This past weekend, New York Times best-selling author, Karen White and Minerva Rising contributor (Issue 2) Rona Simmons, shared their personal writing process with the members of the Atlanta Writers club.
Rona started her talk by mentioning both Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. She explained how each of these books played a major part in her writing process. She continues to follow King’s recommendation of 2000 words a day. Her power point presentation illustrated the Snowflake method she uses to develop an outline for her plot and characters. Rona begins to write only after she has fully flushed out the details of her story.
Karen, on the other hand, noted that she owned both On Writing and Bird by Bird, but has never read either of them. Her process includes coming up with a main character and an internal conflict, and then writing straight through to the end. She talked a lot about having a passion for what you write and the value of a critique group of like-minded writers whose writing you respect. Karen made sure to emphasize the importance of every writer figuring out what works for him or her.
It’s easy to get lost in the maze of varying writing advice:
Write what you know
Write what you want to write about even if you don’t know about it. Learn.
Start with an outline.
Just start writing and see where it takes you.
Set a daily page
Set a daily word count.
Set an amount of time to write each day.
Write at the same time
Join a critique group
Go to conferences/workshops/retreats
We are all looking for sure-fire steps to success. But believe it or not, there is no magic combination. Developing a writing process is about finding the right activities or steps you specifically need in order to get your writing done. And what works for some, may not work for others.
So why is it important to talk about process if it’s such an individual thing?
Examining the way other writers approach their work, gives us fresh insight into our own methodology. It can also motivate us to try something new if our routine has gotten stale or isn’t working. And more importantly, it helps us organize our thinking, and even our day so that we can sit our butts in our chair and write.
There is so much interest in other writer’s process that there is a chain letter of sorts going around the blog-a-sphere called “The Writer’s Process Blog Tour,” where writers answer the following questions about their process:
What am I working on?
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Why do I write what I do?
How does your writing process work?
As fate would have it, I’m up today to share my process. If you’re interested in reading about it, pop over to http://the-confident-writer.net/.
Whether or not you have been tapped for The Writer’s Process Blog Tour, we would love to hear what works for you. Share your writing process in our comments.
