My Writing Process

Introduction

Writing Processes are one of those things I find infinitely interesting. Everyone seems to have a completely different process. We can read about famous authors and how they approach writing a book, and learn hundreds of different ways to go about it. From varying daily word counts, page counts, times of the day to write, length of time they write, planning, pantsing, writing with music, without music, dictating notes. Everyone has their own way.

So, I thought I'd share a little about mine, and how it has evolved over the years. Before I start, I want to make it very clear that the best process for anyone, is the one that works for them. By all means learn how many hours a day your favourite author writes, or what their word count targets are, or when they write. But, if that doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you. There’s no correct one size fits all approach and never will be. And, as you’ll see through my journey, sometimes, even your own process stops working for you, and you have to adapt.

The Early Days

When I first began writing it was as a scriptwriter. I was a planner from the start. The idea of sitting down to write with a blank page in front of me and no real idea of the direction I was going to go in sounded preposterous to me. To this day I still don’t really understand how anyone does it, despite it seemingly being commonplace.

I would fill up a couple of large notepads before I even typed FADE IN: Some of my early feature length scripts had about four hundred pages worth of notes before tackling that first draft. I’d write around my job when I was planning the script, writing in the morning, lunch breaks, and evenings. I had notes on the back of receipts, envelopes, anything to hand. It was kind of ridiculous in hindsight, but it absolutely worked for me back then.

When it came to writing the first draft of a script I took a week off work, and several days either side of that week. Normally I gave myself ten days to write around one hundred pages. Ten pages a day meant I basically didn’t leave the house for those ten days. The reason for the short space of time wasn’t anything profound or technical, my mind just wouldn’t shut off when I was writing a first draft so I struggled with sleep. If I took any longer than ten days living on such little sleep I'd be walking around like a zombie.

So, a few hundred pages of notes taken throughout any time of day, was followed by ten solid days of practically none stop writing to have a first draft ready. From there, I printed out the first draft and made notes all over the hundred pages ready for subsequent redrafts. They mainly focused on writing much stronger dialogue, and tidying up the writing. Often the story and characters were already working well due to the crazy amount of notes beforehand, so it was concentrating on the details and things like tone. This was my process for a good ten years.

30 Days Instead of Ten

As I got older and had to take part in more adulting getting ten straight days to work on a first draft proved impossible. The compromise I made with myself was a month, aiming for three to four pages a day. I still had the same problem with my brain not switching off and not sleeping well, but I just had to put up with it until I adapted. Instead of writing for ten to twelve hours a day that number drastically dropped, but I'd still pull the odd all dayer.

Also around this point I started writing a lot more in the mornings than evenings. I’d get up, take the first bus to where I worked, and sit in a coffee shop for a few hours writing before my shift began. It’s the first time I considered myself to really have a routine when it came to writing.

The redrafting process was the same, but often I had more than one script on the go which meant a very heavy backpack with two or three hundred page scripts and a bunch of notebooks. That wouldn’t change until I got a good laptop and starting writing my notes digitally many years later. To this day I sometimes still write hand written notes, but it’s a lot less often nowadays as I'm more use to typing them up.

Writing Books

When it came time to write my first book, I took a lot longer than a month, and changed much of my process. I still wrote notes, but they were in a somewhat simpler form. Before, I'd know every word I was going to write before I wrote it. Then, I changed to a beats and bullet point system. I’ll have most of the story outlined, but the individual chapters would have bullet points to remind me what was important, and how my character would develop.

Rather than writing a whole story in one go and then redrafting, I'd tackle some of the older chapters as I was writing new ones. I’m not sure why I made that change, I think it was just more difficult to keep the whole story in mind when it was two or three hundred pages of solid text rather than a hundred pages of script with plenty of white.

As my first few books were adaptations of scripts I'd already written much of the story was already there, but I added plenty of extra scenes in the book. It’s a different beast, and adapting my own work was a good learning process. When it came to writing my first story from scratch I wrote notes on each individual chapter before I wrote them, but not with the same detail as scenes in a script. I found myself leaving more room to go with the flow of what I was writing, rather than my more previous regimented scriptwriting approach.

Nowadays

Now, my writing process is a bit of a hybrid of everything. I tend to still write mostly in the mornings, but have different sessions throughout the day if I need them. The days of ten solid hours of writing don’t feel possibly nowadays due to various health issues. But, two or three two-three hours sessions are very doable.

I still write notes, outlining much of my idea before I start, but nowhere near the level of detail I once did. Now, I'll have the characters journey in mind, and the big story beats, but I'll allow myself room in the individual chapters to go off on one if I want too.

I make notes as I go, normally writing extra notes for the chapter the day before I write it, but I found myself working stuff out during the drafts much more now than I use too. Books feel so much bigger than scripts, and there’s always places to add extra detail or enhance a character or scene. In scriptwriting everything has to be so economical, and while I never want to write filler in my books, there is more room to express yourself.

I still do four to five drafts like I always did, but more story goes into the redrafts now. Where it would once be about tidying up my writing and strengthening the dialogue, now I find myself adding little ideas into the extra drafts to build the characters more. Whether that’s because of less preparation beforehand, or having better ideas of what I can do within my writing I'm not sure, but I'm happy with the results. I think my redrafting and editing is better than it’s ever been, and it’s something I won’t ever stop doing. Which. in turn, is why I still never give myself solid deadlines. The works ready when it’s ready.

Going Forward

I’m sure my writing process will change again at some point, but I have a routine that’s working for me at the moment. I feel I write best in the morning for three or four hours, and then will add a second session later in the day either writing more of whatever book I'm working on, or I'll write a short or article like this.

I redraft as I go now rather than at the end and that’s something I'm still working on. I never did that with scripts, always writing to the end before I started the next draft. But, I find that difficult with books. I like working on a new chapter, and then going back to tidy up an older chapter. Sometimes, one chapter will have four drafts before another chapter is written. Like I said, I'm still working on that on part and need to strike a balance between producing my best work, and procrastinating on the rest of the book.

I simply can’t write to three or four in the morning anymore, and I can’t write for the long stretches I use too, but I won’t let that stop me writing. I’ve had adapt to new writing processes over the years, and I'm ok with that, as long as it means I can write. If I have to change it again, I will. I’ll find another process that works, because the important thing is that I'm always working on something, whether it’s for two hours a day or ten.