Sunday
Like I said before, Sunday used to be my update day when Magelife was a web serial, so in honour of that I try to make a post on the blog. Today’s isn’t going to be a craft one, not as such, it’s going to be about process.
Many of my followers are writers. It’s actually fairly normal for a writer to collect writers. But this isn’t aimed at them specifically because they all have their own process. This is for my readers.
Process: What is it?
It is the method, the habits, the system by which a writer writes. It is not the words. It is not the structure of the story or the development of the characters. It is the, seemingly, simple method of putting words on the page.
With that out-of-the-way, we can pick it apart. Most of my readers have had class work, essays, even tests, where the words didn’t come. And they agonised over it. Grew frustrated, possibly even shouted at it and themselves.
It’s the same for us.
My process is very simple. I cut out time from my day, depending on what else is on the docket, I cut out most of the day. I open up my document. Microsoft Word is my preference. It’s slow on my old, obsolete laptop, so I make a cup of tea while it loads. Then, when it’s ready, I read what I wrote the day before.
That reading helps me get my thoughts in order, to get in the mindset of work. And then I start typing. My goal is five hundred words within the first hour. It doesn’t always happen, sometimes its like pulling teeth. If it doesn’t I stop for a few minutes, get up, walk around.
Then I go another hour. Typically the second hour is better, my goal increases to a thousand words. That is a harder goal, not just in raw wordage but in the merit of the words.
After that hour, unless I’m on a roll, I stop again. This time to check out my emails, keep up with friends on Facebook, look for messages on the amazon forum. Maybe find something to eat if it’s that time of day.
Those two hours are important for me, even when they aren’t productive. They let me gauge myself. Thoughts don’t always come when they are needed but they get pushed about. Just the same with assignments for school or work, doing it on demand happens when you invest the time.
This is for my readers that understand that writing is still work, it’s still putting in the hours. Some writers can churn out thousands of words a day, and I can, but they aren’t always good words, or the right ones. Some days everything on the page is wrong, and it has to be deleted before it corrupts everything else. Those are bad days. Days that feel wasted. But they aren’t wasted.
Magelife two is at thirty-six thousand words right now. And I must have written two hundred thousand on it since starting January. Wrong turns. Plot points that go nowhere. The story changes. I have three version of the starting point. I’m happy with the current one, but it isn’t where I first thought it would start.
Much like that essay that you got an A on. It is not your first attempt, because your first attempt probably didn’t answer the question. It looked like it did, but something made you change it.
That is writing for me, it’s a continual process. Words in, story out. But work is lost in the middle because it doesn’t answer the question, or serve the purpose it is meant to
Like so many things writing takes longer than many would like. There is always hidden work, work that no one will ever see in the final product.
