I’ve toyed with different writing processes over the years. Word Docs, Google Docs, Notebooks, fancy pens, pencil, writing linearly, writing scenes as they come to me regardless of order. I’ve never been a plotter. I think I tried that once and, for me at least, it takes away from the process of figuring out. Once I had the story mapped out, writing it didn’t seem fun anymore. Heck, once, years ago, I thought I’d try to make sure that I was at least getting 100 words in at a time in little writing bursts. One of my critique-mates said she could tell I’d been doing something like that. I dropped that process pretty quickly.
The thing I keep coming back to in my writing process is writing first drafts out long-hand and transcribing it later. There’s something about the physical connection to pencil and paper that helps ideas flow better. Sure, I can type faster than I write, but the thoughts don’t flow as easily. Does that mean sometimes things are moving through my noggin’ too fast? Sure. But I can always scribble a quick note in the margins for later.
Plus, you know that thing when you walk into a room because you wanted or needed something, but by the time you’ve got there you’ve completely forgotten what it is you were going for? I’m fortunate that I don’t tend to forget what I want to come next once it’s popped up in the ol’ dome. Sure, I might lose a specific phrasing, but I know where I want things to go.
For The Traveling Jessie Barstow, I wrote a lot of it on the computer first, but it wasn’t until I was doing the long rewrites by hand that I really felt things coming together. Was that because I was writing by hand, or was that just because in rewrites the ideas really coalesced better? I couldn’t say at this point. A little of column A, a little of column B.
One thing I regret doing with Jessie is that as these pages were typed in from my notebook, I put a big red X through them, then tore them out of the notebook, crumpled them up, and recycled them. I don’t regret doing it for any sentimental reason. I think the process of getting rid of the pages as I worked through them was like checking off a box for me. Now, I’m more concerned about proof, in this ever-increasing hunt for people trying to pass AI off as real creative work, that my novel is 100% human made. (But that’s a post for a different day. And I do have multiple print outs of revisions with notes and a file that goes back to 2018.)
For my current work in progress, I’m still crossing stuff out in red. (That will never not be a satisfying sign of completion.) I’m no longer tearing the pages out to throw them away though. Right now, I’m using this super serious Stormtrooper notebook and I’m down to just a nub of a generic #2 pencil. If I don’t lose it, I like to use as much of the pencil as I can before I throw it out. The one I’m using now has a couple/few pages left in it before it is retired.
Not everything is done on paper first. Micro-fiction, writing group homework, blog posts…those kinds of things are generally done straight on the computer.
But for my novels, and a good deal of short stories (on the occasion that I do them) it always seems to work better when I’m writing things out by hand first. Transcribing might be a pain (I currently have about 40 pages to transcribe from the above notebook), but it’s also the first chance for me to make tweaks and corrections to the writing.
What’s your process like?
Happy Reading, be well,
Matt