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.