What writing process works?

Tragically, I think this varies a lot for everyone, but I seem to have gotten what works for me fairly well worked out. If you don’t have any particular process or you are still searching for one, I recommend giving this a try. I’ll explain why in a bit more detail at the end.

1. Draft it. Let it be bad. Just get the words down. Furrow your brow, ignore the fact that the last sentence made almost no sense and just keep going. Get ‘er done.
2. Walk away from it for a day.
3. Come back and start reading it entirely for logical flow.  Do the actions of the characters from this paragraph to the next make sense? Does the argument made in this sentence flow logically into the next one? Are there gaps? Bridge them. Sloppily. Do it with rough notes if you have to. Do not pause and try to make the wording work. Make sure you’re not worrying about anything other than logic.
4. Walk away from it for a day.
5. Come back and start reading it entirely for emotional flow. Do the emotions of the characters fit the situation? Does the emotional state of things make sense? Are characters cracking jokes at a murder scene? Is that okay, or is it not? Kinda depends, but it has to make sense. Make sure you’re not worrying about anything other than emotions.
6. Walk away from it for a day.
7. Come back and start reading it for wording. Are the sentences good? Are you using adverbs you don’t need to be using? Are you inserting useless words like “very” and “just”?
8. In the wording pass, you should also have time to start cutting. Cut cut cut. Look for times you’ve said the same thing twice. Look at each sentence and ask yourself “Does this need to be here?”
9. You can also hit any obvious punctuation issues that are clarity problems, but do not stress over punctuation now. We’ll worry about that later.
10. Walk away for a day.
11. Come back and focus entirely on voice. Do the words on the page match your character’s voice? Would he or she choose different words? Longer sentences? Shorter ones? More or less refined? Harsh or happy? Be sure to tie the voice into the emotional state as well.  Focus entirely on voice.
12. Walk away for a day… or two.
13. Come back and read it through as if you’ve never read it before. Read it aloud. Mark any point where you pause for any reason and just make a tick-mark.  Do not stop to fix it. Just make a mark and plow on.
14. When you’re done with your read-through, go back to your tick-marks and identify what about that section is wrong.  Read it Like it’s Someone Else’s Garbage. Don’t let yourself get away with anything. Fix it. If you paused, then it’s almost definitely a problem you need to fix.
15. Finally, focus on punctuation for clarity and flow.

So I recommend this because it keeps you from doing some really crazy shit like stressing over punctuation on a paragraph that you later wind up cutting entirely from the work, or agonizing over wording on a paragraph where the emotion is so out of whack that you wind up re-writing half of it.

Ultimately, what I think this has become is a smoothing process. You whomp down a giant blobby lump of clay, roughly shape it, and then you keep coming back to make finer and finer alterations until you have it. Using that analogy, the last thing you want to be doing is carefully shaping and smoothing the elbow, only to later realize that you have the elbow positioned on the end of the statue’s nose.

I only wish someone along the lines had shared this with me before, because now that I’ve written it down I’m like “Holy crap, that makes total logical sense.”  Much like every other fricken’ thing I’ve eventually figured out. I’m starting to think that artists are great at making art, but not so great at explaining how you get there.

Le sigh.

Anyway, keep at it. 🙂