#mywritingprocess blog meme

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#mywritingprocess blog meme

Thanks to Emma Pass- author of ACID and THE FEARLESS- for tagging me into the #mywritingprocess meme. Writing is such a personal thing. Every author does it differently and trying to explain it sometimes makes people a little confused or concerned for your sanity/safety/well-being.

So, here is my writing process, complete with gif explanations.

1. What am I working on now?

(This gif is courtesy of the YA Misfits, who are awesome and you should totally check them out.)

I always have a handful of irons in the fire. There are the book ideas that are constantly brewing and the books I outline to get a sense of how I’d write them and how they’d play out. Then there are the books I’m actually full-on writing.

I just finished a YA contemporary that is with my agent now and I’m waiting on edits for THE PEOPLE VS. CECELIA PRICE from my editor at HarperTeen. Beyond that, I’m drafting a new book that is a big endeavor for me and the drafting is going very very slowly. I usually write a book in 3-4 months, tops. This one is going to take awhile. It needs research, which is time consuming itself, and I feel like the process of writing a book that takes place during two different time periods (which this does) and involves a dual narrative (which this has) just takes more care and finesse than the average book. So, it’s slow going, but hopefully that means it will be great when all is said and done.

2. How does my work differ from others?

I am utterly amazed with other people’s writing processes (processi?) because they are all so vastly different. There are the people who write every day at the same time. There are people who aim for word counts. There are people who only write during the summer. There are people who are more “when the mood strikes me” kind of writers.

When it comes to the actual results of my writing, I think that I’m different from other writers because of the stylistic choices I employ. My world-building isn’t as involved as other authors and I am always amazed and semi-jealous when I read a great fantasy/paranormal/sci-fi book with a world I never could have imagined. That kind of thing just blows my mind. Where do they come up with that?

Anyway, I like to use a multigenre approach. I’m not that great at just writing chapters in order. In TASTE TEST, I had recipes, emails, texts, judges notes, interviews, and chapters all blended together. It broke up the narrative and told the story in a way that felt a little more natural to me.

In JUST LIKE THE MOVIES, I used a dual narrative — two characters talking from their own perspective — and that was a really interesting experience, too. I would argue that that book was the hardest for me to write, in that I have a really distinct voice and it was hard for me to create two different perspectives that didn’t sound really similar.

THE PEOPLE VS. CECELIA PRICE is a completely different animal. It has three narrative strands — a present day strand, a past strand from about 3-4 months before the present, and a memory strand. The memories are recalling times from many years before the present. They alternate in order (Present, Past, Memory, Present, Past, Memory, etc.) so that they’re easier to keep track of. There aren’t any chapters, per se, and the memory sections are really short — only a page or two at most.

So, when it comes to an end result, I like to attempt to put in a narrative structure that is interesting and non-traditional. This is both for the reader and for me as a writer.

3. Why do I write what I do?

Hell if I know. I literally have no clue where my ideas come from.

No, seriously, I really don’t know why the stories I write speak to me. Usually I think of characters or end results. General plot points. A moral or lesson. I can build a narrative around that.

Sometimes I start with a theme — I knew TASTE TEST would take place during a teen cooking competition, so that was a plot point I focused on. That book couldn’t exist without that detail. Also, I believe that YA is the most visceral and emotion packed genre that exists. As a writer who thrives on emotions, that’s something I take advantage of a lot. I don’t know if I’d be able to write nearly as well if I knew it was for an intended audience other than teens.

4. How does my writing process work?

You know, I’m going to rely on gifs for most of this one…

So, I come up with an idea or get struck with some kind of inspiration. It’s usually while I’m driving, interestingly enough.

Then, I write a synopsis. This is HARD. It’s usually 2-3 pages long and it tells the whole story, beginning to end, but with less detail than an outline would.

Then, once I’ve come up with a synopsis that actually works out — and that takes a while, believe me — I will do a really thorough outline. Chapter by Chapter (even if I don’t end up writing chapters exactly, I usually call them that at first) and I put down everything I think that will happen. These aren’t usually in complete sentences or anything, but I list a lot of things so I can plot out the trajectory of the story.

(I know that’s not a gif, but totally worth a look, don’t you think?)

So, here is where things get complicated…

I’m usually super driven and excited when I get to this point. I’m ready to go balls to the wall and write ALL THE THINGS.

But.

BIG BUT.

Sometimes I just can’t make that happen. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s not like I don’t have ideas. But there are days when I sit in front of the computer and I can not transfer those ideas to the screen.

It’s the single worst feeling ever. The entire book is in my head. Sometimes it’s already written in my head, but it won’t come out until it’s ready. Kind of like a baby. I’m not kidding.

But the opposite happens, too. There are times when I write from the moment I get up until the moment I go to bed. And those are the BEST. And the worst, because I forget to eat and I stop communicating with my loved ones and I get so preoccupied that I can barely function like a normal human. But I still love it. I still want it to happen all the time.

Writing is my first love. I fell in love with it long before I met my husband or my little boy and, while I love them more than anything else – even more than writing — writing does have its moments where it comes first because it has to. If I don’t get a story out of my body, it’s like living two lives simultaneously.

And now you know why people think describing my process sounds crazy.