Owning Your Writing Process

Some things about the early stages of writing are universal: the exhilaration of epiphany, the struggle to wrangle that amorphous epiphany into actual words, and rampant hair-pulling when the words won’t play fair.

But then again every writer’s process is different-- it’s this weird scaffold of habits and strategies lashed together that capitalizes on your strengths and fights against your weaknesses as you summit the WIP mountain.  So this week I’m revealing my things that make my neurotic process uniquely mine and explaining why my habits are what they are.  The hope is you then think about your process deeply and see what’s working for you, why, and what needs to be changed to get you to the summit.

For me, there is a long incubation period.  I need sit with an idea for a month before I can say “yes, this one’s got some gold worth mining.”  I have a very short attention span and something has to hold my attention for at least that long or it won’t ever get finished.  Many half-formed monstrosities litter my old notebooks from the days before I learned my muse is a fickle mistress.  

Once I say “yes,” I look into the idea’s core and extract a question.  I’m thematically driven, not plot driven, whether I’m writing fiction or nonfiction.  Without a question that tames my curiosity, I’ll be all over the map-- “What about the author’s correspondence? What does chaos theory have to say on the subject?  WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?”  It devolves quickly.  So I pick ONE question and stick to it.  Once I have my question, it’s into the mines.  Time to do some serious RESEARCH.

I really, really like research.  In fact my love for research becomes a problem.  I find myself reading everything even remotely related to my topic.  If that happens I disappear down a rabbit every rabbit hole, then stumble around with an armload of notes like a zombie until I find a way to ritualistically burn it all to cleanse myself of it’s weight.  In short, it’s a grisly scene.  

To avoid this, I start with an “urtext.”  I read a survey work and pull out everything related to my question, then I branch out to more specialized research.  For example, with my last nonfiction piece, I started with Elaine Scarry’s The Body In Pain because I wanted to talk about the body in pain in fanfiction.  No frills.  Just-- the body in pain.  For the novel I’m writing I started with Michael Kane’s Game Boys because it is a straight-forward and intimate look at the rise of esports.  Both of these books are fantastic, if you’re interested in some good reading.  For my current paper, I started with Steve Dixon’s Digital Performance.  Guess what it’s about.

Go on, guess. 

Once the research is done, I type out the notes (a fifteen-page paper equals about thirty-five pages of notes), then I cut them into individual strips and lay them out on a very, very large table.  A lot of people can do all of this part in the computer, and I’m envious of that.  For me, they have to be in my vision simultaneously.  I need to see the spread. Then I write a single word on the side of each note that becomes their taxonomy.  

By the way this is the way long-time New Yorker staff writer John Mcphee also organized his ideas in the ‘70s, down to writing thematic tags on the sides of cards.  I get distracted too easily by any screen.  My mind is trained to see screens as play rather than work and it doesn’t absorb information from them with the same ferocity as it does paper.  Or, as Scientific America puts it, "Whether they realize it or not, many people approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper... most screens, e-readers, smartphones and tablets interfere with intuitive navigation of a text and inhibit people from mapping the journey in their minds.”

After the pre-planning there’s an outline. My question then magically turns into a thesis, and it’s time to write.

That’s it: my brainstorming/research phase laid out.  It’s painfully analog, but since I need things to be real instead of digital to fully process them it’s what must be done. So I do it.

I want to know, what crazy writer habits do you have?

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