The Writing Process by Jim Gilbert

THE WRITING PROCESS

By

Jim Gilbert

Many authors refer to the writing process as an almost magical means of getting their thoughts onto paper for eventual publication.  I say “magical” because each author seems to have his or her own way of translating those thoughts into the wonderful prose we all treasure.  They expound on their individual methods at conferences and conventions, pointing out both the benefits and, often, the drawbacks of their techniques.  However, if each author has his or her own writing process, how is a budding author with dreams of book signings, library visits, and being featured at the above mentioned conferences and conventions ever to find the way that suits them?  It is my hope that this article will offer a little hope to those suffering in the wasteland that writer’s block often feels like.

The most common piece of advice that new writers usually receive from seasoned professionals is “write what you know.”  That’s fine, in as far as it goes; you can’t very well write about something you know nothing about, so stick with things you do know intimately and/or in which you have a strong interest.  However, I don’t feel that “write what you know” goes far enough.  I think a better bit of advice is the old adage “know thyself.”  If this seems a little too broad to be of real practical value, please bear with me.  Some authors have been able to make writing their primary source of income, and they treat writing like a regular job.  In fact, a very prolific science fiction/fantasy author makes writing a 9-to-5 job: he enters his home office at 9 AM sharp, spends the first hour on correspondence (fan mail, emails from his agent and publisher, etc.) and phone calls; writes at his computer for three hours, takes an hour for lunch, writes at his computer for three-and-a-half hours, uses the last half-hour for more correspondence, and leaves his office at 5 PM sharp.  Now, while this is great for him, most of us just haven’t reached the point where we can depend solely on the income from writing (at least not yet, but I still have hope).  If you have not yet hit it big, you have to work your writing time around your regular work schedule, household chores, family issues, etc.  Besides finding the time to write, there are other things to consider.  Do you like to write in a quiet atmosphere, or do you prefer to have music or some other noise in the background?  Do you have a special room or corner that is your “office,” or do you write anywhere you can find the space amidst all of your family’s stuff?  Do you write in spits and spurts, or do you have nonstop, marathon writing sessions?  Do you wing it, or do you have a plot outline written down that you stick to rigidly?  As for myself, I use a laptop computer on a small table at my couch, have the TV running to listen to in the background, use a flexible plot outline (I know key points in the story and where they fit in, and I fill in the “spaces” in between those points in moving from one point to the next), and when I hit a patch of writer’s block (knowing what I want to say, but not exactly how I want to word it), I pause and play a few hands of spider solitaire before going back to writing (letting it percolate in the back of my mind as I play the card game).  So you can see it’s not “just write what you know,” but also “know thyself” that’s important to today’s author.  Of course, I also need to know what to write, and for that I need to do some research.

No matter how much you think you know about a topic, you can always do with learning some more.  You never know when some little tidbit that you learned in some book or from a class or even from some conversation may be useful.  I thought I knew a lot about ghosts from reading stories about real ghost, documentaries, and even a couple of encounters of my own, but I learned something new about ghosts in Charleston, South Carolina, while watching another documentary on TV.  Lo and behold, I was able to devote a whole chapter in my novel, A Host of Ghosts, based on one of the ghostly legends of Charleston.  For another example, I already knew a good deal about motorcycles when I needed one for a chapter in my novel, The Once and Future Now.  I needed a bike that was fast and light, but powerful enough to carry two people while handling the stunts I required of it.  The answer?  Research.  And despite what I had already learned about the Irish Republican Army and its efforts to expel the British from Ireland and eventually seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict, I need more information on the key players and operations of the IRA, as well as information on MI6, particular towns and locations in Ireland, France, and England, and the Hellfire Club.  What did I do?  Research.  With a little studying of the information I collected, I was able to see the novel play out in my head as if I had a movie screen in my mind playing the action in front of me.  All I had to do was write down what I saw as it happened.  Even if you’re creating a world or universe from whole cloth, what happens in that world/universe still have to make sense within the rules you set up for it as well as rules that your readers will understand.  Willing suspension of disbelief (which you expect your readers to adopt if you write science fiction, fantasy, horror, or some combination of them) only goes so far.  Learn something about ecology, sword fighting techniques, battle tactics, medieval technology, blacksmithing, farming, woodscraft, etc. if you are going to write a fantasy novel.  After all, you can’t believably have deadly swarms of giant monsters attacking and wiping out whole towns in a medieval setting without understanding why they are attacking, what they normally feed on when not attacking a town (is there enough wildlife in their normal territory to support those large numbers), what kind of organizational system do they use (pack, flock, herd, etc.), how they have been repelled if this has happened before, etc.  You also need to know something about how a large city and a small village work in a medieval setting in order to make your settings and characters more real for your readers.  For example, is the town/city large enough to have a mayor, a healer/doctor, a priest (or even more than one temple/church and, thus, more than one priest), a tavern, an inn, a town guard or militia, etc?  The same is true for science fiction settings and characters.  To be consistent in your rules for your universe, you have to have the background information firmly in place and in mind before you write.  Research, research, research.

That sounds like the advice Isaac Asimov used to give to new writers trying to break into the business: “Write, write, write.”  The only way to perfect your craft is to write.  After all, practice makes perfect.  The reason some things become a cliché is because they are all too often true.  You can’t become good at something if you don’t practice at it.  That is why they have spring training for baseball players and summer camp for football players to get back into fighting trim.  Your mind is also something that needs to be used, and often, if you wish to become good at something, especially writing, wherein your greatest tool is your mind.  So write, write, write.  Write stories for fanzines, magazines created, written, edited, and illustrated by fans of a particular literary genre or even a particular author.  Write stories and articles for local magazines, as well as e-magazines (magazines available only on the Internet).  Take a writing class.  Join a writers’ group, a collection of local authors/writers who get together regularly to critique one another’s work.  (There is a difference between being critical and doing a critique; one is finding fault with someone’s work, the other is pointing out ways to improve someone’s work by showing that someone how the mistakes can be improved.  You want the latter kind of group, because they will help you improve your writing (grammar, structure, phrasing, word choice, etc.), and, amazingly, as you learn to identify mistakes that need correcting in their work, you learn to watch out for those same mistakes in your own work.  A good group will also help you maintain your focus so that you always have something to present to the group; in other words, they help you keep writing, writing, writing.)

I hope that this helps you find the way to your own writing process, your own method, steps, and procedures for writing your articles, short stories, and novels.