William Amerman's Blog - Posts Tagged "revisions"

It's Monday, first day of two weeks off from work, and the words are flowing for the fourth book. No, I'm not pretending that they are particularly inspired or beautifully wrought. No, some days writing is just laying one brick on top of the other. Knowing that I'll come back and tidy up the mortar, level things up and get it nice and neat.

One of the things I'm most thankful for as a writer is a reckoning and understanding about the writing process. Knowing where the story is going is paramount. Then having a high level outline. Then blocking out each scene. Then actually writing each scene. Then going back over each newly written scene the day after writing it and shoring it up a bit. Then once a week or so going back over the previous week's writing and shoring up even more. And that pretty much gets a book's first draft completed. After that, the rewrite process kicks in, which is where all those days of writing without inspiration are paid for, massaged, pruned, shaped into cohesion.

The reason this process works for me is I've finally realized each day's writing doesn't have to be inspired, just functional. Plenty of time to go back over it.

Unlike blog entries. Which I push out using pretty much a stream of consciousness method. Apologies for today!