What Does Your Writing Journey Look Like?

Everyone has their own reasons for how they write, as well as their own voice and style. Take a glimpse into how NaNo Participant Audrey Shulman begins her drafts.

The NaNoWriMo finishers out there (congratulations) may disagree with me on this one, but for me, it’s the journey and not the destination, that makes writing worthwhile. As someone guilty of having at least three stories in the works at any time, the phrase “I’m finished” is usually reserved for meals.

The creative process in the build up to even starting a writing project is different for everyone, but for me it means weeks of my new characters acting out scene after scene in my mind as I walk the dog or take the train to work. Rather than mapping out a specific journey to the destination, I  leisurely linger/stroll/meander around at the bottom of the mountain.

Developing the setting, character progression and overall arc of the story should probably be a priority at this point, but instead I am lost in an overly specific rendition of an interaction between two characters, which plays on repeat until it occurs to me to write it down. In my journey I have chosen the easy route: it may not get me to the mountaintop fastest, but it has plenty of picnic stops and shady trees.

From there my characters seem to write their own destinies, until the going gets tough and the mountain gets steep. At this point, maybe about 5k, I might admit that I’d quite like to reach that fabled destination that is finishing a first draft. By taking the easy start, I now have a steep, uphill climb. But is there a better feeling than finally figuring out how a situation is going to resolve itself, how two characters are going to meet or exactly how that dialogue should end?

Those moments of success, when we experience a breakthrough and things start to figure themselves out, or even just replacing that adverb that has been annoying you, can each be their own destination, that deserve to be enjoyed and celebrated. When climbing an actual mountain, it’s unlikely you’d wait until the very top to stop and look around, chances are you’re pausing to look back at how far you’ve come, to rest and have some food and congratulate yourself on your progress.

Even as I write this my 25k draft is patiently waiting to be finished, so maybe I’ll change my mind when I reach my mountaintop. But it’s important to take a second to look back at how far you’ve come, rather than focusing on how far you still have left to go. It’s the journey, not the destination, so enjoy it and keep climbing!

Audrey is a copywriter at a marketing agency in London and volunteers at her local library each summer to support the UK’s Summer Reading Challenge. She’s previously worked as a primary school teacher and loves the way books make adventures accessible. She has been writing stories for a long time but has yet to be a NaNoWriMo finisher. Find her on LinkedIn.

Photo Courtesy of Matt Howard via Unsplash.