swissmissing replied to your post “swissmissing replied to your post “Fic’s at 26,200 words and...

swissmissing
replied to your post “swissmissing
replied to your post “Fic’s at 26,200 words and still…”

Okay but seriously. I’m sure you’ve answered this before but how do you manage the insane output? Is it something that just flows and needs to get out, or do you ever struggle to put words together? Do you meticulously plan out the entire story and then fill in the details or do you just start writing and see where things go?

Ha! I always say that I think that output is sort of something like one’s height - it just is what it is, to some extent. In my first big writing phase back in the Harry Potter fandom, I sort of astounded people by writing a hole lots back then, too. 1.4 million words or thereabouts, that was the overall count. I just recently passed that same amount of words for Sherlock fiction last week, I think, and yeah - I often wonder where all those words came from, too! 

It’s sort of like a tap that’s always on. I might not have the specific mood for it 24 hours per day, but there are very few days when I don’t feel like writing at all. I don’t ever sit down and say, “hmm, I’d like to write a story. Now what on earth could I ever write about??” I sort of think that’s the wrong way around - the story should be there first, urging the writer to write it. Otherwise - and this is just my opinion and potentially full of shit, so take it with a grain of salt - but my feeling is that when we write because we want to write something, that’s putting the author ahead of the story and I personally feel it should be the other way around. My thought, though. I basically always have an ongoing queue of stories I’d like to write. I’m never out of ideas or looking for prompts or suggestions - on the contrary, one of my fears is that I’ll die before I’ve managed to write all the things I need to write! :P 

I always know how it begins, how it ends, and several of the major points along the way. I always write in order from beginning to ending. I never change anything after it’s written down, with the exception of typos (most of them, lol). I don’t do drafts and I don’t do rewrites. I might add things. My stories always grow in the edits, not the reverse. I don’t doubt what I’ve written, either. I don’t think I’m the best writer in the world by a long shot, but I don’t second guess what I’ve written. There are a handful of people I’ll occasionally let read in advance because the pat on the shoulder is nice to have, but I’m never looking for guidance. It’s just that the story is very clear to me, and if I have a moment here or there where the way forward for that specific moment isn’t 100% clear, I let it sit and know that it will tell itself to me. It always does. 

I don’t plan things out meticulously. George R. R. Martin once said that he thinks of planning stories like planting a garden - you plant seeds and then you just see what comes up later. I feel a bit like that. If it’s too planned and controlled, then I feel like I’m micromanaging it. The story should tell itself and sometimes that means that, if you let it, it will take the wheel and direct itself, and there should be room for it to do that, to grow and breathe in its own right. But everyone’s process is different! That’s just how it happens to function for me. Other people write in chunks, out of order. Others plan everything down to the hair. I don’t think there’s only one “correct” method, that’s for sure! :) 

But yeah, I have no idea how I’m so fast/prolific. I don’t think it’s a talent; I think it’s just a Thing. On average I write about 12,000 words per week, but there have been notable exceptions - busy weeks where I had no time, and the opposite. I wrote all of Scars (which is about 60K) in 7-8 days. I do my research ahead of the writing. While I was working on Against the Rest of the World, there was a lot of research that needed to be done. Some of it I did while writing, but other parts had been studied long before those sections of the story came around. For Scars, I did all of the research in advance, so that when it came to the time to write, I could just write. I think that’s about it! 

Thanks for asking, you! <33333 And sorry if this post is riddled with typos - my computer was stopping and starting constantly as I was typing so I couldn’t see what I was saying! :P