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5 April, 2010 9:34 am

Finding Your Writing Process

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, Random Writing Rambles, Scrivener

A lot has been written about the process of writing – how you go from initial glimmer of an idea to the final draft – and for good reason. It’s one of the things that most bugs new writers, and most fascinates many more experienced writers. When you’re starting out, you wonder if you’re doing it right, and when you’ve been at it a while you’re curious about what processes other writers use.

For those just starting out, the question of whether or not you’re doing it right, whilst valid and, to some extent, unavoidable, is a question that can never be totally answered.

There are as many different answers as there are writers. We all do it a little differently from the next person, and we’re all right. It’s getting to the final draft that matters, not the route we take.

Having said that, there’s something very reassuring about reading about the writing process of someone who’s further along the road to success than you are. At the very least you can, maybe, learn to streamline your own process if you’re lucky enough to find someone who’s work pattern is already similar to your own. At the very best you can discover that other more widely published writers take a route that’s just as meandering and repetitive as your own. Very reassuring.

The important thing is that you don’t let another writer’s writing process totally derail your own.

This has happened to me in the past. I’ve read a workflow that sounds really good, efficient, clean and organised. I’ve thought it was something I just had to try. I’ve abandoned my own process and adopted the new one – with mostly disastrous results. Disastrous because I’ve had to study how they did it to make it work for myself, so I’ve wasted precious writing time. I’ve had to, in some instances, recopy notes already written in order to make them fit into a new pattern, and I’ve even had to get new software and learn how to use that before I could proceed. And in the end, just about every time, I’ve eventually abandoned the new process and gone back to the one that is uniquely mine.

Just occasionally I come across a writing process/workflow that really does help. In case you’re curious, the best ones I’ve found recently are the totally fabulous writing app Scrivener (which all mac users who write really ought to have, and which I was so sure would be the right one for me I actually bought a mac so I could use it), and which I now use for all my writing, the diary system used by David Hewson, and the notebook used by Antony Johnston.

I’ve always made copious notes about what I’m writing, including plot progression ideas, character sketches, motivations, questions to myself and my characters, reasons and consequences, and I’m more inclined to follow Mr. Johnson’s method of having one notebook on the go at a time, rather than a dedicated notebook for each separate long project/novel. I’ve never tried MacJournal, as used by Mr. Hewson but I am tempted by his latest idea of the private, online novel blog diary and may give that a go.

These two examples of successful author’s processes help rather than derail my own writing process because they expand on methods I already use – namely the notebook and Scrivener. With my notebook, I have tended, in the past, to leave my notes in there and eventually lose them in the plethora of random addresses, phone numbers and shopping lists that also get noted down. But if I adopt either the online diary or the extended use of Scrivener as described by Messrs Hewson and Johnston I should, theoretically at least, not lose track of my notes again.

I don’t think I’ll ever be totally cured of my curiosity towards other writer’s working methods, but hopefully I’ve learned over the years what works best for me and can now pick and choose which new methods I take on board.

The very best advice? By all means read how others do it, and learn from those who’ve gone before, but ultimately follow your own instincts and do what feels best for you. And never, never, ditch a working method half way through a project unless your present writing process just isn’t working and you’re starting again anyway.

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10 January, 2010 8:13 am

Scrivener and The Pale Ones

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, NaNoWriMo, Scrivener, Writing Diary

The Pale Ones are now in Scrivener and I’m faced with the task of organising the scenes and getting to grips with the story again.

Since the end of nano I’ve done very little fiction writing. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I picked up quite a bit more ‘work for hire’ than I normally do and that kept me busy with nonfiction.

But the Pale Ones are nagging. They want their story told and I want to tell it. So I need to get back on track and figure out where we go from here.

Scrivener does make the task of importing a WIP easy. Previously I was using yWriter, and while it’s a great writing tool, it doesn’t quite do what I want or present the work in the way I want it. So the first task was to get the POs out of yWriter and into Scrivener. Simplicity itself. Both programmes behaved perfectly. YWriter exported neatly into .rtf, and Scrivener picked it up effortlessly when asked to do so.

I ended up with a very long single file in Scrivener, which seeing as I’m working in scenes, was no good at all. Scrivener promises that breaking up long files is a simple matter, and it is. Just put the curser in the file where you want to the break and tell Scrivener to make the break. Everything before the break is put into into its own little scene section, and everything beyond the break stays together in the long file. You can select text at the beginning of the break to use as the scene title which makes later identification much easier. In a matter of minutes I’d run through the whole 60k odd word count and recreated the scene sections.

My next task is to organise my Scrivener index cards on the corkboard. I have scenes out of sequence, scenes I no longer need because of changes further on in the story, and scenes which, frankly, just aren’t doing the job they were supposed to do.

I’ve got to pin down my ‘sentence lites’, (Think Sideways jargon), or should that be ’sentences lite?’ and relearn/rethink my story arc. I’ve been away from the story for long enough to have forgotten a lot of what I’ve written which is both good and bad. Good because I can read it back with a fresher eye, and bad because it feels jut a bit like someone else’s story and I’m half afraid that when I try to get reacquainted with it I won’t like it anymore.

Hopefully Scrivener is going to make my task easier. Apart from the normal frustrations of learning a new programme, (and an irrational fear that by clicking buttons and experimenting I’m going to break either my story or Scrivener) my first few days with it have only made me more glad to have it.

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8 January, 2010 11:52 am

Scrivener – Finally!

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, NonFiction Writing, Scrivener, Writing Diary

CorkboardI’ve wanted Scrivener, an absolutely amazing writing programme, since the very first moment I saw it. And finally I have it. It didn’t come easy. First off I made a deal with myself that I would only seriously consider the purchase if I won nano this year.

It’s got to be the most expensive piece of software I’ve ever bought because I had to buy the Mac computer to go with it. Macs are brilliant though, and I have absolutely no regrets. I suppose if I hadn’t loved Macs I would have though twice, and I was lucky enough to have a play with a friend’s Mac (and download a trial of Scrivener) to see if the object of my desire and I were going to be compatible. It was love at first sight and I’m now the proud owner of a MacBook Pro and Scrivener.

What I wanted most was the index cards. I reached the stage where I was dreaming about them. I use index cards for plotting, and up until now have had physical ones. I’m not sure the physical cards will be banished altogether, but if there’s one really big advantage that virtual cards have over real ones it’s that the virtual cards can’t fall on the floor and get muddled up just as you’ve spent hours putting them in order.

No more, thanks to the corkboard in Scrivener. I can have as many index cards as I like, all attached to their respective pieces of writing, be they scenes in fiction, ideas in nonfiction, or whatever. I can rearrange the order with the click of the trackpad, and see at a glance exactly what I have and what else is needed.

The split screen function is a stroke of genius and gives Scrivener an added dimension making it just the perfect writing tool whether you’re into fiction or nonfiction – or both, like me.

I do quite a lot of writing for web clients, where research is key, so I need lots of snippets from lots of different sites and it used to be hard to keep track of what I’d learned from where if I needed to backtrack. Not any more. Scrivener has a research section where you can store webpages, music and audio, pdf files, images, or anything else you may need to refer back to. A click of the split screen button and I can keep my research material in front of me while I write. It has really speeded up the process.

Of course I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Scrivener can do and what I can use it for. The few bits and bobs above are just the main things I knew it would help me with, and the things I’ve tried out and found to be just as successful as I thought they would. I expect to write a whole lot more about Scrivener as the months go by and I get further into its functions and processes.

D’you know what I really like? Scrivener doesn’t try and teach me how to write or force me to write in the way it thinks I should. It’s just there, to do the job I need it to do to hold the various elements of my writing in one place, accessible, moveable, and logically presented.

It’s beautiful.

I gave a huge cheer when I realised Literature and Latte, the company behind Scrivener, is English, based in Cornwall. I’m biased, I know, and I make no apologies for that. That great things still come out of England gives me a real kick.

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