my writing process.
the steps to writing my book
I’ve read up on a lot of famous writer’s process when it comes to writing their novels. Donna Tartt, for example. When Donna Tartt was asked to describe her writing routine, she answered
I write for three hours in the morning. If it isn’t going well, I’ll stop and do something else but if it’s going well I’ll work till I’m tired. (Donna Tartt, Rivista Studio, ‘Donna Tartt, The Writing Life’ Interview/article)
Like a lot of aspiring writers, I first took the route of writing how my favourite writers did and going from there. Of course, that doesn’t really help with creating an original writing style. It makes you a great appreciator of someone else’s process, but I feel that it limits the progress you can make on your own. I’ve been writing things for years, but this is the first time that I believe I will finish my story. I’m unsure how helpful it’d be for anyone reading this, but these are the steps I take/have taken in writing my book that I plan to actually finish.
The Dream.
What begins all of my works is a dream. I sleep on my back every night and I will either get sleep paralysis of all forms or a dream. My dreams are always vivid. In my most recent one, I lived in this odd futuristic world with a flooding problem that had zebra crossings turn into bridges and car tyres roll through inches deep of water like it was nothing. To some, my dreams may seem plotless and odd. Odd, I can agree. Plotless or without message, no. This book came to me in the form of a dream where I was both the camera of myself, spectating everything around me, and yet able to physically feel all the plights and joys of the protagonist. I swear, I could smell the same breeze that she could, held the same hands she did and felt the same weight of her past, as if it had truly happened to me. The dream did not reveal everything to me, though. It showed me a beginning, a middle and a very clear end, but the details in between were hidden from me. Yet when I woke up, I knew exactly what had happened and where my characters would be going. But this does not provoke an immediate beginning of my writing. It makes me aware of what the story should be, so I write all I can remember down. but it is not an immediate trigger to begin writing.
The Experience Barrier.
Although The Dream is a positive thing, I don’t feel comfortable writing until I have gotten the experience under my belt to write what I want. I know that you don’t technically have to experience something to write about it, but I feel like unless it’s a fictional experience that nobody can relate to (e.g. slaying a dragon), the inauthenticity of the feelings you write about shines through. Take how people on AO3/Wattpad write smut. They like to lean back on phrases that suggest physical intimacy and sensuality, but to anyone that has actually experienced what they’re talking about, their writing reads as a fantasy of a real experience, rather than a real experience. Of course, the writers on these apps are young teenagers, so I’m not critiquing them for writing of a fantasy experience, but I will point out that inexperience can be sensed. When I first got the idea for my book, I really wanted to jump into writing it straight away because of my faith in the concept, but until I had interacted with enough people and gained some experience for myself, a whisper in my head seemed to hiss “not yet”. This story would stay a detailed file at the back of my mind for 2 years, as a result. Then, I met someone and I could see my protagonist’s love interests more clearly. That is when I knew I could begin.
Beginning with my Ending.
I have found that the most ‘conventional’ way of working in art may not be the perfect fit for me. When I do graphite drawings of the people I love, I always begin with their eyes. I shape the entire face around them and work to show their joy, as well as the reflections of the camera in their face, the tree that has hit their retina. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Frida Kahlo, specifically near the end of her life and her letter to Diego Rivera before the amputation of her leg, which I posted as a note here on Substack. The ending of something is always the most clear because it has the advantage of possessing the beginning, the middle and all the nitty gritty of the details woven in both preferably answered and full circle, if you’re not trying to make a sequel (which I am not). So, the very first chapter of my book that I wrote was of its ending. My ending had twists, dynamics answered, relationships either drawn to a close or opened to be explored in the privacy of those characters forever, not to be read by my reader. From there, I knew the questions that I should answer and how they would be answered. I knew how some dynamics would be shaped because of these details I had chosen to reserve until the end. I could now do the rest.
Writing what was clear.
The next chapters I completed would be the very beginning and the penultimate chapter. The order was clearly not done with chronological events in mind, but based on what I could remember. What was obvious and what could I get out of the way? I remembered the beginning clearly and I remembered the lead up to the end clearly. It made the most sense to go from there. I wrote it faithful to my memory and then I found that the chapter was short. It made sense, and it was faithful the dream that began this entire story, but even with descriptive detail, I felt something was missing. I didn’t want to turn this novel into a novella. I wanted my book to have physical weight as mental weight. In order to do that, I had to think about what would fill these gaps. I did not need to rely on dialogue. I also did not need to rely too much on what the waking reality of my characters were…and then it hit me. Dreams. I would have my gaps filled with details of dreams that my characters had. It made sense as someone who was introduced to them through dreams, and as someone who finds their dreams messages as important as their waking messages. Which leads me to my final point of my writing process:
Filling what is unclear with what you know to be important.
In my case, I chose dreams. I was writing about a world of strange, unfamiliar circumstances for anyone who will read it. Although I was doing the best I could to make this world familiar through the application of human experiences and emotions in this strange world, what better level playing ground of both the imagination and the reality that many love escapism through the relatable mechanism of dreams? Not only did it fill the gaps for me and give room for symbolism, I think it’ll end up helping to build the reader’s sense of connection to my protagonist. She dreams, as you all do. She is vulnerable to the instruments of the mind, as we all are. In my effort to ensure that even if my character wasn’t loved, she’d be understood, I created gaps that filled where I felt hearts did not reach her.