Processing . . .

Every writer has a process, whether it's winging it, brain storming, or outlining.  I've never been good with outlines.  I hated doing them in school.  Most of the time, I cheated and did them afterward. 

Oddly, doing the outline afterward actually works for me to track continuity.  I also keep a timeline, a family tree, and a character list with details.  Oh, and journal upon journal upon napkins and notebooks and scratch paper of notes.  And every single manuscript I've ever printed and every copy I've ever worked on saved and dated on my laptop and two external drives.  (Think I'm paranoid?  I did work in I.T.  Things fail.  Files disappear.)

The gist?  Never throw away anything you've written and write notes on whatever is nearby.  But pencil on toilet paper needs to be copied onto something else if you ever want to read it again.

For the most part, I wing it.  I've had the story in my head for a long time, after all.  However, I was talking with a friend yesterday and rediscovered a problem I'd had when I hit a certain point in the plot.  And, of course, I can't say what it was without spoilers, but it stopped the story dead. 

I've said before that this all started with a nightmare I had.  That nightmare was the driving force for the original tale when it was about witches and witchcraft.  Around this time, I had read THE MAGIC COTTAGE by James Herbert and it influenced how I shaped a story around my dream.  It made sense and I wrote off and on for many years.

As an adult, I shifted away from the witchcraft theme and decided to go with vampires.  I don't have a clue why.  I don't know where Eric came from initially.  I do remember sitting at the diner where I waited tables thinking about this handsome vampire named Eric L'Blanc who fought in the French Revolution under Napoleon Dynamite.  Wait . . . Tater Tots.  No, just Napoleon (he's a Ziggy Piggy).


When I realized that - A.  I knew nothing about France or the French Revolution, and - B. I'd have to research France and the French Revolution, I chucked that idea.  There are iterations around here somewhere in which Eric L'Blanc exists.  But he was short lived.

Maybe if I hadn't winged it, the story would have been written sooner.  But I don't think so.

So instead, he became Eric Ravenscroft, the last name being inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, Lara Croft, and THE RAVEN (also, Jonathan was originally able to shape shift into a Raven, which I took out but wanted "Raven" in there somewhere, and I also don't know where Jonathan came from - neither were in the original story).  I still wanted a war veteran, so I had to pick between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.  Have I ever mentioned that history was my worst subject?  Because history was my worst subject.  Thankfully, as I dug into Civil War research, I found that I actually enjoyed it.  And one on of these days, I'll do a blog post about my brief stint as a Civil War Reenactor, which is touched upon in the acknowledgements in the book.  

I've derailed from my originating subject.  Which just illustrates that I write as I go and don't plan it out.

SO - my process.  I wing it.  When I get stuck, I yank on my hair, bang my head on my desk, and stare at my screen and usually mutter curse words.  Not so much the first two any more, but the last two happen a lot now that my brain goes on strike.  Because I got stuck so badly in THE ARRIVAL, I tried something different for Confessions.  I created flash cards.

The initial batch contained major plot points and the second batch was for secondary plot points, and for character and world building.  I spread them out so I could see them all and started grouping them together and stacking until I had an order and a direction.  It worked really well.  I had too many points to get them all into Confessions, so I divided them and started over with a pile for Confessions and the leftovers for COMS. 

The flash cards worked for the overarching story that developed in THE ARRIVAL, but they wouldn't have worked for THE ARRIVAL itself.  The problem I ran into needed to be thought through and dissected.  The whole story initially revolved around that nightmare, and I reached a point where I realized the nightmare was missing.  And I couldn't figure out how to tie it into the new world I'd created with vampires instead of witches around my central character.  Essentially, I had half the book written without even knowing where I was taking it and I had no map.

Thus, several candlelit nights and many hours of hair pulling and head banging and cursing at my laptop ensued.  I'd write in the story itself or I'd open a new window and just type out ideas.  I'd space out in the car driving and hurriedly jot down notes at traffic lights.  Eventually, I got there.  It wasn't smooth sailing and I got stuck a few other times to answer the whys and hows of the situation (every writer should be able to answer Who, What, Where, When, Why, How, AND get the character through the door - a metaphor I read about as a way to see the plot:  character starts on one side of the door and winds up on the other side at the end via the plot), but I did it.  Frankly, I'm surprised it worked at all, let alone as well as it did.

I don't have structure.  I don't make myself write X number of words per day.  I don't necessarily do research ahead of time (I'll just write what I want, highlight it for research, and go back to it later).  I let the creative process work at its own pace.  Sometimes I pause to sketch out a character or a weapon or add to the family tree or timeline.  But my mantra is to write when I want to write.  If I force it, I'll end up deleting what I wrote.  It's a waste of time.  I learned that several times.  

For a lot of it, I just got lucky.  Or maybe I'm not giving my brain its due credit and somehow I knew what I was doing thanks to research and creativity.  Either way, I put together a well-written, addictive, and cohesive story that many of you are enjoying or have enjoyed