I subscribe to a few writing websites, like Writer’s Digest and Writer Unboxed. Today’s post comes from Writer Unboxed, and is titled “Your Process Isn’t Broken,” by Barbara O’Neil.

O’Neil opens the article with,

Do you ever wish for the kind of writing process your friend has? You know, the one who sails into the mist? Or the one who writes every scene in the book down ahead of time—and then sticks to it? Or the one who writes a solid five pages a day, day in and day out?

I do. At times I burn for one or another of those ways of writing. You’d think I’d be at peace with it after all these decades, but I tend to beat myself up over my process. Writing a book is extremely hard, and some part of me always thinks there must be an easier way.

I feel this frequently, even when my mentor Tim Waggoner advised me not to fight my process. I have always heard you should write every day–something I definitely don’t do. I have also heard that you can’t wait for the mood (or the muse) to strike, and that you should just sit down and write anyway. I don’t follow this rule very well, either, even though it makes perfect sense to me. I take breaks from writing. Sometimes long breaks (The Fear and the Flame hasn’t been properly worked on since July 12). I usually get stuck, even when I have my sparse bullet list outline at my side. And when I get stuck, I stop until I have everything worked out again. Usually I have to feel mentally ready for it, or, as it goes, for the mood to strike (I wonder if this is because I have a mood disorder).

Let’s take a look at O’Neil’s process:

I really do need a lot of time at the front end to figure out motivations and how the environment—its history, weather, and cultures—influences those characters. I need research, books, video, and often travel, to give me the feeling that I can move around in the world like it’s a movie set. If I don’t have a clear window into that world, I can’t show it to a reader.

The early pages take a long time, too. The word counts are pathetic at that stage—300, 550, maybe a good 800 once in a while. The work isn’t spent on forward motion or scene-by-scene expansion. Instead, I’m writing character interviews, possible scenarios, backstory—so so so much backstory! It shows up in tiny drips and drabs, but I have to know it myself.

Only after I reach about 15,000 words do I have enough material in my head to show up and write a thousand or two thousand words a day. That’s a wonderful pace, and I love holding it. This is where I fantasize about being the kind of writer who writes her words every morning, then goes off to other things the rest of the day. You know, a sane and normal kind of writer. I’m sure they exist.

But then I pass the middle of the book, maybe 50- or 60,000 words and I actually know what’s going to happen. I tumble into the world of the book and just… stay there until I get the rough draft onto the page.

I used to care about prewriting things like world histories, cultures, weather, geography, etc. but realized maybe 1% of that makes it into the book, so I stopped and would just research on the spot when I needed to include information like that in the book.

I don’t have the time or money to devote that much time to do the research the author partakes in. Especially the travel part. I can’t deny in the past I travelled, and those settings do pop up in my books, but I can’t decide to write a book about vampires and take a writing trip to Transylvania to research it. My life is not that glamorous, and I am poor.

I also used to do character interviews and fill out worksheets that created detailed biographies for them. As much fun as these were to fill out, I found them taking away valuable time from the writing itself. So I’ve stopped doing them.

O’Neil is all about creating backstory before diving into the writing. I am a light worldbuilder, and like I wrote before, maybe 1% of that gets into the book (although Son of the Siren may have gotten 5-7% because that book is a quest fantasy). So it seems like a waste to do all that prep work beforehand. I usually have a good sense of the setting and characters in my mind anyway, and go from there.

But this article isn’t about comparing my process with hers. It’s not about comparing your process with anyone’s, even though we tend to do that. It’s about being comfortable with what we know to do and the habits that we have as writers that creates our process. As the title says, our process isn’t broken. It’s just what we know to do to produce our work.

I don’t write everyday. I write when my mood strikes. Sometimes I take long breaks from writing when my brain and emotions are in a tumult, or when I get stuck. I don’t do massive plotting beforehand. I just make a to-do list with bullet points and use that as my guide, and then I wing it the rest of the way.

It sounds like I’m doing everything wrong based on what common writing advice says. But when I don’t fight my process, I do my best writing and my brain settles down. I sometimes run into trouble with my process (like when I have a looming deadline; then I break some of my personal rules), but overall, it’s what I’ve done for decades, and I probably can’t change it now, since it’s so ingrained in me.

It’s nice to see an article that assures me that I’m doing ok.