Posted: July 16, 2024
In my professional life, I am an editor and book designer, but in my heart of hearts, I’ve always been a writer first. I started as a reader, evolved to a writer, and everything after that comes secondarily.
I’m a very specific kind of writer. Things that help me to write may also work well for some writers, but may be entirely wrong for others. These things are just what I’ve discovered about myself as a writer over the years.
I go a bit more into detail about this in the next point, but I try to dedicate an hour every weekday on my personal writing. All day I’m editing and working on other people’s stories, and it can be draining and time consuming—even if I love it.
My own writing is something that I can feel accomplished about, and it’s also a way to unwind. Sometimes while I’m editing another person’s story, I’ll get an idea about how to solve an issue in my own story because of an issue I’ve encountered and needed to solve in theirs. It’s super helpful.
Other times, editing someone else work drains my tank all the way to the bottom, and I can’t bring myself to write. I’ve experimented a bit, and I find that sometimes it’s easier for me to write first thing in the morning, and other times it’s better to write after dinner—this usually switches after a “marathon” project like NaNoWriMo. Maintaining this strict schedule not only motivates me to write because “I have this time to work on it,” it also forces me to write because “I only have this time to work on it.”
A problem I have is that my interest burns out really quickly on projects. I hyper fixate on something, do it too much, then suddenly lose interest. I’m not diagnosed ADHD, but it’s something I’ve heard people with ADHD complaining about—I’m not sure if it’s the same, but it’s how I am, so this is how I deal with it.
Each day of the week (Monday through Friday), I work on a different project. Typically, they’ll be doing different things. For example, Mondays, I’ll write 250 to 500 words on an outline for Project #1; Tuesdays, I’ll edit a chapter in Project #2; Wednesdays, I’ll rewrite scenes in Project #3; Thursdays, I’ll be designing, printing, and binding Project #4 (for fun); and Fridays I’ll do research and make consistency documents for Project #5. I try to split my days into different aspects of a project; that way, I’m never fully emptying my creativity tank before it can refill.
This is something I learned back in 2015 after watching a Youtube video suggesting this very method. For my first official original novel, I wrote the entire happenings of the book on a single page (about 500 words). From there, I expanded the scenes, made notes for characters and worldbuilding, broke it up into parts, and so on until I had a 40,000-word draft.
Since then, I’ve always used this method. For my current work in progress, I wrote this brief outline in my notebook, along with the backstories of certain characters and other ideas. During the November 2023 NaNoWriMo, I started it by writing the scenes directly, then found that I couldn’t write in that much detail so quickly, so I chose to use my extended outline method instead. The entire “summary” met the 50,000-word goal, and after giving it a month to rest, I began extending each “scene” into proper prose by putting in proper dialogue, descriptions, and focal character narration. It has been an enlightening process.
I will always have a notebook or two dedicated to writing ideas for stories. In these notebooks, I tend to write a lot about planning a book before I allow myself to work on the computer.
I’ll never write scenes in my notebooks, as I find it takes too long to transcribe, but I’ll write “what happens” in the story. I’ll use my notebooks for calculations, charts, and other research pieces that are much easier to do freehand.
I’ve mentioned that I write ideas and make lists and charts in my notebooks, and while a lot of the time they stay there, notebooks are my place for throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Once I am certain about things, I’ll organize them in electronic documents on my computer. That way, if I lose my notebook, I’ll have a digital copy, and if my digital copy is corrupted, I’ll still have my original notes. I find it much easier to come up with new ideas when writing with a pen, but Word documents are what helps me organize those creative thoughts.
I’ll typically have a few different timelines—one overall, one split by book, and one split by main character/storyline. For my current work in progress, I also have the class schedules of the students (since they’re attending high school), I have a chart for different scents and what they mean (since one character uses scents to distinguish things), character names and their meanings, supernatural powers for the different types of creatures (since it’s a fantasy), and more. I have over twenty-one different documents to help me keep track of different elements of my story—including the weather for each day of the time and place the story is being told! I want to be as consistent as possible and make the world as realistic as possible so that my readers can get lost in the story and not get hung up on details.
What are things you’ve discovered about yourself as a writer? Discovering the best writing methods, tips, and tricks for yourself is vitally important in your writing journey. Always try new things and make note of which ones just click with you.
5 Characters I Love
5 Books That Inspire Me
5 Genres I Like to Read
My Top 10 Favourite Tropes
My Top 10 Least Favourite Tropes
Tigerpetal Press is a small book press dedicated to publishing local authors and poets.