereading, minor editing, and staring at my outlines. It doesn't feel productive while I'm doing it, but I actually think those periods are a helpful and even necessary part of the process, letting the work I've done sink in and looking at it like a reader would.

Comments

[cometcrazie113.livejournal.com]

The way you write is totally legit and pretty common -- it's called recursive writing :) apparently recursive writing comes naturally to a lot of people, but schools never teach you to write that way so people try to write other ways.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I never "learned" to write--I picked up almost all my writing skills by reading a massive number of books--so I guess it's easier for me to ignore the rules than it is for people who've spent years being told how to do things.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Idea generation requires creativity without focus, whereas pounding out the actual words requires creativity and focus. Sometimes I get focus without creativity, which usually means a lot of rereading, minor editing, and staring at my outlines.

That is extremely interesting and I need to think about it for a while. Thanks!

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about it.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

I'm the sort of person who stubbornly resists authority even when it's in my own head

Well put. I may have to steal that one.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Feel free!

[lunacow]

Go with whatever process works for you. (As if I need to tell you that!)

Rewriting as you write has the potential that you'll get stuck endlessly revising the first 15% of the work and never get to the end, which isn't a good process, so that's why people tend to advise against this method. But that advice only applies to people who have no idea what works for them and have yet to finish anything. You know what it takes to get a story written, and there's no reason to apologize for it.

That's cool that you get a lot written on the bus. I hope you find a solution that spares your poor thumbs. Have you seen the AlphaSmart? There are used ones on ebay for less than $50.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't really have that endless-revising problem. I've never actively tried to edit an unfinished piece without adding to the unfinished parts, but I suspect I wouldn't be able to.

I'm actually okay with the sore thumbs! It's good pain, like that 1.5-days-after-exercising stiffness. It means I accomplished something. :)

(yes, I do have a cat)

[desert-neon.livejournal.com]

You write just like I do! And I also get my best ideas while either falling asleep or just waking up. I thought I was the only one who did that! :)

Re: (yes, I do have a cat)

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

That's one of the reasons I wrote these posts--I was wondering what similarities exist between writers, because we don't actually seem to talk about the nitty-gritty details of writing all that much.