Snowflake Challenge: Day Eleven

[tangeriner]

Day 11

In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I think I'm more of a pantser than a planner. Every story I write follows the same basic approach:

1. Get an idea and think about it for an indeterminate amount of time, could be hours, days, months, years, depending on the deadline.
2. Once I have a general idea of what I want to do, I sit down and just write until I get to the ending.
3. I do minimal revision, since I've usually overthought things and the story has usually come out exactly how I thought it would.

I'm a very linear writer. Sometimes, with the long things, I might add a scene or two later, if needed, but I rarely jump around. Sometimes, I accidentally write the ending before I'm ready, and then I might just keep pushing it down until I'm ready for it, but that's rare, too. The story usually ends up being 50% things I thought about and 50% things that I thought might be neat to add once the story actually got going. 

If the story is long enough, and the timeline complicated enough, I might jot down a rough outline of events, usually on a sheet of folded up printer paper, if I can find a pen. If I can't, I might just add an end note to the story file, but that's not my favourite way of doing things. I very occasionally make notes for myself, especially if I feel like I might forget something important, but that's not particularly common for me.

I've been writing long enough that I know what things I can do to get me into a writing frame of mind and fast:

• Putting on headphones that cover my ears and hug my head
• Sitting at my desktop, hair tied back, in comfy clothes, with something to drink
• Opening up iTunes and finding something to listen to
• Listening to that song, album or artist on repeat, possibly for days or, weep, weeks

None of these are really set-in-stone rules. I can write under other circumstances, but if the situation allows, I like my default creative process. I'm definitely most productive with my default creative process. I don't physically write every day, but I think about writing every day. 

Comments

[coyoteclaw11]

Oooh songs on repeat for hours/days/weeks is one of my favs. Especially when a specific song gives you like... a certain kind of feeling that just... inspires you to just portray that very specific feeling... having it on loop to keep that feeling in your mind (while also not being distracted by anything new) is just? so nice I really like it

[tangeriner]

Yes, precisely! I also find that later, if I hear that song again, I'm transported back to that story, and the feelings are very nice and good. (Occasionally, my brain latches onto a weird song for a story, but the most part, the feeling of the song usually matches the feeling of the story).