Writing Process Blog Tour

And sometimes somebody asks you to do something that makes you think about the way you do your thing.


I have to thank Yelena Casale for inviting me to participate in the Writing Process Blog Tour. You can find her at Yelena Casale's Writing Blog and on Twitter at @Yelena_Casale.

The point of all this is to reveal a little bit about the process each of us has when we sit down to write.  Each is unique in its own way. This is mine.  On to the questions!

1) What am I working on? 

The thing that's taking up the bulk of my writing time is an untitled science fiction piece of "undetermined" length.  The current target is 50,000 words, but it might shrink or grow as things progress.  At the moment it's working out to be a science fiction take on James Bond with a female protagonist.  Like most of the stuff I've written it's mutated from what it started out being.

The other thing I'm spending head-time on is a project that I started, got through a first draft and then had to put down due to to other concerns.  It's a sort of urban fantasy novel concerning good, evil and fate.  Considering how long it took to write the first draft, the second and succeeding drafts could take a while.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? 

While I tend to write what can nominally be called "science fiction" and fantasy, my science fiction stuff tends toward space opera rather than hard sf.  While there are explanations of the science in the stories, those explanations aren't very deep and some things simply aren't explained at all because I don't feel the need to do so.  Also, my work tends to have more than a tinge of romance to it.  My fantasy work tends to be more character driven than plot driven.  My characters don't tend to go on epic quests.  Things happen and they learn things about themselves that they didn't previously know.

3) Why do I write what I do?

 I've been a fan of science fiction and fantasy since I was very young.  It's the thing I'm most familiar with.  As such, when I began writing stuff in my teens I started writing science fiction-y stuff.  Over the years I've been slowly expanding my repertoire to include bits and pieces of other genres, but I've always gravitated toward those genres because they feel right.

4) How does my writing process work?

 Honestly, I think my process is weird.  I'm sort of a hybrid pantser/plotter.  Usually when I start a first draft I'm pantsing it until I'm either at a point where I know the piece has legs or isn't going to work.  If it does have legs then I'll tend to sit down and write an outline with the major plot points I'll need to hit.  The outline then acts as a guide to get me from point A to point B.  If the story takes detours that's fine. The map is there to bring me back on track when necessary.

I also try to write the ending first.  A piece of advice I got from a professional writer friend years ago.  I will actually sit down and write out a paragraph or more that defines the ending scene.  Having done that I have a direction to go toward.  That ending might change based on the story, but it gives me a direction to head in.

I don't do a whole lot of research.  Most of my stuff is either in a fantastical world of my own creation or uses ideas that are sort of standard in the sf genre.  I have done research in the past when I've needed to understand a concept, but it's not usual for me. 

Keeping the tour rolling, these three authors will be posting about their process on Monday, July 21st. Read them. See what makes them tick.

Lisa T. Cresswell

Lisa T. Cresswell is the author of a middle grade, fantasy trilogy and a YA Contemporary novel. Her next book, a YA dystopian novel is due from Month9Books in 2015. By day, she roams the deserts of southern Idaho, where she works as an archaeologist. By night, she writes fanciful stories for young people. Find out more at www.lisatcresswell.com .














Allison Duke

Allison describes herself like this:

I am a person who loves. I love God, my husband, my kids, my church, books, life, horses, art, music, theatre, movies, the Bible, people, sarcasm, good food, good friends, family, butterflies, mountains, sunshine, snow, and chocolate. I occasionally blog my thoughts and write novels. I live in Colorado and I love it here.

You can find her blog at allieduke.blogspot.com













J. B. Mills

Julia used to want to write 100 novels and lock them in an old trunk, so a century later someone could find them and publish them postmortem. Then she decided getting published in her lifetime might be ok too. At least that’s the current plan! She writes YA novels and lives with her husband and son in Denver, CO. She’s expecting her second child in September.

http://writerwandererwonderer.blogspot.com/

 

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?  I started this blog as a way to post flash fiction. That lasted for two posts. The question I have rolling around in my brain is what to do with it now? Does it become a personal blog? A blog about writing? Maybe a bit of all that?

Here's the thing: all of the blogs/journals I've had on the Internet have been places to vent frustration about the world around me. This is true of my personal offline journals as well. The time when I feel the urge to write things down is when the world has gotten me down. As much as I've tried to write about the good things that have gone on (and there have been a few of those over the years) but it doesn't last. I suppose I'm too happy at the time and writing about it doesn't occur to me.

But I'm going to try. I'm going to try to make a point of writing the good things and the bad things that happen.

Life


Dad spent Christmas in the hospital with pneumonia and a blood clot in his lungs. (Pneumonia in one and the clot in the other.) Got the pneumonia cleared up but had to wait over a week for the anticoagulant to build up enough so they could send him home.  (Quick background:  Dad had a tumor in his lung two years ago, went through radiation and chemotherapy and that tumor is gone, then they found another one at the beginning of last year and a procedure called Gamma Knife Radiation (essentially a extremely focused beam to cut out the tumor). That tumor is also now gone, or at least very hard to find when they do the PET scans they've been doing.

Work is work. I work at Target primarily as the Key Team Member for Signing. I prepare the silly little signs for every weeks Sunday Circular. If I'm lucky I work on the salesfloor one or two days a week. Some weeks I actually get enough hours that I can almost pay my bills. As New Year starts I may or may not have to go back on partial Unemployment to make ends meet. We'll see.

Writing


I put the current Work In Progress on the back burner during the holidays. Mostly because the holidays in retail are Hell x 100.  I intend to get back to it fairly soon. Probably in the next week or so. I'm at a good stopping point, though, so getting back in won't be a problem. I'm hoping to have the first draft done by maybe March or April depending on how much time I have. Then revision time begins. If I'm lucky I'll get the whole thing done and done by June or July.

Other Stuff


Behind the scenes I'm also a gamer. Right now I'm playing Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG. It's an impressive game, fully voice-acted with lots and lots of story stuff. There's still a lot of the "Kill x of y" quests, but they come as bonus missions along with the main quest.  Bioware, it seems, realized that the player is going to kill those guys anyway so there didn't need to be a large number of that type of quest.

I've also started playing the new Elder Scrolls game Skyrim. Like the other games in the series it's a open world game where you can go just about anywhere and do anything you want.  I've only played about two hours of it, but I'll get back in to it at some point.

I also play quite a few games on my iPod Touch and right now I'm addicted to the new Bejeweled and it's Diamond Mine mode.  A different challenge and it's actually a lot of fun.

I don't read much anymore.  I do listen to quite a few audiobooks, though.  It's a different way of consuming both ficiton and non-fiction and it allows me to do other things while I'm listening.  I may sometimes have to listen to a book more than once to get everything out of it, but I do that with movies and music, too.  At the moment I'm listening to Star Wars books based on the Old Republic game.  They're fun and have some interesting ideas in them.  The reader has a bad habit of mispronouncing words to an annoying degree (this, to me, is a problem that can be solved by a good director) but the overall stories are fun and not too heavy.

So, that's that. I'll try to post updates at least once a week. No promises. Have a good week!