At the San Antonio Writers Guild August meeting last night, Chris Roberson spoke about his personal writing process as contrasted against those of other writers. His presentation, given in a casual conversational style, was titled "Everyone Else Is Crazy: Finding the Process that Fits".
Chris admitted he was in fact the person who was just as likely to be crazy. His point was that every other writer's system or method or process appears crazy to other writers. No two writers have the same process, much as no two people have the same signature or surf the web in the same way. And that's a good thing.
What's important is we learn what other successful writers do, take what we can use and throw the rest out. This advice is very much like that given in 12-step programs...not that I would know ;-)
Chris's process is basically this:
He jots any and every notable idea in small Moleskin notebooks he takes everywhere with him.
After a time, stewing on a number of different story ideas, he'll walk through these small notebooks and pop the related ideas into a different style, slightly larger, notebook. In these, he'll record his 2-sided "conversation" with himself in an effort to shake ideas from the bushes.
The third and longest step is outlining. We're not talking high school outlines. We're not talking college outlines. We're talking full doctorate-level outline where, in the case of short stories, every detail of every paragraph is defined. This step can take anywhere from 2-3 weeks, depending upon the length of the work. I found it curious that his short story outlines tend to be nearly as long as the finished work whereas his novel outlines will be closer to 20% of the novel's finished length. He outlines his novel's chapter detail as opposed to individual paragraphs. Doing otherwise might tip the balance and have men in white coats looking for him.
Finally, once he has nailed down the outline with 100% certainty, only then does he do the actual writing. Having the road cleared of any second-guessing or mid-stream modification, he is free to attack his writing with what for many of us is unthinkable speed: 10k words in a day is not uncommon.
What at first sounds like madness became perfectly clear to me as I sat listening to him. The fact that he has done the difficult groundwork beforehand, all the plotting and massaging, allows him to write the entire story or novel in the same mind.
Talk about an a-ha moment.
One of the major difficulties I've had in writing longer pieces has been, as a beginning writing my words tend to sound different by the end of the story than they did at the beginning. I attribute this to a two things.
First, when I begin a story, writing by the seat of my pants, I know the story in a fresh, undiscovered way. By the end of the story, I know it far better so the mood has changed. I can see a positive aspect of writing this way: transformation in the author, transformation in the characters and action. The problem is, I'm out of my comfort zone. As a designer, I find it necessary to have all my ducks in a row before I start on a design because I have to get pretty close the first time since I'm working with other people's money.
Second, my writing is constantly improving so when I write a story over a few months time, I'm at a different, noticeable skill level from the beginning to the end. Try as I might, I can't find the benefit to this problem.
So a big thank you to Chris Roberson for sharing his process and for having a process adequately odd for me to simulate in my next work. I'll let you know how it goes.
Click here to visit Chris at his site Roberson's Interminable Ramble.
