Writing Process

What is your writing process like? For instance, I write very slowly. I can spend hours and only get a few paragraphs down. I analyze every sentence and try to make it as perfect as it can get. It's been months working on my first book and I have around 25 pages. (Aiming for 100). Do you write at night? Slowly? Quickly? Listen to music? Silence? How distracted are you? My biggest personal issue is the motivation to write, is it hard for you anons to get started working writing? General writing process discussion.

Not sure that I can speak, since I haven't written in a long time. But my best, and basically only writing I've written that I'm proud of, was written really quickly. I didn't look back or revise, just wrote whatever came to mind. I'd start with an image or an action and develop an scene around it. If a scene started boring me and I got an idea for one later in the story, I just started working on that one. Your early draft will be shit no matter how meticulous you are, so having a fragmented pile of slush is fine. You can fix it in editing.

I used to be exactly like you. I would spend hours on something as mundane as an email paragraph, let alone actual writing. I trained myself to write faster by getting drunk enough to inhibit my perfectionism. Now I can write several thousand words a day. I think it's foolish to edit while you're writing your first draft, which is essentially what you're doing.

That's another question for the thread. Do you PLAN what you're going to write and does it help?

Well it's just how I write, i don't think there is a point to put it down if it's shit. I'd rather go back and edit something I think is good already and then have it turn out even better. Even though I am already picky, I plan on going back for a revision.

I, particularly, take some notes to guide myself but mostly try to move in the most organic way. It feels stiffed if you're just following a preestablished pattern.

I guess for this book I've been making a lot of notes because of how difficult the story is. But I take notes and think of scenes and jot them down to later add more to and refurbish. Sometimes even a phrase I like if I'll jot down.

I usually write at night. Other than that, I don't worry at all about making anything perfect. Even if an idea is kind of iffy, I still write it down. For a first draft, I just kind of let it all flow. It's better to have too much material than not enough.

Then, you're going to spend most of your time on editing, so you slowly clean everything up and worry about making it perfect in your next drafts.

How long do you guys write at a time? How do you get yourself into it?

Honestly when I write more I feel a sense of progress that motivates me to write more. You should give it a shot, if motivation is your issue. Think of it like setting in place the stone you will sculpt into precision with editing.

I usually only write about 1-1.5k words at a time. Takes maybe 20 minutes to an hour, depends.

I never look forward to writing, so I always try to put it off, but once I get into it I really dig it, so I have no idea why I always dread doing it. Just getting into the habit of writing every day, even if it's something you're going to throw away, is what it's all about.

I put my writing off badly, but I am proud of it and am pretty excited for it to be finished I just GOTTA DO IT.

>tfw I realize that I don't have a writing process
>I literally just wait till I'm "inspired" and write shit down then
Am I retarded?

If you're retarded, so am I.

Well, if you ever want to be a writer, you do need to learn how to force yourself how to write, even when you don't have the motivation, or it's something you're not even enthusiastic about, or that you don't even have any good ideas for.

Well...let me guess. You don't have a lot of work to show for this method, right?

I don't necessarily want to be a writer per say, but this book is something I feel like I need to do. This will be my magnum opus and something to say I've accomplished. Considering my family is a load of rednecks and I'm the only male ever to graduate in it, I'm a big step up.

neurotic tree branching with editing after the fact

tree branching:
im a genius, look at all these ideas woo sugar woo explosions woo inception s-u-b-l-i-m-e

editing after letting it sit for a day:
look at this fucking idiot, this doesn't make sense, this is bullshit, this is not necessary, take this out, delete that, change that word, facepalm, fuck we barely have 1 paragraph worth of material

before tree branching I will sometimes have an outline in my notepad, but as I start to write I usually abandon certain points and add others. I've never stuck to the outline in its entireity.

Do you guys star over a lot? Currently for the book I have 25 pages on (when I started it) I got like 3 or 4 pages in but I realized it was actually trash so I totally started over and it's better now.

Don't see an issue with restarting 1-5 pages. Problem is when you have 20+ pages and need to restart.

IMO the way to think of it is like building a tower out of clay. You have to solidify a certain section before moving to the next one. Then the last one is the one that's moldable. Then you solidify that one and the next one again is moldable. So eventually your tower should solidly grow. Then at the end you go over the entire tower and make minor adaptations here and there to polish it out.

That's actually a great analogy user.

I usually write slowly, spending a lot of time on looking at individual sentences, I write whenever, sometimes just writing on scraps of paper when something comes to me. I sometimes listen to music, though it is exclusively classical, I find that while listening to this I imbue my writing with a certain rhythm, I've been told that it sounds like it should have some kind of melody accompanying it.

that picture is extremely Veeky Forums, OP

different user here, but i am the same and have almost nothing to show for

>write a bit
>notice that it's pure shit
>tell myself to keep going and to just edit and use fragments of it later
>never do

>I can spend hours and only get a few paragraphs down. I analyze every sentence and try to make it as perfect as it can get

You will never finish a single book like this.

It's a Zdzislaw Beksinski painting user.

Well have you finished a book? What do you suggest? I'm 1/4 through the book so...

I agree, this is a very good analogy. I'll have to steal this some day.

Think about story for days, slosh around in head. Do drugs, put on music, frantically type out what I thought about, keep going until I have to think more about what happens. Write notes on what's next. Edit sober. Print out every couple chapters to read over and share. Waste time on internet until not depressed. Think about story for days.

Flaubert did motherfucker, not everyone writes the same way

Draft out the characters and setting. Define traits for the characters. Make a basic outline of how the plot will progress. Decide what style of prose the book is going to follow. (although that's mostly always the same)

After studying this information, set it aside. I'll spend the next few weeks daydreaming about the characters and setting while I'm going about my daily life, and I'll jot down any interesting ideas that come to mind.

Much later, I'll start writing a rough draft. Once the draft is complete, I'll go back and fix grammatical errors, reword awkward prose, etc.

is tree branching the same as:

Timmy had a blue ball made of plastic -- plastic being, of course, the most dangerous of materials what with the toxic fumes it gives off when reheated in the microwave. If you really want to microwave a material, I would recommend tin foil; after a few seconds it explodes with blue sparks that make you fear for your safety but also, and more importantly, look very neat. Blue sparks are better than red sparks because ...

?

no, i never said you go full retard. give me a topic and i will try to write an example

Not him but I'll give you a topic. Coloring Books.

Sorry for the mistakes, did not double check what I wrote.

I hope you will find this of some worth. First off, *coloring books* is something I would never pick and I feel it's just as important to tell you why I'd never pick coloring books as it is to put forth an example for coloring books. If you consider tree branching, you need a trunk where branches spring forth from or a main branch that branches off into smaller branches. Therefore, I was hoping someone would pick an idea (I guess it is my fault for putting it as merely a *topic* instead of using the term *idea*) that would make a good starting point as a sizeable branch if not the trunk itself. The reason why I don't see coloring books as having the ability to serve as a main branch or trunk for me are several. This is highly specific to me as a person and a writer, so it's entirely possible someone else might find coloring books works for them in ways that don't work for me. What I see with coloring books are potential ways to branch off into books, colors, children, etc. on a very basic level, now coloring books by itself I don't see a term that works well for making an exposition on colors or books in general. It might for others but it does not for me.

Now I could fake it, I'll give you an idea: I immediately wonder whether coloring books limit a child's ability for creativity. Having the shapes already drawn out with option of only filling them in with certain colors has a certain totalitarian feel to me. It already forces a framework on the child to think in, which possibly makes him more adept at adapting to the current societal framework as a whole but does this activity at all promote change for the better when one is practicing working within already established parameters? Is this youth of ours going to change the world for the better? Or is this an excercise in conformity where we spare the child the pain of sticking out for the price of killing his ability to be a part of change? Of course here I have pre-supposed several things, namely the better-worse dualism could be thrown out, rather instead focusing on the conformity-change duo by itself, there is no telling that a higher level of creative forces would necessarily lead to a somehow (in what way we also have yet to establish) better community, the world, the society, the societal framework or consensus or whatever you want to call it. So as I recognize the above this would be a highly abstract way of arriving at a sort of a philosophical discourse from mere coloring books. Now this being as abstract as it is, it would best work as an essay or a more *technical* paper. The problem I see with it is as my own critic, is the fact that there is too big of a jump between coloring books and the abstract discourse, that is the gap makes it reek of bullshit. Though I am not completely certain that all schools or ***intellectuals*** would denounce it, we on a gut instinctual level that it's pure posturing. So I would never write that.

Now in fiction, say a short story or a novel, I would also, and I am almost certain of this, never choose coloring books in any way whatsoever. Where I *could* see it working is if you used it as one of the foundations for constructing a story around it, say we have a colorblind girl or a boy coloring in these books, or someone with mental issues, etc. (to interrput momentarily, it popped up in my mind earlier when I first used the word child, but have forgotten about it up to this point - I don't know for sure but I assume there are also coloring books for adults, I don't find this an interesting thing to explore, but it would allow for yet more material if necessary) and colors could be a theme, or the theme could be something made up like this colorblind girl fills in colors even though she can't see them and you find a psychological reason for this then tie it in with her life-story. Additionally it could even work as a horror gimmick (think of having this coloring being a consistent appearance throughout the text and then you find a correct moment to drop in the fact that she's blind altogether or colorblind). You might have this theme where it's some poor boy who has no other toys so this is all he does even though he can't even see colors and the whole novel could have the feel of colorless grey, almost in the *nothing really happens here* type of stuff but for some reason you can't help but follow the life story of this kid. Now again, for me I can't do it because I'd never use coloring books as a vehicle and it would make me feel as a fraud. In fact it likely would not work for any reader either because I believe readers can detect fraud like they can detect rotten food, regardless of how it's arranged. I think in fact it's easier to trick intellectuals than your average Joe consumer of art. Everyone can tell the food is rotten, everyone can tell you're singing out of pitch even if they don't know what key the song is in, everyone can tell when the writing is a fraud. You can manipulate the intellectuals though.

The first image that pops up in my mind with coloring books is this is sort of a cynically complacent and detached suburbia, to the point of being drugged out by the mundane existence of their lives, yet not necessarily unhappy in fact often quite the opposite, which as a whole is one of the things I detest. So I would not mention coloring books, even as a passing note completely irrelevant to the whole text, because it immediately induces me with the image of the above described suburbia that I find no interest in. The best possible option I can see for coloring books working as one of the main branches or the tree trunk is as a psychological device, but I would never engage in it myself, not my style. Hopefully this was of help.

The fact that this is all over Coloring Books made me kek hard.