Since we didn’t get to catch up (the Serious Writer girls, see previous post) for this three-week span, Katy emailed (for sake of conversation) a question I always love asking of writers everywhere: what’s your process?
Katy asked specifically if I’m writing to get to know my characters or if I’m working on something else (nonfiction) while I work on the characters in my head. Interestingly enough, up to this point of my writing career, I’ve always gone with the latter. I always have four or five writing projects going at the same time (can’t sit still…) and find that when I get stuck on one I can flit to another and find something else to work on easily.
But this time–at least with the fiction–things are different. I don’t remember if I mentioned it but the hero of my current story (Christopher) has been telling me bits and pieces of himself at really odd times (you know that if you’re a writer you’re always thinking of your story so don’t pretend like you never “hear” things from your characters…LOL) and instead of keeping them all in my mind, I’ve been writing them down. I’ve almost filled up an entire notebook with Chris and Lily (the heroine) notes. I’m not used to this–my preferred method of writing fiction is to solidify that first all-important, crucial scene in my mind 99% then settle in and write it.
The problem has come when that first scene (often first chapter) comes out easily but I’ve written everything i know about the character to that point into that section of the story, leaving me with little to go on. I don’t always plot out all the crucial scenes (gasp…!) so I find myself lose interest in the story or it takes a wild tangent I didn’t expect, which ends up being an excuse not to finish.
So I thought…what the hell, I’ll try something different. I must admit it’s a really refreshing feeling. I don’t have that “dread” when I sit down to write that I often had in the past where I don’t know what comes next. I’m having fun writing about the characters, discovering tiny details about the character or setting I think I might have missed had I just written fast from the start.
The fun will start when i finally get the real story started but the hope is that I’ll have a wealth of info from my notes to draw upon and use as my map. I guess I won’t know til I get there but I’m having a darn fun time trying it…
back to the notebook…
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