As a writer I think it’s fair to say that there are some aspects of writing that I’m good at and others I’m not as good at. Everyone who writes is like this–in fact, everyone who lives is like this. No one is good at everything, and thank goodness for that. How strange it would be to be good at everything. Nice at first, I would think, but, like those movies where people get their wishes, I think you’d realize you didn’t want it after all.
(This is also my mindset when making a character for Dungeons & Dragons. I like characters who are bad at certain things. It’s more fun to play a really intelligent wizard who doesn’t notice jack all than it is to play someone who is good at everything. At least for me.)That’s enough of a bunny-trail.
In writing, I’m an ideas person. I don’t know where they come from, for the most part, but they come and they keep coming: bits of dialogue as I walk down the street; images and scenes while I’m reading or at work; fragments of world-building as I’m grocery shopping. The more I consume and the more I write the more ideas I have, which is why I have 17 Scrivener projects for more developed ideas and another four or five for small bits and pieces, including short stories. (The “Random Ideas” project by itself has 28 ideas in various stages of development.)
Being an ideas person means I can generate, but that these ideas and snippets are often too small to sustain anything longer than what they already are. Very rarely does something consume enough other material that it can grow into a short story or a novel. Occasionally, this happens, my current project Scalped being such a thing. It started with a small idea: a person sitting in a saloon with their hat on. And it grew into something so much bigger (which is the subject for another blog post, probably–someday I should talk about it).
I also struggle a lot when it comes to the editing phase of writing. I can throw clay onto the wheel but shaping it after there is a mound of it there? That’s much more difficult.
To use popular parlance, I am a pantser. A discovery writer. I don’t know where I’m going when I start. I find myself in the same boat as Kate Chopin, who wrote: “…I shall go on writing stories as they come to me. It is either very easy for me to write a story, or utterly impossible; that is, the story must ‘write itself’ without any perceptible effort on my part, or it remains unwritten.” Same, Kate. Same.
I don’t know about Kate Chopin, but the way I write makes it challenging to edit. When I sit down to write, I typically set a timer for 15 minutes, and I just type whatever comes until that timer runs out. Then I set it aside and come back the next day and do the same thing. If I can’t remember something that happened previously in the story, or I can’t remember details I mentioned earlier (like how many people are in a cavalry troop in my fictional universe *cough*Scalped*cough*) I make up something or come up with another number. This leads, as one might expect, to inconsistencies. Some are small. It’s easy to change how many people are referred to when it comes up. It is not as easy to rectify timeline issues and how many years pass between certain events.
Having finished a first (zero?) draft of Scalped, I now find myself in the unenviable position of editing Scalped. This weekend and next weekend I’m hoping to develop a plan for the editing. The actual editing will start some time in March, which is fitting, since March is when I started writing Scalped. (March 17th to be exact–I have a spreadsheet.
I’ll start with the obvious things, like deciding how many soldiers are in a cavalry troop in my fake universe and deciding what on earth to call the two main countries. Then I’ll probably zero in on the less obvious and easy things. Like adding other characters’ POVs and linearizing (that’s not a word…) character development.
Editing is a brave new world for me (cue Iron Maiden), and I’m not going to say I’m excited about it. I am terrified.
What about you all? How does your writing process lend itself (or not, like mine) to the editing process? Also, any recommendations or suggestions or resources regarding editing are appreciated–I’m hoping not to drown here.
Anna Goss 