My Writing Process: 009

My Writing Process

Introduction

Writing Processes are one of those things I find infinitely fascinating. Everyone seems to have a completely different process despite all heading in a similar direction. We’ve all read articles or books from famous authors and how they approach writing a book, learnt how their ways differ from ours. We’ve seen how other writers on Substack or Medium tackle their work from a completely different perspective than our own. Everyone has their own way:

There’s varying daily word count. Page counts. Times of the day people like to write. Length of time they write. Planning. Pantsing. Beat outline’s. Full outlines. Vomit drafts. Meticulous first drafts. Writing with music. Without music. Dictating notes. Diagrams. Graphs. Quiet studies. Noisy coffeeshops. Alone. With a writing partner. Writer retreats…

It feels like an infinite amount of things can be different.

So, I thought I'd share a little about my own process, and how it’s evolved over the years.

But, before I start, I want to make it very clear that the best process for anyone, is the one that works for you. Whatever process means you write.

By all means learn how many hours a day your favourite author writes. What their word count targets are. When they write. But, if that doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you. There’s no correct one size fits all approach and never will be. And, as you’ll see through my own journey, sometimes even your own process stops working for you, and you have to adapt.

The Early Days

When I first began writing it was as a scriptwriter. I was a planner from the start. The idea of sitting down to write with a blank page and no real solid idea of the direction I was going in sounded preposterous to me. To this day I still don’t really understand how anyone does it, despite it seemingly being commonplace.

I would fill up a couple of large notepads before I even typed FADE IN: Some of my early feature length scripts had about four hundred pages worth of notes before tackling that first draft. I’d write around my job when I was planning the script, writing in the morning, lunch breaks, and evenings. I had notes on the back of receipts, envelopes, single sheets stolen from the printer. Anything to hand. It was kind of ridiculous in hindsight, but it absolutely worked for me back then.

When it came to writing the first draft I took a week off work, and several days either side. Normally I gave myself ten days to write around one hundred pages (One page equals one minute of screen time if correctly formatted… at least it use to)

Ten pages a day meant I basically didn’t leave the house for those ten days. The reason for the short space of time wasn’t anything profound or technical, my mind just wouldn’t shut off when I was writing a first draft so I struggled with sleep. If I took any longer than ten days living on such little sleep I'd be walking around like a zombie.

So, a few hundred pages of notes taken throughout the day for about half a year, was followed by ten solid days of practically non-stop writing to have a first draft ready. From there, I printed out the first draft and made notes all over the hundred pages ready for subsequent redrafts.

My notes mainly focused on writing stronger dialogue, and tidying up the action/business. Often the story and characters already largely worked thanks to the crazy amount of notes beforehand but it also gave me a chance to look for, and fix, and major logic gaps. Concentrating on tone was another big part of my redrafts.

This was my process for a good ten years.

30 Days Instead of Ten

As I got older and had to take part in more adulting getting ten straight days to work on a first draft proved impossible. The compromise I made was a month, aiming for three to four pages a day. I still had the same problem with my brain not switching off and sleeping poorly, but I just had to put up with it until I adapted. Instead of writing for ten to twelve hours a day that number halved, but I'd still pull the odd all dayer if I wasn’t working or socialising.

Also around this point I started writing a lot more in the mornings than evenings. I’d get up early, take the first bus into town where I worked, and sit in a coffee shop for a few hours writing before my shift began.

It’s the first time I considered myself to really have a routine when it came to writing.

The redrafting process was the same, but often I had more than one script on the go which meant a very heavy backpack with multiple hundred page scripts and a bunch of notebooks. That wouldn’t change until I got a good laptop and starting writing my notes digitally many years later.

Writing Books

When it came time to write my first novel, I gave myself a lot longer than a month, and changed much of my process. I still wrote notes, but they were in a somewhat simpler form. Instead of knowing every word and detail I changed to a beats and bullet point system. I still had most of the story outlined and a structure figured out, but the individual chapters would have bullet points to remind me what was important, and how my character would develop, rather than a blow-by-blow.

Also, rather than writing the whole story in one go and then working on each separate draft, I often tackled some of the older chapters as I wrote new ones. (One chapter could be on the third draft while another was on the first)

I’m not sure why I made this change. Whether it was a conscious decision, or one that just felt natural. I found it to difficult to keep track of the whole story when it was two or three hundred pages of solid text rather than a hundred pages of script with plenty of white. Constantly going backwards and forwards kept everything feeling fresh and immediate.

As my first few books were adaptations of my own screenplays much of the story was already in place, but I added plenty of extra scenes within the books. It didn’t take me long to realise the two formats were completely different beast. Adapting my own work was a good learning process.

When it came to writing my first story from scratch I wrote notes on the individual chapters before I wrote them, but not in the same regimented manner as scenes in my screenplays. I found myself leaving more room to go with the flow of what I was writing, and listened to the characters more (kind of hate that term, but also agree with it)

Nowadays

Now, my writing process is a hybrid of everything which came before. I tend to still mostly write in the mornings, but have different sessions throughout the day if I need them. The days of ten solid hours of writing don’t feel possibly nowadays due to various health issues, but a couple of two/three/four hours sessions are very doable.

I still write notes, outlining much of my idea before I start, and some as I go, but they’re not at the level of detail they once were. I'll have the character’s journey figured, the big story beats, and the general structure, but I allow myself room in the individual chapters to go off on one if I want to.

Books feel much bigger than screenplays, and there’s always places to add extra details or enhance a character or scene. In scriptwriting everything has to be economical, a blueprint. So while I never want to write filler within my books, there is a lot more room to express yourself.

I still do four to five drafts, but more story goes into the redrafts now. Where as before it would be about tidying up my writing and strengthening the dialogue, now I find myself adding more character. Additional scenes. Extra details. More tangents. A lot more world building.

Whether the additional work in the drafts is because of less preparation beforehand, or having a better ideas of what I can do within my writing and feeling I can be more creative, I'm not sure. But, I'm happy with the results.

I think my re-drafting and editing is better than it’s ever been, and it’s something I won’t ever stop trying to improve at. Which, in turn, is why I still never give myself solid deadlines. The works ready when it’s ready.

Going Forward

I’m sure my writing process will change again at some point, but I have a routine that’s working for me at the moment. I feel I write best in the morning for three to four hours on my main work (novels, short stories, etc) and then can add a second session later in the day if I want to. That second session is for either writing more of whatever story I'm working on, or working on articles and subgenre pieces. Time has become more important than any kind of word count.

I redraft as I go now rather than at the end. I never did that with scripts. I always wrote to the end before starting the next draft. But, I find that difficult with books. I like working on a new chapter, then going back and tidying up an older chapter.

Sometimes, as I mentioned, one chapter will have three or four drafts before another chapter is even written. I'm still working on this process and know I have to find the balance. There’s a fine line between producing my best work, and procrastinating on writing the rest of the book.

I simply can’t write to three or four in the morning anymore thanks to my diabetes and other health issue. And I can’t write for the long stretches I use too without suffering for it the next day or two. But, I won’t let any new limitations stop me writing.

I’ve had to adapt my writing process over the years but I'm ok with that as long as it means I can still write. If I have to change it again, I will. I’ll find another process that works, because the important thing for me is to always be writing something, whether that’s for two hours a day or ten. Whether it’s a hundred words, or three thousand. It all adds up. It all means I’m writing.