Writing is my passion, but it’s also a major pain in the ass. I’m sure many other writers would agree with that statement. It’s something we love, but it’s not always easy.
It can be really hard to get the words to flow. Creative constipation is very, very real. Yet we still choose to create, and I love that about us creative folks. Despite the frustrations, we soldier on and produce stories we are proud of.
Everyone sees the final project. That book on the shelf with the pretty cover. The words inside that make you laugh and cry. What you don’t see are the endless drafts that happened along the way to get to that finished product.
So how does it happen? Well, for everyone, the process looks different. All I can tell you is how my brain works through the strings of ideas swirling about, and how I unravel the knots and tangles to create something worth reading.
Every day, I know I am filled with the capacity to create. There is an opportunity in each day to craft a story, but there is not always the time or energy to go along with it.
Let’s face it. Life is very demanding! Most writers aren’t exactly rolling in the big bucks from our writing, so we have to work our creative projects around our full-time jobs that actually pay the bills. Couple the 9-5 obligations with social engagements, hobbies, chores, errands… I’ve just come to accept that we aren’t given enough hours in the day!
What I’ve had to learn as I’ve become more serious about my creative pursuits, it’s all about optimizing the time I do have and working through the creative process that works best for me.
Most of the time, I have a very vague concept of what I want to write. There is usually no particular direction, narrator, or setting. I primarily run on vibes and questions.
Whether I have more concrete details ingrained in my concept or a vibe I’m trying to capture, the creative process begins the same way. A fragment of a thought. A question begging to be answered.
Such was the case in 2020 when I wrote my short story, The Dream Thief. One day, the thought popped into my head: What if you could live forever through dreams? Once I have a question, it snowballs until you’ve got something akin to the boulder Indiana Jones is trying to escape. You start asking more questions and filling in the blanks. How does one live forever through dreams? What is the consequence of living forever through dreams? How would immortality in a dream world change a person?
It becomes easy for me to start spitballing ideas when I have questions. In a way, I’m reminded of my theater kid days of playing improv games in my high school drama class. We learned that the number one rule in improvisation is “Yes, and.” You add to the scene by agreeing to whatever the scenario is, and you add to it by expanding the scenario. Writing feels no different to me. I ask a question, and I improvise the answer.
At least that’s what I do for the short stories. The novels are an entirely different beast to tame.
With novels, it’s not just about answering a question and winging it like I do with my short stories. Novels take a considerable amount of planning. The narrative structure is on a much larger scale in novels than in shorter fiction. I need more steps in my creative process to build a novel that makes sense. While I do enjoy the freedom to explore a story unfold with no expectations when I craft short stories, when I approach my longer projects, I always start with a plan. I’m a planner, not a pantser! My anxiety and perfectionist tendencies would short circuit if I tried to wing an entire novel. I commend the authors who have that skill!
Inspiration comes from many places, and I plan to write a blog doing a deep dive into how I come up with my story ideas. For now, I’ll just talk about the practical process from when I’ve settled on an idea and how I grow the idea from a sentence scribbled in my tattered green notebook I got at Target into a full length story.
It’s going to sound a bit crazy, but this is how my brain works. It has not failed me yet!
To the drawing board… literally!
Listen, I love me a good whiteboard with some crisp dry-erase markers. I keep my whiteboards (yes, I have multiple) next to my desk. It’s so easy to jot down ideas and do some brain dumps when inspiration strikes. Sometimes I just have random thoughts for a novel but not necessarily in the right order for the plot. Scribbling everything down quickly on my whiteboard is a great way for me to visualize all the elements in one place. It often sparks more ideas and gets the ball rolling. I take pictures of my whiteboards before I erase them so I have a record of all the ideas I generated. Usually, I’ll write them in various Google Docs to keep track of my brainstorming sessions afterwards. The trick is to not think, just write. Whiteboards get me out of my head and allow me to just free write the ideas as they come.
Index cards are a girl’s best friend.
Marilyn Monroe might have said diamonds are our best friend, but I certainly have way more index cards than I do diamonds. I don’t think I could function without my index cards! They are such an important part of my process! Once I’ve gotten the general idea mapped out from my whiteboard scribbling, I use index cards to put the puzzle pieces together. Most of the time, I don’t have my plot fleshed out entirely. I have plot points but no order to them. There is a beginning and an ending. That middle part to get me from Point A to Point B? That’s where my index cards save my life. I write each potential plot point onto its own card. I don’t worry about the order. I only care about writing everything down. Sometimes I end up with over 50 cards for one project. Once I feel like I’ve gotten all of the plot points I want in the story, I will lay out all the cards on the floor, my bed, or the kitchen table and begin putting them in a sequential order from start to finish. It feels like putting a puzzle together and finding where each piece fits. This helps me visualize the timeline of my novel and move things around to where they make the most sense. This card method has helped me plot and outline four books this year alone, and it’s only March!
Angels in the Outline
I fully understand the limitations of index cards. One wrong move and they scatter and get completely out of order. It’s not the most reliable system, which is why I take those index cards and type them up in the order I’ve laid out to create an outline in Google Docs. Sometimes I break the outline down into chapters but most often, I just go by plot points and scenes. I figure out where the chapters end as I’m writing. Stories and characters don’t always do what I want them to, and I learned not to limit them. The chapter ends when they say it ends. I just make sure I have a rough outline to guide me from one plot point to the next. It’s like mapping out a roadtrip. There’s a vague idea of where you want to end up at the end, and you’ve marked each town you want to visit along the way. You just don’t necessarily know everything you’re going to do while you’re in those towns.
The craft is in the draft.
So begins the actual writing part! Drafting is the most frustrating part of the process for me because building a story from scratch can be challenging! You have the idea in your head of what you want the story to be, but your first draft is not going to be it. It’s called a rough draft for a reason. Grammatical errors. Plot holes. Typos. Losing direction. It’s messy! It’s for my eyes only. Writing a book is like building a house, and the rough draft is the foundation and framework. A lot needs to be added before the final house is ready to be on the market. Getting the rough draft down is my biggest struggle because I want it to be good – and I know that it won’t be. It takes rounds of revisions and editing to really make it something special. But I do get discouraged when I read it back. The self-doubt is so real!
It gets easier once the draft is finished and I can set it aside to clear my mind. I come back to it with fresh eyes and edit, revise, rewrite, flesh out… all of the things I need to do so that my story is polished and something that I enjoy reading. I’ll put on my playlist I’ve created precisely for the project I’m working on, and I will go to town!
Eventually, there comes a time when you just know your story is done and ready to be out in the world, and that’s where I currently am with my debut novel – Happily Never Afterlife. For two years, I’ve worked on this novel and developed these characters and the overall story that I love so much.
Rinse and Repeat
When time is limited and I only have so much energy I can devote to my creative passions, I feel grateful that I have developed this writing process to keep things moving along the pipeline. It allows me to create outlines I can work from and jump into different projects that are in various stages of the process. While Happily Never Afterlife is about to be published, another novel is heading into draft #3 of rewrites so I can query it for traditional publishing. Two other books have entered the rough draft phase. Two other projects have been outlined and are waiting in the wings until I can move them up the pipeline.
I found a way to keep my creative waterfall flowing. For years I struggled with a lack of inspiration, and I felt creatively stifled. Now, through the madness to my method, I never feel short of ideas. There is always something to work on. Every idea gets catalogued in my notebook, Google Docs, or the notes app on my phone. Anything I feel worth fleshing out will go through this process until a finished novel emerges.
As the meme says, “it ain’t much, but it’s honest work.”
