This Is How I Roll, I Mean Write

I'm about 20k words into a new WIP and figured sharing a little about my writing process may be useful to some of my dear readers. So here's the skinny on my writing life.

First, I am NOT structured or disciplined, at all. Some writers follow regimented rules and give themselves all sorts of deadlines and crap. Yeah, anytime I can do something other than write, I do. I only write when the voices in my head are screaming WRITE ME so freakin loud I have to pen a novel just to get them to shut up. Right now the muse is talking to me, so I'm writing.

When I first got the idea for this book I wrote a summary. It was about three pages long and covered the basic key points of the story. My summary was much looser than a true outline, but had enough of a beginning middle and end that I at least had something to write towards.

After I had a summary, and a character's voice in my head (that's the most important part of this equation since I always write in first person), it was time to start writing. For about the first week I didn't even think about where the story was supposed to start. I just wrote the scenes that I saw, most of which will live somewhere in the middle or possibly even the end of the final novel. I'm sure I will rewrite all of these scenes eventually but starting with the big important scenes was an easy way to dive into this new world I'm creating.

Once I had a basic sense of my characters voice and the world I was writing in I started to write in a more linear fashion.I'm still not worrying about things like chapter breaks, as I expect I'll pepper in several new scenes between the ones I've already got as I continue to build this world. But the 20k words I've written are starting to feel a lot like the first third of a novel.

Because I'm now in crazy draft mode, I'm loosing the desire to do anything and everything that isn't writing. I doubt this MUST WRITE NOW frenzy will carry me all the way to the end of the book, but I think it will take me far enough to at least see the possibility of a real book before I start wanting my life back.

I feel like I'm writing this book relatively slowly. I've been at it for about three weeks now and am only 20k into it. I got so obsessed with the world I was building while writing COUNTING TO D (the book I currently have out on sub) that I think I hit the 30k mark less than a week into the drafting process. I have, of course, written 10k or less to many other stories that I've quickly abandoned. So even if I'm keeping some semblance of a grip on reality right now, I'm still doing some hard core writing.

I think this book is going to turn out pretty good. This early in the drafting phase it's easy to like what I'm writing. It isn't until I get to the editing phase that I realize how craptastic it is. So there you have it. That's what I'm up to right now. Just drafting away.

Since I'm actually pretending to be a writer right now, if you have writerly type questions for me, I might actually be able to come up with some writerly type answers.