I’ve been running behind this year.
I’ve tried to give myself some grace as I’ve moved and chaperoned and changed jobs. But, when you are a Type-A, it’s hard to let yourself off the hook.
So I’m trying not to beat myself up that Valerie Biel nominated me for a blog hop post back in May to talk about my writing process… and that I still haven’t written it. Oops.
I’ve been holding her email invite in my inbox these many months, knowing that I would get to it eventually. Well, eventually is now. Without further ado, here is how I go about writing things. All the things.
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I have no actual process.
That’s probably not what anybody wanted to hear. It’s not really what I wanted to type. I wanted to say that I get up early every morning and sit on my front porch, sipping a cup of coffee and taking a moment to enjoy the sunrise before I set to typing, never failing to write 1,000 words before I head to work at 7 AM.
That is not the case.
Right now, writing for me has been a haphazard endeavor. It’s something I squeeze in between work hours, freelance projects, and the need for sleep and nourishment.
As you can tell, I’m making tons of progress on that novel (Actual 2014 word count: maybe 14).
But, this year I have been blogging, albeit somewhat infrequently. I’m getting better. That’s progress right? that still counts as writing, right?
Right?!?
When I do write, it’s mostly because I have all of a sudden stumbled upon some half-formed idea while walking from my car to my desk, and so I hurry into work and open Evernote and jot the scrambled thoughts as quickly as I can into a note in my “Writing” folder. I’ve got dozens of little snippets of novels, poems, short stories, and anything else you can think of – just not a completed novel.
This frenzied write-when-inspired tactic is also probably why I have most of the climatic “moments” of my novel written and am now trying to fill in the details to get people from point A to point B in a semi-realistic fashion (Hint: air travel is a blessing).
So, I’m never out of ideas, just the time or motivation to execute on them.
As far as blogs go, I approach them a few different ways. Often, the blog is just about what is going on in life. I write to help me work through what is going on around me, to process life as it happens. Right now, I’m exploring “rest” a lot on the blog, as I reevaluate what is working and what isn’t in my day-to-day routine. Very often I am inspired by other bloggers – a line I read on their site will get the wheels churning and a few weeks later I have my own opinion on something. Other times, its a photo that I take that spurs a blog story – like the weekend we spent in northern Wisconsin recently.
I then usually write the words first, indicating where I will insert what images. Then I watermark photos I’ve taken or create a graphic in Canva for the post and put it altogether. I schedule social media posts about the blog, and call it done! I try to blog on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it doesn’t always happen.
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So that is my writing “process” – a term I use here very loosely.
Thanks, Valerie, for prompting me to write this blog, even it the prompting came many months ago. You should all go check out Valerie’s latest novel: Circle of Nine: Beltany
Thanks for the inspiration, Valerie!
If you are a writer, what does your process look like?