The Writing Process

Welcome, again, to the rambling black hole that is my mind. So today's topic is... How to write a story. Or at least, the way I approach writing.

So, different writers have different ways of approaching this. However, the way I see writing is like a pregnancy. This has led to a number of inside jokes, but that is just a part of being a writer. My metaphor (of writing being like a pregnancy) might seem a little strange. Obviously it is not one that everyone can understand. Now, don't go thinking that I have been pregnant and, therefore, know exactly what pregnancy is like. I have never been pregnant. However, as the oldest of four kids (and the oldest of almost 14 cousins) I have seen my fair share of pregnant women, and I know the basics of pregnancy, which relate to this metaphor.

So here's how it works: a story is like a fetus. You, as the writer, are the mother. You nurture and care for it. You try to support the story as it grows within you. Until one day it is born! Oh how glorious! But your work is not done yet. Not even close, now you have to raise it, continue to care for it until it can survive on its own. Then, you are done, and you can live out your life happily watching your story succeed on its own. It lives beyond you to carry on your name and your legacy. Happily Ever After, right?

But sometimes stories don't make it to the Happily Ever After. Sometimes stories fail when you let them go. Sometimes stories don't even make it that far, the ones I call 'miscarriages.' So, what do you do with them? You bury them. Plain and simple. You have to be the tough love on a failed (or failing) story. Once it is gone, don't try to bring it back, because it is just dead, so let it rest in peace.

Frequently, my ideas die in my head. I have to just let these 'miscarriages' die. I bury them, and then I don't worry about them any more. No one (should) feed and nurture a loved one that is just rotting in the ground.

Now, please do not think I am atheist, or sacrilegious. I do believe in the Christian God (I'm a baptized Catholic, but I have some opinions that go against Catholic Ideology) and Heaven is a very real thing to me. Life after death, Salvation, the whole thing. However, once you die, your physical body will rot on this Earth until judgment day.

Keeping that in mind, feeding the bones is going to do nothing to bring back the one lost. I have seen enough TV, and read enough stories, about what happens when you try to go against the natural order of things. Pretty much: dead things should stay dead, so you have time to take care of those still living.

So, once you understand that metaphor (the whole 'writing process equals pregnancy' thing), you can learn the how part of writing.

This, to me, is the fun part. But also the most difficult. Mainly, because it is the part that requires the most time. Like a mother's body just knows how to care for the fetus, a writer just knows how to write a story. My biggest pet peeve is when younger writers ask me to 'teach them how to write a story.' Because there is SO much more to writing than rules and a real "process" to follow. Let me put it to you this way;
Things that have a process are things like:
1. Baking a Cake
2. Calculus
3. Science
Things that can be done in any order and still reach (pretty much) the same goal:
1. Party Set-Up
2. Sports
3. Dance

Pretty much there are some things that have to be done a certain way, with a certain order. These things must be done EXACTLY the same every time, or else you have just a big mess. Other things can be done in a slightly different order each time. Setting up for a party has no strict code for how it has to be done. You can set up the bouncy house first, or you could set up the DJ table first. No matter which way you do it, you come to the same results.

I feel the writing process falls under the latter category. Because writing has no hard and fast rules. There is nothing that says that you must sit down and write a book in chronological order. There is no law against writing more than one story at a time. No one will know if you wrote the whole book on sticky notes that you had tacked up around your bedroom. You see? The writing process is just two steps:
1. Write the story
2. Edit the story

That's it. There is no big secret that you can follow to be a successful writer. I say that practice is great. Just
write things for the Hell of it. I also feel that reading is a key part of it. Having places to draw inspiration from, probably a plus. And being friends with other writers is, again, helpful. But none of these are rules at guarantee success.

So, basically, there is no one way to write. But this is the way I write. I will toil over many stories at a time, because that helps me. If I get stuck, I just force myself to keep writing. I have other people read thru my stories as I go along, and I take every piece of critique with a grain of salt.

There you go. I will post more about the writing process and how I "learned to write a good story." But this is enough for one day.

Ciao!