(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

The Writing Process

Gen­er­al­ly, there is a great deal of con­fu­sion about the dif­fer­ence between process and craft.  A lot of peo­ple who enjoy writ­ing and have a refined process, are not par­tic­u­lar­ly good at the actu­al craft (like me) and a lot of peo­ple who are quite adept at craft strug­gle with the process for their entire lives.  Many excel­lent writ­ers have writ­ten only a few sto­ries, and can­not moti­vate them­selves to write more.  Or they write bril­liant­ly, but only when under dead­line for a class.

Very often the trou­ble here is that writ­ing well is only half the sto­ry and usu­al­ly only a small por­tion of the dif­fi­cul­ty most writ­ers strug­gle with.  If the tech­ni­cal skill of writ­ing is not mar­ried to a good sense of process, then what you end up with a very good writer who does not pro­duce very much. Indeed, most writ­ers have more dif­fi­cul­ty just sit­ting to write than they ever do with the prose itself. (Although, unfor­tu­nate­ly, most writ­ers focus on learn­ing the tech­ni­cal skill almost the exclu­sion of work­ing on their process.)

While con­crete imagery, dia­logue, or char­ac­ter­i­za­tion are craft ele­ments, how many times to draft, when to write, how impor­tant research and how to sit down and pro­duce every day is process. These are arti­cles about the process of writ­ing and what­ev­er insight I have gleaned about it.

The Lessons of Brande.  Dorothea Bran­de’s book Becom­ing A Writer is the best process book that I know of.
1 One Book To Rule Them All (And With Over­sewing Bind Them).
2 Cul­ti­vat­ing inter­nal dual­ism.
3 Morn­ing writ­ing
4 The Float­ing Half Hour of Writ­ing

Do What Works For YOU It’s not just a con­cept in mar­tial arts, but about writ­ing in gen­er­al.
The Witch­ing Hour When Mag­ic Works Write when you enjoy writ­ing, not oth­ers.
Free Writing–Why it Rocks There’s actu­al­ly a neu­ro­log­i­cal rea­son
Should I Out­line? (Mail­box) Authors have mixed feel­ings.  I weigh in.
Revi­sion Land (Mail­box) Char­lie the uni­corn goes to the mag­i­cal Revi­sion Land
When to Revise (Mail­box) What to do when revi­sion feels like not writ­ing

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