How do I put the words on the page?
There's been a lot of talk in the various author groups I follow about the writing process. I thought I would take the opportunity to share my own, not because it is "The Way", just because it's my way. I hate editing. Loathe it, in fact. I am firmly on the side of back reading and editing as I start writing each day, simply because I catch the little errors I made when I was tired the previous day. It also gets me back into story zone, fires up the mood to continue with the telling. Once a book becomes more than about 15 minutes of back reading, I only go back to my starting point of the previous day, maybe two. You guys, it saves SO MUCH TIME, for me. I have a hard time picturing just 'getting all the words down' and then being faced with going back and making sense of it all...what if there's a plot hole? A gap in the story line? How do you fix it without a massive re-write of all the material that follows? The idea makes me feel woozy. When I come up with the idea for a book, I first have a 'flash' of a main character, and something unique about them that makes them worth developing a story. By the time I start writing I have a loose plot outline in my head (no, I don't write it down, I don't want to get caught up in sticking to it). I have a title and about three points that the characters need to arrive at, the getting there happens as I write. These characters take on a life of their own, you can't force them to do or say something out of character, it will read as forced and unnatural. These characters develop voices, mannerisms, individual vocabularies and favorite slang. It's amazing if you come up with a character and feel as though you are the puppet master, and then, nope, hard left into territory you weren't expecting because that's where the character would go. I try to give up the reins a little bit, and I never know what the conflict in the story will be, those develop naturally as I get to know that characters. Happy reading and writing!
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