# Writing Approach--thinking vs. working



## Incanus (Jul 22, 2014)

I'm very curious as to how different writers work with their ideas:  Do you separate your 'muse' time, your 'idea generation' time from your 'work' time, the time spent simply putting down words?  Do you do these things in different locations, or at certain times?  How long do you develop ideas for?  Do you just make it up as you go along?  Or is it a little different every time, depending on the nature of the work itself?

I'm especially interested in the more prolific types (darting a swift glance in Caged Maiden's direction--she reported having a 4K day recently; very, very impressive!).  Maybe ideas just come quicker to some.  Or, are some able to see more potential in run-of-the-mill ideas, and are able to just plow forward?

Mostly, what I have in mind here pertains to the earlier phases of writing:  developing ideas, outlining, first drafting, etc.

I'll answer my own question in a separate post, later on.  Just getting the ball rolling for now.


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## Svrtnsse (Jul 22, 2014)

I'm fairly new at this, but what I've found works for me is to have a fairly detailed plan of what to write. That way I work on the plot/ideas/creativity part first and then I work on the wordcrafting. I have the impression that compared to a lot of other writers my planning is rather detailed, but it's what works for me.
The benefit for me is that once I sit down to write I know what to do. I can focus on just putting it in words and don't have to worry too much about making up the story at the same time.

It works for me, but that doesn't mean that's the right way of doing it. I know others who like to start with just a vague notion of what they want to do and then start with a blank page an see what happens. Personally, that leaves me too much room to get distracted by funny little details, but if you can live with that, then it's probably great fun.


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## Penpilot (Jul 22, 2014)

Every one works differently.

For myself, ideas get generated and refined as go about living my life. I rarely just sit down to just think about ideas for my stories. Usually, I'm writing one project while planing and coming up with ideas for the next. I usually consider a project ready to go once I understand what the progatonist(s) wants, what the antagonist(s) wants, what's the central thread that pulls them into conflict, and what the general flavors of the world are.

Once I know those things, I develop an outline, laying out what needs to be accomplished in each scene, and then I write, filling in the details as I go. After the first draft, I go back and add stuff, remove stuff, and refine stuff. Rinse and repeat. 

Each story is different in the way it comes out. Same with each part of the story. Some stuff comes out very close to the final form it will take while other stuff comes out very rough and needs to be refined and reworked or sometimes trashed and replaced with something better.

The more you write the more ideas come to you on the fly. Sometimes I plan a scene one way but as soon as I start writing it plays out in a completely different way. The job I needed the scene to do is still done, but just not the way I expected, and more often than not, in a better way. Also as you write, the details of the world come out, and it's never exactly how you imagined it. But to me that's the cool part of discovering your world.

As for writing locations. I usually like to get out of the house. Locations generally don't matter to me otherwise. Some times it's the library. Other times it's McDonalds or the food court at the mall. As long as there's a spot for my laptop, and I'm allowed to sit there for a few hours undisturbed except by the silence or the hum of the crowd, I'm good.

To me, the most important thing is to get into the rhythm of writing everyday. When I do that, the words come fairly easily. They're not always perfect--pretty much never actually. But after the first draft gets finished any doubt in regards to if the story will get finished goes away. It's just a matter of rolling up the sleeves and getting to work editing, which is the hardest part, but in some ways the most fun. It's where you get to shape the raw material of the first draft into something really cool.


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## Jabrosky (Jul 22, 2014)

I daydream all the time. I'll do it walking around the neighborhood, riding in a car or bus, pacing around the house, or even lying in bed. In the former two cases I listen to music on my iPhone, which gives my thoughts a soundtrack.

On the best days I use my daydreaming time to mentally plan out my stories. These days I think of myself as standing closer to the outlining side of the spectrum, but the twist is that I'm doing most of this outlining inside my head instead of writing it all down on paper. It's worked for me in the past and, after experimenting with other methods, I've decided it works the best for me.


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## psychotick (Jul 23, 2014)

Hi,

For me my muse time is usually while I'm writing. But I have ideas at other times too and usually then have to jot them down somewhere to write up later. And as for prolific I just finished the first draft of a 220k book in two months - that's simply beause I was swept up in the story as I wrote and the ideas flowed constantly.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Incanus (Jul 23, 2014)

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts so far.  

For myself, I've been doing most of my brainstorming out on walks.  I live fairly close to a nice big river and there are a bunch of hiking trails along the parkway--perfect for daydreaming about fantasy concepts.  When I write, I have to have absolutely no distractions of any kind.  I closet myself up in my dingy apartment.  I think it is interesting to see the different ways people go about these things.  I'm somewhat fascinated by the creative process in general.

I have to say that I'm pretty well blown away by 220,000 words in 2 months.  This kind of output makes even Stephen King look like something of a slacker.  This would be totally impossible for me.  I think my lifetime total of prose production is somewhere between 300-400 pages; and the majority of that is incomplete, first draft junk.  Of course that doesn't count notes, maps, glossaries, and what not, but still. . .

I've improved my production a tiny bit lately, but I do wonder if my hangups and slow rate suggest that maybe I shouldn't be trying to do this after all.  Not that I'm going to stop any time soon, but I am riddled with doubts.


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## Penpilot (Jul 23, 2014)

Incanus said:


> I've improved my production a tiny bit lately, but I do wonder if my hangups and slow rate suggest that maybe I shouldn't be trying to do this after all.  Not that I'm going to stop any time soon, but I am riddled with doubts.



Honestly, you'd be surprised at how little you have to write to be productive. I've written 50k+ in a month, and I've had stretches where I write 10k words a day on different projects, but you don't need that type of production to finish things. If you write 250 words every day that's 91250 words in a year, which is a novel. In fact, if you do a word count on the post you just wrote it's 200+words.


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## Fyle (Jul 24, 2014)

I think of where I want plots/character arcs to go whenever I am not writing.

If I completely forget something it's not good enough ( and I used to be freak about writing everything down so didn't "forget") 

so far, no regrets... all the hooks, lines and cliffhangers I thought to be great stuck in my mind and flowed out when I went to get them down.


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## Incanus (Jul 24, 2014)

I may have sounded a little more negative than I intended in my last post.  In my defense, though, 'maybe' and 'suggest' are pretty weak words.  I was just sort of wondering aloud.  I've really been quite excited about writing since I came up with the 'big idea' a year and a half or so ago.  I still am, very much so.

I have seen that the words _do _add up.  They certainly do.  Only got about 300 words last night, but it is forward progress.  Years ago, I had dozens of sessions that yielded a mere 50-60 words.  I think much of this was that the stories I was working on were flawed fundamentally, but I plowed ahead anyway.  I've been conceiving much better ideas for short stories lately (at least I like to think so), and they're flowing a little better as a result.

This place has inspired me, at least a little so far.  It's interesting to see some writers struggling with and thinking about some of the same things that I have.

So, forward and onward!


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## psychotick (Jul 25, 2014)

Hi Incanus,

It's not that good I'm afraid. That's just the first draft. After that come the rewrites, then the true agony - editing. The first draft is the stuff that flows easily.

Cheers, Greg.


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## The Dark One (Jul 25, 2014)

Like Svrtnsse, I'm a careful planner, but there's a musing aspect to the planning which takes it beyond strict intellectual activity. But when I'm generating prose within the plan - getting from plot point to plot point - there's a lot of musing happening. After 20 years of writing I've learned to 'live in the story', as I call it, and really see, hear, feel and taste the story as it happens. Every day I start with revising the last few pp of the previous session and when I'm hot, I usually don't remember what I did the day before. This means I get to read it for the first time - just like a reader - and I am constantly blown away by what's been produced. When it's really cooking I find I barely need to alter a word in editing phase.

Of course, it's the REALLY good days I've just described. 

I would mostly do between 500 - 1000 new words a day, plus a bit of editing, but because I work full time that's as much as I can realistically manage (and I'm busy with all sorts of other stuff on the weekends). On rare occasions I might get a day off work and feel like writing all day and there have been times when I was totally in the zone and rattled off several thousand words. There was a particular day back in about 2009 when I was getting towards the end of my (already accepted) book when I must have done the best part of 10k words, but because the story was so strong in my head it was like I just sat there as it poured through my fingers and onto the screen.

Doesn't happen often. Only once, in fact.


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## Philip Overby (Jul 25, 2014)

I was a heavy word counter up until earlier this year when I decided spending time writing every day was more important to staying consistent. While keeping track of words is certainly a good way to track your progress, I tend to worry more about if I'm maintaining momentum. I find if I lose momentum on a project, it often kills it. 

About separating brainstorming time from writing time, I often do that. It's not really intentional, but I find that I do better brainstorming in notebooks while when it's time to write, I do better with Scrivener or whatever word processor I happen to be using. Although I have recently started writing stories and novels in notebooks when I feel like it. Partitioning off time for short stories and time for novels helps give me more of a task oriented approach to writing. 

For example, a typical writing day may be like this:

1. Brainstorm session
2. Work on short stories
3. Editing on primary WIP
4. Working on first draft of secondary WIP

This doesn't always happen this way, but by setting up daily tasks for myself, I find I can juggle projects more easily without losing interest and keep my forward momentum. Taking a day off has often destroyed my momentum, so I don't take days off anymore. I may only edit some days or only work on a short story, but I'm always working on something.


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## Addison (Jul 26, 2014)

"First you write with the heart, and then with the head." Sean Connery, "Finding Forrester". 

I write by that policy. The first draft is just my fingers flying as they try to keep up with the story pouring from my imagination. Once I get to the end, and ONLY then, do I go back and go over it with my head. Looking at grammar, spelling, tone, paragraphs, chapter breaks, whether or not to keep that scene etc. 

Then I go over it again with the heart, then the head again. Rinse and repeat. It works.  

My uncle Larry once told me "If from word one you're writing from the head it's not fiction. Because there's no thinking needed to be imaginative." That goes both ways, as if there was no imagination in text books or any non-fiction then I would have flunked every grade.


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## deilaitha (Jul 26, 2014)

Penpilot said:


> If you write 250 words every day that's 91250 words in a year, which is a novel.



Surprisingly, that is a huge revelation to me.  I always psych myself out with word quotas (the lowest I've ever set is 500).  250 words is puddlenuts, though. I really ought to try that.


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## Incanus (Jul 28, 2014)

This is great.  We're seeing a lot of different approaches here.

But I have to acknowledge something I have long suspected about myself:  I'm weird.

It's true.  I'm really weird.  It seems I don't work in the 'usual' way.  I can't just 'pour out a story out of my imagination', or anything remotely like it.  Setting aside for a moment my hangup with quality prose in the first draft (I'm trying to loosen up, but have met with limited success so far), I can't just handle a whole plot, character plots, setting, exposition, description, conflicts, POVs, invent monsters, use magic, keep track of the fantasy world, and make sure all these things are working well together.  What if I come up with some dumb plot thing in chapter 3 or 4, and then write 50,000 more words that build on that plot thing only to realize it was a bad idea, not thought through?  I can't just work with any old idea; it has to have _something_ special or unique about it.

I haven't given myself any 'word-count minimums' to date.  I'd fall short a lot of the time.

It seems to me that within 2000-5000 words there would be a great many ideas, large and small.  More than I can deal with in one day.

I think I'm still having a hard time with abstract ideas.  For me, they don't come cheap.  I have to go take a 1-2 hour walk to work out the more difficult ones, and that's a chunk out of my writing time.

I can see one advantage, however:  rewriting and editing are not particularly difficult or time-consuming once I have that elusive first draft.

It's hard not to conclude that I'm at least a little strange. . .


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## Ryan_Crown (Jul 28, 2014)

For a long time I tried the 'just sit down and write, seat-of-your-pants' style of writing, and seldom had problems coming up with ideas or with developing great scenes or interesting characters. The problem I constantly ran into, however, was that once the ideas started to flow more slowly (or stopped flowing altogether) my story would stall out, and eventually be set aside never to be picked up again. So recently I've decided to try a more structured approach -- to build as solid a plot outline as I can, to develop the basic concept and story arch of each major character, to do as much concrete world building as I can, all BEFORE I start writing the actual novel.

So far, it has not been easy, as it's not my normal writing style. And with my current novel (my first serious attempt at a novel) I think I'm only halfway there. But it has definitely helped. I'm still running into roadblocks where I'm struggling to figure out what happens in the next scene, but knowing most of the key scenes after that makes it much easier to power through those points since I do know overall where the story is going. With any luck I'll actually be able to finish this story as a result. And with my next story (assuming I get that far), I'm thinking I will spend even more time in the outline/development stage, so that I really have a solid grasp of both the plotline and the characters before I sit down and start putting words on the page.

In the past I'd always thought this sort of pre-planning/structuring would be an impedement to creativity; now I'm starting to realize it's a very useful tool to keep my creativity on track and moving forward. But that's just my view.


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## skip.knox (Jul 29, 2014)

Emphatic agreement with the psychotik one. The arithmetic of encouragement always bothered me, and bothered me even more once I started writing seriously. Just write n words a day and in a year you'll have n*300 words, with time off for holidays!

The figures are very nearly meaningless. Sure, at a thousand words a day you'll have 300,000 words. Of which you will throw out a hundred thousand, and will rewrite another 50,000 and still need to write 25,000 new ones. And that's just to get the thing to the point where it's worth showing to a beta reader.

And you ain't gonna write a thousand a day, not when you're beginning. Your output will lurch around worse than a drunken pirate on a leaky barque. Some writers can turn out a book a year. They are considered titans. Think Asimov or Simenone. A more reasonable expectation is one every few years. Those 100,000 words in that novel? Those are the words left standing after the slaughter of editing.

My only point of disagreement with Greg is, sometimes even the first draft does not flow easily.

Ain't I the cheerful one tonight?


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## skip.knox (Jul 29, 2014)

Since I mentioned Georges Simenon, and since I seem to be in a cheery mood this evening, I post a quote from the man.

"Writing is considered a profession, and I don’t think it is a profession. I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy."

This, from a man who, at his height, turned out six books a year. In a year!

The quote is from The Paris Review, which has a whole series of interviews with extraordinary writers. All the articles are worth a read. Here's the one with Georgie-pie.

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 9, Georges Simenon


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## skip.knox (Jul 29, 2014)

And a nice quote from J.G. Ballard:

"Imagination is the shortest route between any two conceivable points"


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## Penpilot (Jul 29, 2014)

Incanus said:


> This is great.  We're seeing a lot of different approaches here.
> 
> But I have to acknowledge something I have long suspected about myself:  I'm weird.



I think most of us around here are weird. We're writers after all. 




Incanus said:


> It seems to me that within 2000-5000 words there would be a great many ideas, large and small.  More than I can deal with in one day.



Not as many as you think, and it's not as hard as you imagine to tackle. When I began, I was overwhelmed by the numbers. How can anyone write 100k? Where do they come up the words and the number of things to talk about? It seemed impossible.

Then, I began to study about writing. I read about point of view and how to use it. I read about story structure. I read countless books on writing and writing technique, etc. While doing this I wrote, for the most part badly, but I wrote and I wrote, churning out a 275k novel.

I learned so many things while writing, editing, and completing that novel. One of the most important was that I could do it. 100k? Not such a big mountain to climb any longer. 




Incanus said:


> I think I'm still having a hard time with abstract ideas.  For me, they don't come cheap.  I have to go take a 1-2 hour walk to work out the more difficult ones, and that's a chunk out of my writing time.



For me, the ideas, abstract or otherwise, come easier when I'm not focus on coming up with them. My best ideas and solutions to problems I have come to me most often when I'm driving or riding the bus from point A to B or when I'm taking a shower and my mind wanders.

Other times, they come to me when I'm writing. When the words start flowing and I'm on a role, not only do ideas for the current story flow out, ideas for other stories flow out too, sometimes to distraction. I often have to take a quick break from my current story to jot down notes for others that came to me during that writing session.

From my experiences, if there's one sure way to block yourself from coming up with good ideas, it's to put yourself in a spot and demand yourself to come up with a good idea. But that's just me. People are different.




skip.knox said:


> Emphatic agreement with the psychotik one. The arithmetic of encouragement always bothered me, and bothered me even more once I started writing seriously. Just write n words a day and in a year you'll have n*300 words, with time off for holidays!
> 
> The figures are very nearly meaningless. Sure, at a thousand words a day you'll have 300,000 words. Of which you will throw out a hundred thousand, and will rewrite another 50,000 and still need to write 25,000 new ones. And that's just to get the thing to the point where it's worth showing to a beta reader.



We're going to have to disagree on this, but to me, the numbers aren't meaningless. It's a way of showing how few words you have to write daily in order to finish a first draft. A lot of new writers, including myself when I was starting off, didn't know what a good daily word count was or have a reference point on how long it would take me to finish novel.

I once heard Stephen King say he wrote 20k words in a day. I thought he meant that he did that every day and pumped out novels every week, and that freaked me out because the best I could do at the time was maybe 2k.

When I first saw the numbers, they gave me encouragement. I thought, "Hey, I can do that," and I did. Never once did I think that the numbers included the work I would need to do in editing and rewrites. For me, and a lot of other writers, it's getting that very first draft to that very first book that was most challenging hump to get over. Once over that hump, everything else seems doable. 



Incanus said:


> And you ain't gonna write a thousand a day, not when you're beginning. Your output will lurch around worse than a drunken pirate on a leaky barque. Some writers can turn out a book a year. They are considered titans. Think Asimov or Simenone. A more reasonable expectation is one every few years. Those 100,000 words in that novel? Those are the words left standing after the slaughter of editing.



And to me, this is one of the reasons knowing the numbers helps. A writing day with, say, 500 words won't be discouraging or be considered a disaster. And gives perspective that 2k words is a pretty good day. I mean of course there's more to it than first draft, but knowing the numbers is to me the first step in understanding the amount of work needed to complete a first draft. It lets the new writer know they only need to take small bites not huge gulps in order to get anything done. 

And to me that's the key to completing big jobs, not just novels. It's being able to break the job down into its smaller tasks, and seeing how they all fit together. Doing that opens things up into just how doable any big task is.


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## Incanus (Jul 29, 2014)

Penpilot said:


> Not as many as you think, and it's not as hard as you imagine to tackle. When I began, I was overwhelmed by the numbers. How can anyone write 100k? Where do they come up the words and the number of things to talk about? It seemed impossible.




Of course, there are words and there are words.  I'd say it takes someone like a Robert Jordan to do in 2000-3000 words what Tolkien accomplishes in 500.  Not that this is strictly true, mind.  WoT will never be LoTR even if it was a trillion words long.  Some writing is fluffier than others.

As painful as it might be to produce, I think I'd rather create one Lord of the Rings, than 50 forgettable, run-of-the-mill fantasy novels.

For what its worth, one of those quotes above wasn't mine.

I have to say, though, that I disagree 100% with Addison's uncle:  I believe thinking is crucial to imagination, indispensible.


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## Dalleena (Jul 30, 2014)

Hi
I've found that for myself, I can't plan ahead. I lose interest in the story, if I know exactly how it's going to play out. I know this might sound weird, but seeing that we're all a little weird.  I let the characters decide. I will sit in front of my computer and know that anything can happen, which inspires me. Of course this approach takes up a lot of extra work, when I go over it again. But for me it works. I tried writing with an outline a while ago, but that just ended in a writing block for a few months.


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## Ryan_Crown (Jul 30, 2014)

Incanus said:


> As painful as it might be to produce, I think I'd rather create one Lord of the Rings, than 50 forgettable, run-of-the-mill fantasy novels.



I admit it would be amazing to create a Lord of the Rings quality novel, but even if all I ever wrote were run-of-the-mill fantasy novels, as long as I knew there were people out there enjoying my writing (even if there weren't that many of them), that would be pretty damned satisfying.


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