My Real Writing Process

I am currently at my writing happy place: a friend's cabin in the middle of nowhere. I've been coming up here for about ten years now and gotten a great deal of work done on my current novel while here.

This time it has been especially wonderful because I'm in the home stretch for BookEnds AND my novel finally started moving forward with all the pieces falling into place. It's a magical moment in a magical place.

For the past several months, I've been applying for writing residencies for the fall so I can keep this momentum going after BookEnds concludes in July and achieve my goal of finishing the novel by October. One of the questions that's asked on residency applications is "Describe your process and how this residency will benefit you."

The funny thing is, the day-to-day process, the nitty gritty process of actually getting the writing done is not what they're looking for. They want the bigger picture about aesthetic and what themes and questions inform your work. The truth is, the process is always "put words on paper." No matter what mechanism you use for writing, the writing only happens when you generate words.

But the question did get me looking at my day-to-day process and noticing there's a distinct pattern to how I get to the place where those words happen.

1. Stress and feel to anxious to write
2. Panic because I have a (pick one) -- deadline, client edit, family issue, illness, sick dog, household repair, dishes in the sink -- that needs to be dealt with
3. Doubt the writing will ever happen
4. Feel enough self-loathing and lack of self-respect that I work on the WIP so I can continue to call myself a writer
5. Take forever to write a couple hundred words and are awful and make me wonder why I thought I could write
6. Write a couple hundred words that are amazing
7. Expect the words to start flowing, but they don't, so I spend the day playing Solitaire, checking FB and trying to convince myself to work on something else
8. Write a page that is awful and plodding
9. Edit the previous day's travesty, continue writing words that flow and scenes start to fall into place
10. Magic happens -- an unforeseen revelation, connection, character action appears on the page and it's perfect and better than anything I thought was going to happen or had outlined
11. Fly
12. Finish chapter
13. Edit
14. Repeat

I'm about mid-way through this process for my current chapter. It should be an interesting next couple of days.