My writing process

Well, I promised the class I would lead off the discussion of our own writing processes, but Maria has already beaten me! Good on you, Maria, for not waiting!

I've had an up-and-down year in terms of productivity, where I seem to write in fits and spurts, my most recent spurt being at a writing retreat where I did just over 8000 words in two days. But then there have been the chasms of non-productivity, the weeks subsumed by marking and writing tests and workshopping and class prep and family life, the weeks that frustrate me intensely. This isn't the way I write best. I write best, as most writers do, when my writing is a constant part of my life, when I am at it every day.

I'm not the kind of person who can be working on multiple projects at one time. If it's my novel, it's my novel, though I might write a bit of poetry around this -- but never a short story or another novel. It's all about immersion.

When I am immersed in a project, then that project is with me all day, no matter what I am doing. I can't be writing a short story when my head is mulling over my novel. And that's the problem when I'm not writing regularly enough: I lose that immersion and break through the surface of my own fictional dream. When I return to the project, I have to reacquaint myself with what's going on, where it's all at. This might seem like it should get easier with the more drafts I do, because I know the project better, but it becomes difficult to remember what changes you've implemented or got rid of or changed in each draft.

So, constant writing is the key for me: having a daily practice, prioritising writing over some of those things that distract me from it. Then I can sit down, and not feel the burden of the white page: then I can sit down and let the words flow. Or not. Because even on the days they're not flowing, if I stay put in that chair, facing down that white page, I know I'll get them down in the end.

Tracey