Process

As in what is mine?  When it comes to writing, that is.  Not that anyone’s asked me, but in today’s entry, I feel like talking about it.

It’s my blog, I can talk about whatever I want.

When I was in my twenties, furiously scribbling a couple of fantasy potboilers, one I foolishly shopped around to various publishers erroneously convinced they’d fight each other for the chance to publish it, and the other not – I made the astonishing discovery it was pointless for me to make an outline.  Oh, I gave it a go, dutifully delineating a plot for my epics, only to discover, during the process of writing, the characters had other plans.  They had definite ideas about what they were and weren’t going to do, and my ideas on the subject were of little or no interest to them.

The really funny thing was, if  I stopped fighting it, ceased attempting to impose my will on the story and its inhabitants, and let them have their heads and run with the thing, the dang end result was way better!  Better story, better characters,  better writing.  In fact, the more I consciously stepped out of the way, removed myself from the process and let the story tell itself, well, that was when it was the best of all.  Sometimes I would sit in front of my typewriter (yep, that’s what used back then.) amazed at what was translating from my fingers to the page.

Now, that doesn’t mean what I wrote back then was good, because it wasn’t. Plainly speaking, back then I stunk.  (I had to serve a decade in the fanfic trenches before I could consider myself experienced enough to attempt to do the publishing rounds again).  But learning how to produce the best work I was capable of at that moment in time – that was valuable.

And the lesson learned; simply let it be.  Definitely an important component to my personal process, but not all.

That’s all I feel like saying at the moment.  The next novel beckons.

More tomorrow – or when I get back to this next.

Blog question.  Can anyone explain tags to me and if and why I need to use them?