Proclivity VS. Structure

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Proclivity VS. Structure

If you’re visiting my blog for the first time let me drop some knowledge on you.

I wrote a book. It’s plastered all over this blog. Nope I’m not being facetious, this isn’t an anecdotal term for my marriage for I am single. A Demon Love Story is my first full length novel.

If someone asked me what do you think you’d be in your mid-thirties about 20 years ago I would have said “a graphic designer” “author” would have never passed my lips. Honestly the English language and all its rules usually went over my head but I loved to tell stories I’ve been telling stories on paper, now computer screen for ages.

This brings me to my topic.

What makes a successful writer?

Is it natural ability or education and honor of all things technical? I know people who possess both of these abilities, I’m in envy of them. I’m an artist by nature but a writer by talent. Of course some that have read my book may argue that but I am confident in my ability to tell a story.

So is writing a left side or right side of the brain trait? I like to think anything stemming from pure imagination and creativity would lend itself in the right quadrant but to be a writer you always have to have some form of a structured technique as well.

Quite the quagmire–

Anyone that reads regularly will say that creativeness as well as structure is the recipe to make a good story. You can’t just write willy-nilly and hope that it’s legible. So when you sit down to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) what is your writing process?

When I started my book I looked at my screen and started with the very fist line of my book “I have never wanted anything more than him” and it grew from there.

Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_process It’s stated that there are 5 stages to the writing process:

1. Prewriting–planning, research, outlining, diagraming, storyboarding, etc.

2. Drafting–developing a more cohesive product

3. Revising–identifying your thesis, determine structure by figuring out strengths and weaknesses and solve problems with presentation and arguments.

4. Editing–our favorite

5. Publishing

They make it sound so easy right?

I can say that my process was as follows…

1. Drafting, revising, editing, drafting again, adding, editing, revising, drafting…formal editing, then publishing.

Which in reality means when I sat at the computer at hourly intervals for a year just writing what popped into my head. Structure was not a consideration. I tried my best to keep punctuation and comma placement as well as some semblance of legible spelling. But when I look at the finished product vs my first write-up–wow what a difference when the structure is put into play.

So tell me what are you thoughts on the matter? Are you a structured writer or do you just let proclivity take the reins?