Merely to give myself some accountability…

Today I typed up 2,300 words of Sacrifice. On the way I realised a scene was missing and added it to my list of scenes to write. I also realised one of my main characters needs a life of her own, rather than as an appendage to the other main character, so I gave some thought to her life and have decided her sister needs to become visible. More scenes added to the to-do list.

My process is a little strange I think. Certainly none of the ‘how to write’ books I’ve read describe a process like this. I write some scenes in no particular order, fresh, raw material, until I run out of steam. Then I run them together and start rewriting. This suggests more scenes which I make a note of, and throws up problems which I try to solve. Then I get stuck and go back to writing new scenes. And it goes back and forth like that until I eventually come to the end. When I got to about 30,000 words with Sacrifice I decided I needed scene cards and notice boards to make sense of it all, but before that point they wouldn’t have helped at all.

Discovering my process has been hard. I always want to think I’m doing the ‘right’ thing and if I’m doing something different to the books or the people in my writers’ circle I think it must be me that must be wrong. And I cling to the fantasy that if I was more organised, more disciplined, then the writing would just flow. Which is of course, nonsense, but very seductive nonsense.