What's your writing process?

[Nathan]

I'm just curious as to what you guys do for inspiration? What gets your creative juices flowing? How do you construct a story?

I find it interesting the different ways I can get it going, and I was wondering what works best for all of you. Do you wake up at 4 am and crack open some champagne and orange juice, or do scribble little things throughout the day and try and piece them together later.

Sometimes I'll find myself driving, or in line at the grocery store, and entire scenes will play out in my head, superimposed onto the world before me. I then do my best to get that into MS word.

So, what's your writing process?

[Jason]

I sit down with characters and a plot conflict and I start typing. That's really it. To make it go more quickly/have more fun, I crank up loud, bouncy music, put in my headphones, and bob up and down while I type.

I'm sure I draw looks from anyone who might be around.

I don't plot ahead of time, I don't write out-of-order. It's just watching the characters get into trouble and jotting it down.

[Katheryn]

Usually, something will pop up in my head (a conversation between two characters, an action scene) and I write it down. Most of the time I'm away from my computer when that happens, so I carry a small notebook around and jot ideas in there. When I do get to my computer, I type it all up and try to figure out what happened before/after - focusing on character development. Sometimes I hit a gold mine, usually I hit a dead end. If it's an idea I really like and want to develop as much as possible, I look for prompts to keep me going.

When I have enough on the characters, plot usually begins to peek through, and I shift focus to that. All my writing is done to the backdrop of my Pandora stations. I switch the station according to mood - anything from reggaeton to heavy metal.

[Amber]

I brainstorm while I'm running, or while I'm driving and listening to classical music. Sometimes ideas pop up when I mean to be meditating after yoga. I then write in total silence, no music. I scribble notes on paper when I get these inspirations. I'm working on something now, in which my psychic protagonist gets involved in art authentication and tracing art theft, an idea I got from a free local paper I found lying on a table in Whole Foods. I got an idea for another element of the same book from a question a blogger asked me for an upcoming interview. Once I get started I try to write a first draft as an improv, and then chop it up and recyle the parts worth saving. I go back every few chapters and see if it's flowing, cut and restart at the point that it bogs down. I keep track of loose threads in the plot fabric at that point and start the outline of how I'll weave them. My characters' authentic responses drive the plot, so I have to provide the right, believable stimuli for them. It's a mix of intuition and logic. Hard to describe.

[S.T.]

My stories, I think, reflect my own disgruntlement with certain aspects of society; and they become more real once I've encountered something that makes them concrete.

The novel I'm finishing now, really, is an song to parents -- for I loathe when I see parents letting their children run around all willy nilly without keeping any type of watch.

So then I told myself, so what if everytime that happened, the kids were taken -- never to be heard from again.

Then I added details; how can I make this more sinister, more painful, yet interesting, clinging to reality by a thread.

[Jacek]

I usually start the text by making up a single phrase sum up of it. Something really simple, like "a thriller/horror about a girl in a derailed train" or "a girl being abducted in an abandoned house". Then I create a result or a cause of that phrase, make up a little of the characters (mostly their physical side; somehow the psychological side is made on the fly in the process of writing and it goes pretty well, I reckon - if I know how the character looks like, I can easily imagine how they would act), some sketches of the setting and slowly fill in more and more of the details - usually also on the fly.

My inspirations are pretty wide - sometimes it's a music album, sometimes it's a rain outside when I travel to work (that's how the idea for my current novel had hit me), sometimes it's some news I've read or seen - virtually anything can do.

I also try to produce a certain amount of writing each day or week - if I had to wait for "the mood", I'd probably write nothing at all. So I set up a goal of X characters per day or per week and try to stick to it. Doesn't have to be top class or great but it's better to write, say, 5k characters of mediocre writing that can be polished later than to wait until I'm in the mood.

Oh, and the music. The music is a must - especially when the story I write is somehow related to this or that certain music. But I realized that my flow is greatly influenced by the music playing somewhere in the background.

And there's always a lot of generic brand Coke and cigarettes around me.

I don't really take notes though - I find it really distracting; I usually have all the notes in my head. I sometimes jot down some ideas "for later" but if I get any and don't start working on it immediately, there's a slim chance I will ever get back to it.

Great topic though, I was thinking about making a similar thread for days now but you did it far better than I ever would!

edit: forgot about one VERY important piece of my working process. Bitching. I keep whining and complaining all the time (usually aloud) about how my writing sucks, how I won't make it, how it's all bad, how I'm not suited for it, etc., etc.

[Michael]

There is usually a certain scene or piece of dialog that I want to use, the rest of the story is kind of a map to get to that point. funny enough half the time I don't even end up using the scene or dialog since the story has grown on its own.