As you may recall from my last post, I have been experimenting with my creative process. And…IT WORKS! My experiments have been successful so far!
I’m gaining clarity on my process. It tends to start somewhat mistily with visions arriving in my imagination, seemingly from nowhere (a.k.a StoryLand). Usually they have a kind of soft focus, and a limited scope; I see, sense and know certain details about a character or world but it’s often limited to a particular scene or group of scenes. I’ve also realized that I visualize stories in color palettes—so I might not know what happens in a story, but I know what color it is. For example, one project that I’m totally stumped on is a lovely deep teal, so dark it’s almost black, with a glittering gold at the top.
Eventually (at some Magic Moment that is seemingly determined by the story itself), the story starts talking to me, i.e. I begin to hear words, whole phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. Not all of these make it to the page verbatim, of course. But as soon as the story starts doing this, I can usually start writing.
So, I write—but I can only really go as far as I’ve heard the story so far. Once that peters out, I have to wind down and wait for it to start talking again.
This is a key moment for me: if I don’t wait to hear that internal narrative to start talking again, then I’ve jumped the gun. I will inevitably end up with a scene (or scenes, or an entire draft!! AAHHHH) that does not quite work, and about which I will have a niggling, dissatisfied feeling.
And that’s been my big question—can I wait out that uncomfortable point? If I do, what will happen?
Well, I waited. I lay in bed in the morning on a Sunday1 and asked the story what it had to say. And it started talking to me. Yes, folks, that’s right, I listened to a story…in my head. Which doesn’t sound crazy at all. Or at least, I listened to certain exciting bits, before becoming distracted with some side concerns about the import/export situation in my fantasy world (because I am truly a nerd).
I don’t hear everything before I write—just enough to get me started and to get through to a certain point. The rest comes as I write.
The last two weekends, I have written a combined 19 THOUSAND WORDS. Yes, that is a staggering amount by my standards, especially since it was written over a total of three days. (For those of you who are not writers and do not think in word counts, it’s about 75 pages.)
This is a secret project. I have not told anyone anything about it (not even my mom!) except for the genre (it’s fantasy, you can know this too).
To be truthful, I’d begun to wonder if it was even possible to write a story in this way again. This is how I wrote as a kid—totally unselfconscious, free, utterly invested, unaware of time, external commitments. While I have accessed this space since age 14, it’s never been for the entirety of what is now a 36,0002 word (and counting) project.
Why is it working now? For one thing, I’m not thinking about who’s going to read it. I don’t care if anyone ever reads it. I’m writing it because I want to! You might be thinking, well, isn’t that how every writer writes? but no, alas. Ever since I started to realize that other people would read my work, well…I wrote with the expectation that somebody would read it. I hope that doesn’t sound conceited—the somebody else might just be a friend or a fellow student in a writing class or someone in a writer’s group or my parents.
Imagination is, I think, a delicate balance. When you are feeling your way through a story—lighting your path through a dark wood with only a lantern and your own courage—it’s easy to get derailed. You don’t outline, so there isn’t something external to fall back on3; if you try to explain the story to someone else, and they say, Well, that doesn’t make sense, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to make it make sense, rather than letting the story reveal itself as you write it.
So, I think this story is going well because I’ve allowed it to be a completely internal process. Only I know what it’s about, and only I have read it. (Hehehehe.)
Another factor is that I’m free of financial pressure around this book. Okay, that might sound conceited for real, but bear with me. I wrote full-time for…hmmm…five years? Yes indeed, the money that I lived on came from novels. Yes, it was very cool. Yes, I wanted it. But it also put pressure on my creative process, and made it harder to write for the sake of writing—because I actually, believe it or not, ENJOY this process!
You may have noticed that these posts are coming more sporadically…that is because I’ve been working on this secret project and don’t want to disrupt the flow!
Well, that’s where we’re at, with footnotes. Whatever form it takes, I hope your creativity is flourishing. Have a beautiful St. Brigid’s Day, friends.
YES, I HURKLE-DURKLED! (I feel like I’m supposed to hate auto-play videos on social media but it’s thanks to random Instagram reels that I know this Scottish term.)
Non-writers: we’re at 143 double-spaced pages. I use Scrivener, but checked the page length in Word.
This absolutely does not mean that you SHOULD outline, either, although maybe you do, or need to, and that’s great! I don’t. I won’t. I REFUSE! Haha. But seriously.
What a fun way to do your writing! You are amazingly creative, Callie! :)