Tuesday, January 18, 2011

What's Your Writing Process Blogfest

Thanks to Shallee for hosting this blogfest. Go Here to check out the other participants.

Well, I'm not a super authority on the writing process. If you read my blog regularly, you know this. I'm always searching for new ways to make my process easier. What I've learned is that making it easier is not always right. It has to be right for me and fit me, like a comfortable shoe. So with that said, I will describe the process that I've done already, and that may be my fit, despite the hair pulling it's given me.

Most of my ideas are inspired by music. Yes, music. A song will play and I will get a scene popping into my head like a movie trailer. After that, the characters start to show themselves and more songs will start to fill in the other scenes and the story is born. Everything I've written has a soundtrack (the two pieces I'm working on have soundtracks on my music page above).

From there I do characterization, filling journals of each character describing them, with their age, likes, dislikes, and their part in the story. As I do this, I continue writing scenes usually starting with dialogue. It's how I see it in my head...characters talking, then action. After I write the dialogue, I go back and add the details. I don't write from the first chapter through the end. I tried this and for me it doesn't work, at least not now. If I need to, I do world building loosely. This helps me understand the rules of the world or race of the being.

With my first novel, I wrote it not doing anything, making it up as I went. This has made me frustrated though, because I'm now re-writing a lot. Patience is not my forte. I do like to free write, to clear my head, the problem with this is I need a certain atmosphere to write--No one around to bother me and I must be listening to my inspiration music. This is not the case at my house. Let's just say, I can't wait till both kids are in school.

So far, this seems like my fit. The novel just writes itself as I go, just some things have to be worked out before hand. If I think too much about it, all the creativity gets lost.  Oh and lots and lots of chocolate.

Can't wait to see the other processes.

Oh and please go vote for Illustrator, Kaitlyn McCane's windmill design. So cute. It's looks great as a T-shirt. Check it out here and vote.

Have a great day!