The Process

(What I meant to say before I got all nostalgic about Drake Public Library the last time)

It’s been a couple of weeks now since my book event at the library. Sales of Hell is Freezing Over on November 23rd (HIFOON23) continue a little each day and I am some fifty-six pages into a completely different title-less manuscript, which feels good.

I was asked to talk about my “process” at the signing event, and it baffled me to think about. I wasn’t sure what my process was in part because since we returned to the Midwest, I’ve been immersed only in revision. There hadn’t been a great deal of new creation happening for quite a long time.

There is now. Now I remember how I do this.

I sit down at the desk, or table, or wherever I decide to work that day and start writing.  I’m just VirgoEnglishTeacher enough that some correction and revision happens on the page during the first go if I see a mistake or think of a clearer description, or better word. I’m anal enough that just letting it flow is difficult and something I have to practice and work to achieve.

When I have a good chunk- at least a new chapter- done, I print it and add it to my working binder. I read it and make corrections and additions in pink or red ink (you can take the teacher out of the classroom…) and make those changes the next time I sit down to write. This helps me review what I’ve done and gets my mind in the right place to continue.

I don’t plot. (Something, now that I think about it, we DID try to make students do…) You won’t find big flowcharts or maps pinned up on my wall to tell me what’s next. Somehow, by the time the story is told it’s just all there. I taught a lot of academic writing over the course of nearly four decades, but I wouldn’t know how to teach what I do when I write fiction. I don’t know how to teach creativity. When the muse is with me and I’m in the zone, honestly?

It’s more like taking dictation than anything else.

So far this title-less story hasn’t woken me in the middle of the night, but there’s a notebook in the nightstand for when it does. The characters are becoming enough a part of my brain-space that I find myself making observations with their eyes during the day sometimes, and being aware of how everyday things would affect them.

HIFOON23 broke my “process” and was written in chunks because I was still employed full-time, and was twice overwhelmed with self-doubt in my ability to accurately represent Ginny, Christine, and Christopher. I had trouble focusing on their stories because I worried and wondered that people might mistake them for me or more often, their families for my own. Just to be clear once and for all, that disclaimer? “All resemblance to persons living or dead,” etc.? It’s the truth. For the last time: I. Am. Not. Trudy.

Of course my life experience plays into what my characters know. There may be places that I have been or particular personality quirks that someone might attribute to me or a person close to me. When something I know little about (llamas, for example, or crib death, or lesbian relationships, or living in an ashram) is suddenly clearly something I need to know to move forward, I start doing research. I have to learn about it through reading, videos, and lots of talking with people who know more. But I take what I learn and make it my character’s knowledge. My characters are always composites. Bits and pieces of many people mixed with completely fictional situations and molded into one new, unique, wonderful person my readers will enjoy getting to know.

And I hope you will.