the mysterious writing process

The Trusty Machine

My hope is that at least some of us will use this author’s site as a place to talk about books and the writing process. I personally find the writing process fascinating, partly because although I am more of a “pantser” than a “planner/plotter,” I don’t fit into either category that neatly.

Here is my process in a nutshell. I start with a character (Nick Crane, veteran LA PI) and a problem (an alt-right group of “super-patriots” wants to destroy him). So given these few parameters, I plunge into the story-telling. As a “pantser” I should, in theory, write a big, boisterous hairy-chested (full-breasted?) first draft, perhaps well over 100,000 words, making it up blithely as I’m going along.

Alas, I can’t work that way. My way is more of a stop-and-start, back and forth, inch forward, inch backward, kind of deal.

Let’s say I write the first 2,000 words of a new Nick Crane thriller (or any other sort of book, for that matter). The next day I go back and re-write (quickly) that first 2,000 words. Only when I have whipped it into better shape, do I venture forward, writing the next section. I follow this process throughout the text. I will typically rewrite a chapter carefully before going on to the next. Thus, by the time I’ve actually finished my “first draft,” it’s actually the culmination of numerous partial rewrites and my ”first draft” is actually a somewhat worked-over manuscript. Only when this hybrid first draft is complete do I venture forward to start writing a “second draft.”

In my next entry (perhaps tomorrow), I’ll describe what happened years ago when I wrote a true “unadulterated” first draft of a novel…

(Note to anyone who is interested: In the Comments section, please describe your own approach to the mysterious writing process.)