On How I Write (Patreon)

Over on the FM mesage board, I posted the question: "How do you write?"  Answers have started trickling in, and it's an intiguing mix of approaches.

For any writers following along here, what's your process, your method--how and where do you write, and what works for you, if you don't mind sharing?

I can see my own writing broken across several phases of my life.  There was a period, way back when, during which I wrote whenever the urge hit me.  Initially my own stories, shared with friends; then fanfiction, shared online.  I wrote sporadically, though when I did sit to write I'd churn out volumes.  Then I stopped writing.

Constant was my effort to get back into writing.  I wanted to write, and I wanted to publish, and I had an idea for a novel (I've still got that idea floating around somewhere) but I lacked the confidence and had no idea whether I had the ability.  I started Constant to see whether I could bring a longer project, something novel-ish in length, to conclusion.  I also wanted to get in the writing practice, to improve as I went along.

Because I saw Constant as a stepping stone to something else, I didn't put a great deal of thought into it before starting - no long, detailed planning, character sketches, world building and the like.  (Most of that came later.)  I had an idea of a tough-guy mysoginist with a shady past, an executive dragged down in status--and that opening scene, the prelude with Cindy in a dress holding a gun.  

A lot came out of that scene: where'd she learn to handle a gun? What was her relationship with the man tied to the chair? Who did this to her, and why?  The semi-noir flavour influenced the opening chapters, too.

But I was mostly writing for fun, with an eye on subverting a lot of the stereotypes that seemed to underlie a lot of stories on FM: passive protagonists, semi-magical transformations, and so on.  And I started to write it at a point in my life where, for various reasons, I had quite a bit of free time outside of work.  I was single, and writing filled in some of the empty space in my life.

I wrote for about a year, finished season one, started to slow down with the opening chapters of season two, and then... stopped.  For over a decade.  Life changed, significantly, and writing just fell to the side.

I did write a bit during that decade.  I took desultory pokes at Constant a few times--some minor edits, a few bigger ones--but never found the energy or courage to progress the story.  At one point I took a couple of short story writing classes at further education colleges.  I'd highly recommend the experience.  I don't know that it actually made me a better writer (though it may well have, just by forcing me to try different genres and styles, and read short story authors I'd never have otherwise discovered).  But it was highly entertaining.  There were some wonderfully odd people signed up for the course. (I may have been one of them?)  Some of their stories were terrible--in fascinating ways--and some were excellent.

A few years ago I picked up Constant again.  Wrote chapters 4 and 5 and started the Interlude and--stalled, again.  It's hard to pinpoint precisely why.  Work became a lot more intense, for a time; that played a big part.  And I was still writing in a sort of "what I can, when I can" sort of mode.  So when it became difficult--when I sort of lost track of where I was headed with the Interlude--I guess I sort of gave up?  

And now?  Well, it's been a pretty good run to date.  The Interlude is done, Chapter 6 is coming along nicely, and I managed the first two chapters of a fantasy side project along the way.  Spirits remain high, mostly.  And I think what's made the largest difference is establishing that routine and that reasonable deadline.

I still hold myself to 500/words a day.  It's a small number, but an achievable one; and if I pass it (which I do most days) it feels good.  Hitting 1000 feels great; 2000--which rarely happens--a real achievement.  But even that 500 words means that progress is made, every day, and that feels significant.

My writing tends to be slow.  When I pick up the story for the day, I almost always go back a few paragraphs--pages--even to the start of the scene and re-read.  This gets me back into the flow of the story and the mindset of the characters.  I also edit as I go along, often making pretty significant changes: catching typos, but also expanding on setting or dialogue, or adding to the action.  Sometimes this means that by the time I get back to continuing the scene, I've already hit my word limit for the day.  It also means that by the time I've reached the end of the scene, the earliest parts of it have been read over several times and the effort of the final edit is lessened.

I do most of my writing at work.  The nature of my workplace gives me a certain amount of privacy and space, something I generally don't have at home.  The commute offers some a bit of space to think about what's ahead.  I'm usually at my desk by 7am, so once I get the essentials for the day sorted, I can usually manage about 30minutes to an hour of writing.  Throughout the working day, when I find some time--not always possible--I make a few edits or add a paragraph or two; sometimes, I find another uninterrupted hour.  The end of the working day is usually when I get the best writing done, generally another hour if I'm lucky.

That unconscious expectation of writing in the morning means that when I start, it almost always 'clicks' - something in the unconscious kicks in and I'm able to begin without too much trouble.  Establishing this routine over the past several months seems to created a more robust method for writing than before, especially when targeted at an achievable word count for the day.  It's a little twisted, but I find my best writing seems to happen when I ought to be doing something else; and so writing against a backdrop of work also motivates in a way that I find far more difficult when at home, or on holiday.

And that's how I write, mostly.  The other routine I'm working on establishing is reading--I don't read nearly enough, and I've found that when I am reading, my writing improves.  Definitely something to work on.

In any case, at the moment things feel mostly pretty good.  I don't feel anywhere close to giving up or abandoning; the writing is going well and progressing at a solid pace.  There are definite moments of doubt, of course--you've seen some of those in earlier posts--but I feel these are pretty normal for anyone doing any kind of creative task.  And there are occasional lapses, days where for whatever reason I don't hit my target or don't write at all.  But those are increasingly rare.  

And sure, of course I'd love it if the Patreon was bigger, or my posted work received more hits.  But if I look all the way back to why I started writing Constant in the first place, it feels as though I'm back on track for my original purpose.  It wasn't to make money, or for hits.  It was to prove to myself I could finish a project and improve as a writer.  

I think we're on track to finish Constant by the end of the year.  As for the second: well, it's a hard thing to judge.  But along the way, I've had fun experimenting with different styles and approaches.  I've messed around with narrative frames, chronology and voice.  With Silk and Shadows, I played in a different genre.  I've enjoyed all that.  I think there's a lot I still need to learn, though: in editing, and trimming things back to keep it pacier.  In plotting. In characterisation, too.  I also want to try writing short fiction--I find it much harder to write short than to write long.  

And that's my ramble.

So... how do you write?