The Art of Writing: Know Your Process

Earlier this week, Blackwarren founder Vaughn R. Demont shared the first half of his advice on his writing process. Today, here’s the rest.

“So My Advice to You Is: Don't Strangle Yourself. A Second Recommendation: Have Fun.”

– Jim Butcher, author of The Dresden Files (LJ Quote)

If someone had told me years ago that one of the most important things to do while writing was to “have fun” I probably would’ve thought they were crazy. I was still mired in the idea that writing had to be “good”, and by “good” I don’t mean well-written, since that was a given; it had to be literary, a word I still have no idea how to properly define as to how one book can be literary and one can’t be other than using the rather gauche duality of popular vs. critically acclaimed. The only impression I got was that if you were actually going to school to study the fine art of creative writing beyond the general education requirements, then you obviously were trying to be a literary writer. If you wanted to write “genre fiction” (which would be said with a dubious and somewhat disappointed tone) then you had to be a genre-revolutionary. Sci-fi? You had better be writing like early Gibson or better yet, like Delany. Fantasy? If you weren’t writing like Tolkien from the get-go, or better yet, Marquéz (because magical realism is apparently fantasy), then it would be best to give up writing then and there.

Gods help you if all you wanted to write was a standard sword and sorcery epic or an urban piece with some light cyberpunk elements. With all of the plotting and pacing and wedging in as much meaning as possible, writing had become a generally dead weight around my neck that I dragged inch by inch toward a degree. Simply put, it wasn’t any fun.

Granted, this is what I thought everyone believed. Attending Goddard, a low residency grad school, was only a public experience for a few days out of the semester, after all, and then I was sent home for one-on-one time with my advisor over the lumbering beast of the US Postal Service. Your mind tends to get away from you when you consider the other people in your group, who start out as writers maybe sharing space with other writers, and by the time I was reaching the end of the semester, I was half-convinced that my fellow Goddardites all lived in a commune producing epic works of experimental fiction that would immensely dwarf my own work, and that said epics would probably be produced through some Hermetic ritual involving the Greater Keys of Solomon. I’m joking of course, but looking back I don’t think it would’ve taken me much effort to get that far.

When I wrote up James, the protagonist for my novel Lightning Rod, I used character creation exercises that I’d used in roleplaying games (I even used a character sheet). I established a bare-bones skeleton, fleshed him out slightly, and charged off into the plot figuring I could find out the rest about him along the way. As a result, I ended up with some plot turns that were just as surprising to me as I hope they were to the reader.

This approach made getting to know James a little more difficult, but in my opinion, it was a more enjoyable experience. It gave the character some autonomy to determine his own characteristics, become an independent force in shaping his own story. In the end, that’s what I want for all of my characters as a writer: to give them the story they deserve to have. I want to capture his voice, take him through his triumphs and failings, and outline the flaws that make him human even as I show him aspiring to virtue which makes him human as well.

And it’s rather fun. Before I started writing novels and novellas a few years ago, the idea of writing a story that was ten whole pages was a daunting three-week task that would require much agonizing. Now ten pages is easily a night’s work, if that, because I barely notice the time or the word count. I just have fun writing the scene and seeing how my characters work through the story. It was taking writing back to a place where I used to write and write for hours. I was having fun, and it showed through to the reader.

“I’ll be fine if you give me a minute, A man’s got a limit / I can’t get a life if my heart’s not in it”

– Oasis, “The Importance of Being Idle”

I can’t discuss my process without discussing the music that is so much a part of it. I wholly believe that every writer has triggers for their creativity, and I’m no exception. Like many writers, my primary trigger is music, not only for getting me into the correct mood to get writing, but a lot of my plot ideas have come from the music I listen to.

When I conceptualize a character, I often ask myself what kind of music they listen to, and contrary to some belief, they are not always into the same music as me. Not only does knowing the type of music my characters enjoy deepen them, but it makes it easier to get into their mindset and write them. When writing James, I discovered that he was a fan of classic rock primarily due to his mother’s influence, particularly The Rolling Stones, even though it’s never mentioned in the story itself. I also discovered he couldn’t stand the sound of Nine Inch Nails, an industrial band. Investigation of that band, as well as their sound, led to a (eventually discarded) final plot twist of Lightning Rod that James was created by the antagonist Heath, and that the music of Nine Inch Nails figured into the ritual that created him.

What I have to wonder is whether knowledge of this cheapens the plot twist? Does the twist in the book become less original or impressive because it was inspired by music, or, more to the point, popular music? I’d dealt with this in poetry classes in undergraduate studies where I’d written a long prose piece I’d entitled “Meteora” which my group found wonderfully expressive and descriptive and evoking brilliant images and whatnot. When I revealed that I’d written it while listening to the album of the same name by the nu-metal band Linkin Park (a band generally reviled as sell-outs by “serious” music fans) the praise for the piece instantly evaporated and the prose was turned into a betrayal of my craft for committing the crime of not being inspired by Mozart or John Coltrane (It was actually said in workshop that the piece would have been acceptable had it been inspired by these artists).

Music is a cornerstone of my process because it remains as one of the few avenues of inspiration I refused to allow myself to be shamed for. I suppose one of the reasons I choose to work in popular fiction is because the genres within it will allow a writer to be inspired by whatever he wants without smirking ridicule, where taking the road more traveled can have as much weight as the road less, because it’s never taken into account that when choosing one road or the other, you’re still being rewarded with a new experience, so why not choose the one you’ll be passionate about?

To conclude, my writing is a process of immersing myself in popular culture, media, television, films, books, graphic novels, music, and asking myself what it is about those experiences that make them enjoyable, and trying to do the same with my own writing. My process toward becoming a writer is a long string of acceptance both practical and emotional. I accept that my writing will probably not win awards or the respect of my peers, and it probably won’t end up on any bestseller lists or get optioned out to be the next summer blockbuster or fall series. But I’m okay with that, because that isn’t the reason I write anyway. I write because it’s fun, because I enjoy writing again.

Writing is a job to me, and it’s a real job, and I love it.