Discussion → Writing Process
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What's your writing process? Seems everyone's is different, though there are certain styles that are similar. Do you sit for hours on end? Or do quick bursts? Does it have anything to do with how your mind works?
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I may be more plot-oriented than many of you: I tend toward story-telling in the old sense and almost always with what would be called 'genre' subject matter. So I need to have an idea of where a story is going in the baldest possible terms--x leads to y, etc. The plot changes substantially and moves in unexpected ways as a work progresses; the characters develop odd facets. But I usually have a point I'm headed toward. I do try, once I'm into something, to sit down with it almost every day and work on it--even when I feel like I'm forcing myself. But once something is done--I'm thinking of longer works--I may not begin something new for quite a while.
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Associative logic and flawed logic direct my writing, and helped build a sense of tragic urgency. my plots are internal and psychological.
I use Sanford Meisner's creative theory (Meisner was a famous acting teacher and actor) which is "Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances".
I use Meisner's theory of creativity unconsciously every time I write. Having all my training in theater (I was an actor from age 8 to age 26) prepared me for the creative layering of imaginary worlds through detail, and through sensory information.
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Thanks, Meg, for this reference to Sanford Meisner's creative theory: It is staying with me.
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I'm a family man. I have a full time job, a wonderful daughter and the most beautiful wife a guy could ever hope for. I write when I can.
I keep my smartphone nearby, so I can burst into prose or poetry whenever I have a moment -- in the grocery store line (I often choose longer lines to have more time), in solitary moments while sitting on the john, in meetings at work. All of my poetry is on the phone, along with "transfer" files and notes about where I left off on fiction projects.
I have a relentlessly organized set of folders on my MacBook Pro, which include photoshopped sketches of room layouts, designs of things in the stories and what not.
Finally, I have a "secret" section of my website where I keep things I'm working on, so I can review them (often taking notes for revisions) or letting people see them for feedback.
I fit it in where I can. Poetry and microfiction fit my time requirements more than the novels I wanna write, but we all do what we must.
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I would love to be more disciplined to the point of it all coming together naturally as may be the process in Meg's case. But Hannibal's manner is more like my own. The best stories turn out to be the ones that started out of the blue with an opening line and just rambled into something from there. I'm usually completely in the dark as to where it is going (though I do catch on eventually). Perhaps that is why my endings are the biggest problem for my to decide; waiting to see if that's all there is to it.
If I tend to choose a topic that I wish to develop into a story, the narrative somehow becomes too "telling" for me and unnatural.
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i've not thought much about my process but i think my latest flash piece ("Asthmatic", http://bit.ly/7uMsTq)is as good a place as any to start:
on boxing day, antagonized after a night full of asthma attacks, i board a train to hamburg, the town where i lived for many years. sitting atop the rolling ruckus, i write without haste. i play with it for a couple of hours then, on the next day, i edit it but, as with many of my short pieces, the paragraph structure and central images remained intact.
since we're at her house, my step mother happens to read the piece and it makes her cry because she is reminded of my father's death. Only then do i realise that the date i chose in the piece, 12 august, is the day when she died, and that i'm in the house now where she fell to her death many moons ago.
i upload the piece to my blog (http://flawnt.me/), which i treat like a womb: many stories lie there egg-like, unfertilised. by modern magic, the blog post is also virtually immediately visible on my facebook site. since i am, by now, fairly sure of "Asthmatic", i also post it to the general fictionaut wall, receiving very kind comments from a number of people. (had i not been so sure, i would have posted it to the 'Hidden Workshop' group on fictionaut where others most generously profess their likes and dislikes.) Knowing that writers now look at this makes me read the piece more carefully again and i make small changes here and there, nothing substantial, like ironing out creases.
i tweet the piece as 'new flash by flawnt' via my twitter account (http://twitter.com/flawnt/). On the next day, back in berlin, i read it aloud for the first time (something i normally do earlier during editing) and i decide that i like it, like my voice for it (not always the case) so that i make a recording and share that, too via facebook (http://bit.ly/8zWyuB - at other times, i use YouTube). the reading announces itself on facebook by way of the same 21st century hex as before.
On the next day, i'm excited to see that the story has jumped up on the fnaut 'recommended stories' list. a couple of the commenters there are new friends. I add their comments, identies and links to their own work on my 'flawntwalk' (http://bit.ly/3d5NFm), a place to go back to when, at some point in the future, i may be overwhelmed by the shadow of my bearded muse whispering 'You will die like a dog for no good reason.'
KPI interlude: as of today, possible readers of this piece include my twitter followers (3,971) and my facebook friends (275): confirmed readers on fnaut (50) and of my blog (via google analytics; 250 who viewed this never having been on my site, and 950 who have been on my site before). the devil has auspiciously overlooked the fact that the story contains 666/2 words. i received 7 favs. if i want to write anything else ever again, i must shower now and wash off the digits.
feeling sustained by writers and readers (making me feel privileged beyond belief, like an antipope) yet another flash has come to pass looking for a place of publication. preferably 'matchbook', but they're closed for submissions, so i must pitch my tent at the entrance of its black and white headquarters on the off chance that ed mullany comes walking by looking for fillings.
as i chew on these numbers as on a gum gone flavourless, i'm thinking about a couple of other things i want to do. life in the writing line is good.
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a shorter version of the moment by moment description above goes like this: never before have writing, editing, publishing and feedback been so close to each other. while i benefit enormously from this, both on ego and developmental grounds, my long fiction is touched by this process as such only via the publication of (largely) unedited excerpts which help me maintain momentum.
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I completely forgot another tool I use extensively: outlining.
Because I write in tiny fragments, I have to look back to lots of notes and an outline to remember where longer pieces of narrative works are going. Easy to keep synchronized copies on my smartphone and computer, and easy to follow the breadcrumbs back to where I was going.
I also often find new interesting things to flesh out as I go back to it, which is fun as well.
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interesting, hannibal. i also tend to write in tiny fragments (both in my head and then later on the machine), this is helpful. and i also go back to old fragments A LOT, which usually i read after quite some time, often having forgotten about them. this is lovely and useful for editing, too.
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Apparently Nabokov composed his novels in fragments, writing them sentence by sentence on notecards.
A review of "The Original of Laura," his recent (posthumously published) novel:
http://bit.ly/582tha
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thanks ed for that link - odd, isn't it, that modern word processors (scrivener, ulysses) now have to emulate that very universe of index cards, with cork boards and hidden little corners of the mind...
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The best writer of tomorrow writes in effortless longhand in creamy imported notebooks; she transfers the writing days later to a Mac. The heat went out in my apartment at 10 a.m. The temperature outdoors is 18 degrees F; indoors 59. I type at the PC wearing a lime-green bicycle glove on my right hand. Today I'm wearing a cashmere cap, shearling boots, and a parka over leggings. I wish, I really wish I could write in fragments on notecards or scraps of paper, carry them in a box. When I've tried to scratch at a cafe, library, or pub, I've laughed out loud, been a chuckler. I run out of Kleenex. I need to be alone at a control panel with my hands on the keys playing it like organ or newspaper layout terminal.
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nice. here is the cover of my actual 15 cm x 15 cm card board box, beautifully decorated (not by me) with extracts from botticelli's venus: http://bit.ly/6y1Tli - very pleasing to the touch and to the eye, filled with yellowish musty index cards. i will use your lovely description as an encouragement to not just look at and open it at odd intervals and pregnant moments, as if conferring a sacrament, but stuff it instead and see what emerges. hope you have a wonderful new year's eve!
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Finnegan has suggested to me that I post here this vid of my writing process, or, at least it was one process of my writing one thing.
The Making of Directions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K3Tsz8-quo
I spent two weeks thinking about the story before I put anything to composition. During that time I did a whole lot of other things. This vid is the actual writing of one paragraph of a larger story.
I am interested in how most of our understanding of writing comes from our reading of finished work and that in the process of learning to write, at least for me, it is a reverse engineering that we have to go through to figure out how to construct material that emulates what we come to feel has some sort of value. Rarely do we encounter the writing in the process of being written... even when we go back to early manuscripts and carry them forward, or backwards or however we approach 1st hand an author's raw material. Reading Pound's edit of the Wasteland has always entertained me to the point that I find the controversy over Gordon Lish's editing of Raymond Carver somewhat pedestrian.
Recently I encountered some conversations online where people were talking about how they read their work out loud in the process of rewriting, as if it is some sort of new idea. Usually I am making noises before I even get finished with the sentence though that could be a dietary side effect and I only think that it makes sense.
Again, this vid is in real time, I was actually writing the story. When I got done I submitted the story to an e-zine. It was very quickly rejected in a form notice... which made me feel bad not that it was rejected but that I thought I had a relationship and it was a form notice. So I immediately turned around and submitted it elsewhere. I also placed it in a private room to see what comments from friends that it would gather.
I made a point of not shaving over the Xmas Holiday, it was an inexpensive celebration, and as my wife pointed out when she watched the vid today, I look like hell. Sometimes in my writing process I do look like hell -- it is one of the pleasures of writing that usually I don't care what I look like. One comment I got on one of my vids is that my hair should either be Marine Corp short or John Lennon long... you know what? Be happy.
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neat about the Nabokov edition
I have been playing w/ Liquid Story Binder
http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/it has some issues but the replication of 'cards' and the integration of outlining, along w/ mind mapping, and the ability to put inspirational photos into the file, plus other gadgets makes it worth whatever hassles I have encountered
it can also be put, w/ the novel, onto a usb flash card so that you can move it from computer to computer
I also enjoy composition on my smart phone and got one that, since I am PC based, is seamless w/ MS Word... I often will take work along to edit on the train, if I happen to be on a train... sometimes writing on envelopes with a borrowed pencil also works
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GO, really appreciate your description of the writing process on top of the vid. i also enjoy a strong relationship with sound during the writing process though it took my own podcasts (cuz of the stills they're not really vids) to become conscious of it. lifting it into my conscious mind and working with sound purposefully really enriches the experience for me and - i hope - improves the writing, too.
i prefer the unclean look (half shaven, shorn, worn, whatever) especially if it makes you happy.
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Gabriel, thanks for the video, insights, and revelations. I like:
"I am interested in how most of our understanding of writing comes from our reading of finished work and that in the process of learning to write, at least for me, it is a reverse engineering that we have to go through to figure out how to construct material that emulates what we come to feel has some sort of value."
And:
"Reading Pound's edit of the Wasteland has always entertained me to the point that I find the controversy over Gordon Lish's editing of Raymond Carver somewhat pedestrian."
And:
"Recently I encountered some conversations online where people were talking about how they read their work out loud in the process of rewriting, as if it is some sort of new idea."
I'm often interested in details of grooming, as here.
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does anyone still write on a volleyball?
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i've done some writing sitting most uncomfortably on a birth ball after my wife was finished with that - does that count?
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