On writing
So, yes, writing. I haven't been writing fiction very long really. It's probably only about two years since I read a lot of stuff at the Quill and thought "I could do that". At that point I was (and still am) an extremely competent technical writer - writing and editing 100,000 word reports was a regular part of my job - but I hadn't written anything fictional since leaving primary school. So it's been a really happy thing for me to discover that I can put pen to paper and write fanfiction that other people might want to read.
It's also been interesting to discover the way that I approach this sort of writing. It's totally different to anything else that I write or create in any other sphere, which has got me to wondering about the writing process - how do you guys do it, what inspires you, do you write in the same way all the time? That sort of thing.
My approach seems to be as follows:
- Have fic idea as total bolt out of the blue (usually in a meeting, or the shower, or somewhere where I can't write it down)
- Think of pithy title. (This seems to be an important stage for some reason. I have lots of ideas but they generally only proceed to the written fic stage if I have a title before I start).
- Wander around for anything up to two weeks thinking about the idea in every spare moment, sorting out the different scenes I want in the fic (which I imagine in quite a filmic way a lot of the time) and then running them over in different ways in my head. Absolutely nothing gets written down at this point.
- Fire up the laptop at about 11pm and type like crazy for an hour or so, almost as though someone is dictating to me. Lots and lots of words get onto the page and I almost never go back and revise anything at this point.
- Repeat the previous two steps any number of times until I have a first draft.
- Spend almost as much time as I spent on draft one tinkering with sentence structure for draft two. Remove lots of commas, take out superfluous words, fiddle about a bit to get character voice more to my liking, make sure I have exactly the right adjectives, remove any stray adverbs, and so on.
- Final read over, send off to beta, make any changes that seem sensible as a result of their feedback, publish and be damned.
So what about you? Does that sound anything like the way that you go about it? Tell me all, dear friends.
It's also been interesting to discover the way that I approach this sort of writing. It's totally different to anything else that I write or create in any other sphere, which has got me to wondering about the writing process - how do you guys do it, what inspires you, do you write in the same way all the time? That sort of thing.
My approach seems to be as follows:
- Have fic idea as total bolt out of the blue (usually in a meeting, or the shower, or somewhere where I can't write it down)
- Think of pithy title. (This seems to be an important stage for some reason. I have lots of ideas but they generally only proceed to the written fic stage if I have a title before I start).
- Wander around for anything up to two weeks thinking about the idea in every spare moment, sorting out the different scenes I want in the fic (which I imagine in quite a filmic way a lot of the time) and then running them over in different ways in my head. Absolutely nothing gets written down at this point.
- Fire up the laptop at about 11pm and type like crazy for an hour or so, almost as though someone is dictating to me. Lots and lots of words get onto the page and I almost never go back and revise anything at this point.
- Repeat the previous two steps any number of times until I have a first draft.
- Spend almost as much time as I spent on draft one tinkering with sentence structure for draft two. Remove lots of commas, take out superfluous words, fiddle about a bit to get character voice more to my liking, make sure I have exactly the right adjectives, remove any stray adverbs, and so on.
- Final read over, send off to beta, make any changes that seem sensible as a result of their feedback, publish and be damned.
So what about you? Does that sound anything like the way that you go about it? Tell me all, dear friends.