For the
moment, my process seems to be pretty consistent. Shared with intended humor, though it's still true, this is how each story is
born:
- So, I have this idea…
- I think my idea is pretty good.
- This is a pretty good story.
- This is going awesome!
- Huh.
- This is tricky.
- I can’t figure it out.
- Fucking-a.
- (This is where I try to distract my brain with stupid logic puzzle games.)
- Okay. I need to babble at you about a story you don’t know anything about. But please don’t ask me any questions yet or you’ll derail my train of thought. I just need you to let me babble.
- I hit a wall and it’s a thick wall.
- I’m going to moan about it and say I need to take a break but I’m not going to take a break. Instead I’m going to work on this one sentence for the next 5 hours.
- This is crap. THIS SUCKS! I don’t even remember where it was going!
- I’m going to ask you what you think, but everything you say will be wrong. Sorry in advance.
- I don’t want to hear you say that I’m a good writer and I can do this. Stop encouraging my failure!
- I suck. This was a horrible idea. Everything I write is lame. What was I thinking?!
- The universe is lame. I can’t write. I can’t be a writer. I want to die.
- I should just work at Crawl-mart…
- …but I can’t imagine doing anything other than writing.
- (Deep breaths.)
- I just need you to tell me I’m a good writer. Tell me I can do this.
- I need to look at my story with new eyes.
- Okay, a lot of it doesn’t suck.
- OH! OMG! I figured it out!
- (Insert usual unhappiness that I had to cut something/someone I cared about to make it work. At least I accept it as part of the journey. Fighting it only insures a broken story.)
- That was so easy to fix.
- I think this is a good story.
- I wrote a really good story.
- Writing is awesome.
