I was chatting with a friend and fellow writer the other day. We were discussing a few of the stresses involved in creating books and I jokingly made the comment, “Why do we do this to ourselves?”
All Swoon. No Spice.
Month: March 2014
This past week I had someone ask for advice about how to start a book. As I responded, I started considering my own writing process. I feel the best way to describe my writing is that it’s organic. On the one hand, that’s just a nice way of saying I have few organizational skills and like to fly by the seat of my pants. On the other hand, it’s also an admission that sometimes it’s far from pretty, sometimes it has to be pruned back, and other times I just have to let it grow however it wants. There’s a reason that the maze in Just Ella isn’t perfectly tame. I find beauty in the unruly way that nature grows.
I started writing the very last chapter of Missing Lily today. Hopefully that means that in a few days it will be done, meaning the entire first draft will be done.
Now, one might worry that it’s only a rough draft and will still take a long time to finish, especially since Just Ella took me a loooooong time to write. However, I’ve been editing and revising as I’ve gone along, which means that it’s really just the last few chapters that need to be polished before I get some final feedback. It’s close. It’s really close. Which is wonderful.