Do you set aside a time each day to write? Do you write five pages stream of consciousness then trim it down into something that makes sense? Are you a planner? Do you write in a notebook? Do you write once, edit once? write twice, edit once? Write once, edit thrice?
I don’t have a consistent process. I’ve been experimenting with writing in a basic markdown editor, maybe 500 words at a time, then stringing together multiple entries as best I can. What I find is I have lots of ideas and thoughts that are separate, and critical to my ability to form complex thought is correlating multiple seemingly unrelating things, which then creates a new more complicated and hybrid whole. I can’t sit down and write 5,000 words on one thing, but I can write 500 words on ten things, and then use that as the basis of a mosaic piece that (when edited well) comes together into a unique whole.
My process has been to dismantle all my useless and limiting expectations and structure which I was arbitrarily applying to myself and failing to meet. Now I write whatever whenever at my own whim which I have been having much more fun with. Writing isn’t my job, there’s no deadline, there are no laws regarding what structure it has to take, and no minimum requirement for how much I must produce on any kind of basis to be “worth it” at all. I do it because I like to write and read it, and sometimes other people like to read it as well.
My process is influenced by my story’s nature/how I am publishing it: I am writing a character-driven serial on Royal Road. This means I am writing chapters of about 2000 words, and they are generally a fair amount over (I try to not let a chapter be less than 1800, but some chapters just are short before the next section that will be long is going to start).
Each chapter roughly represents a scene, 2-3 very short scenes, or a significant piece of a very long scene and I need to find a suitable break point.
So that is what I am aiming for when I sit down to write. I want to complete a scene/chapter. I don’t want a dangling thread. I want someone to be able to read this chapter and not feel like I just randomly stopped somewhere.
It’s in my not-writing time that I think about the rest of the plot and potential future scenes etc. Well, I try to organize it that way, which doesn’t always work. But this is how I focus my writing overall.
I am working through writing my first novel, and I started at 1600 words/day in an attempt to keep up with NaNoWriMo. Now, though, I do about 300 words/day. I bang out a scene or two each day, out of order, based on whichever part of the story I want to add to. When I meet my final word count goal, I will reorganize and rewrite the whole a few times so that the story makes sense.
Are there any pitfalls to the consistent 300 words/day? Do you find that on some days you just can’t output good work, or maybe that you consistently avoid certain parts of the story that you don’t know how to write?
I used to keep separate books (fiction, journal, ideas, etc) but I found I could only personally keep consistent if I just wrote them all in one book I keep with me all day whenever the idea pops into my head
Most stuff only gets edited or expanded upon if after a few days I keep circling back to a passage or page
Do you make an effort to go back through your ideas and evaluate which ones you want to expand? Or does it happen more organically in some way?
