The lovely Katie Young recruited me to participate in the My Writing Life Blog tour which is a brilliant way of linking writers from all over the world and delving into the mechanics of their writing habits. You can find her My Writing Life entry HERE
So let's dive into this!
My Writing Process
Right now I am working on the first draft of a manuscript that started off as a National Novel Writing Month idea run amuck. Tentatively titled "1000 Butterflies" it is a science fiction tale about three young women in three different periods of the near future who have all been affected by a new anxiety treatment that involves tampering with the minds of the girls in question.
My work differs from others of its genre because it is focused almost completely on the points of view of the girls, and less on the men around them who created the technology. I think in a typical story of this genre, the plot-line would probably revolve around a scientist or a boyfriend who would be struggling with the fallout of symptoms with an extreme treatment like this with the female characters affected serving as a trophy at the end for the character who "fixes them". I'm more interested in creating a story that deals with each of these young women as individuals are surviving the best they can with the hand dealt them and that may or may not lead to a sad end.
I also like to connect all the characters in all of my stories and most of my poems in the same universe. It helps keep all my stories real for me. So it's quite common to find characters and headlines intersecting across all of my stories.
I write purely to keep myself interested. Oftentimes an initial motivation for me writing something is because I don't see what I want to read out there. If I can't find it, then I write it! Hopefully the potential readers will enjoy it as well.
My writing process is very disorganized sadly. I wish I could say I had a set schedule and a time frame that was set in stone and no one ever bothered me and there were no chores to do... but alas! I'm an opportunist sort, so I wait patiently (or impatiently) until I can find a block of time to start writing.
I always have three or four writing projects going on at the same time, and if I sour or stall on one, it means I have something else to fall back on. I MUST be passionate about my ideas at all times or else I can't write a thing. If I do become lukewarm on a manuscript or it feels too difficult to get enthused about it, I will set it aside for days to years while I work on other things more interesting.
My poems are almost always handwritten first, and my short stories are tapped up by computer. My novel Antipathia was actually handwritten in its first draft entirety with blue gel ink on pink notebooks! The pink paper actually kept me motivated for the writing process in that period. LOL whatever works right?
Make sure to check out the next participants in the My Writing Process Blog Hop!
The darling Elena Jacob who will be posting Monday, March 3:
Here is her blog: Raven Hart Press
Elena Jacob is a not-so-mild-mannered owner of a social media marketing company, and by night, she works on her novel, because sleep is for the weak. She is a fan of tea, a hopeless geek, and an Oxford comma enthusiast.
And the awesome Tim Baughman Jr. will be posting on the 10th:
Here is his blog Short Stories and Sustenance
Tim Baughman Jr author of the blog Short Stories and Sustenance. His work primarily focuses on dark fiction, the road to becoming a successful twenty-something, and his love for rocky road ice cream.
