On process, being a fish, and jumping into the abyss

[spitkitten]

Originally published at spitkitten dot com. You can comment here or there.

Process is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately-because I’ve realized in the past three weeks that I have no process. Well, not yet.
And this terrifies me.
Before you dredge up any sympathy for me, I’ll admit up front that it is my own fault. For twelve years, I

Comments

Phase one: collect underpants.

[buscemi]

I need to work on that, too. I have this bad habit of psyching myself out even before I work on an edit. Coming up with the initial ideas is easier than it has been in a long time, since I'm focusing more on structure. (Before that, I knew I didn't want to do the standard ABAB stuff. Since I didn't have an alternative, the results were somewhat unfocused.)

Back in my poetry-writing days, I found that reading other types of books seemed to help the most (non-fiction, fiction, medical books, etc.)

[coffee777]

and the inappropriate, out-of-context, paraphrased, half-remembered former-roommate quote of the day is: "and when some people hit bottom...they find that they like it there".

[lilahwild]

This is normal, this is natural, give yourself time to recover from it. I'm a year past Clarion and I'm *still* processing what I learned.
Your process will evolve through what makes you happiest at the keyboard. Find the things that light you up while you're there, the rest will follow.

[spitkitten]

Thank you.
You know what I am going through...it's hard to regain perspective out of the collective. :)