What is this writer up to now?

I am writing, and we don't talk enough on here about how we go about that.

Following on from a note I saw yesterday pointing out that almost no writers actually talk about their writing on here, and then Gracie giving the history of how she wrote her Watchtower series, I thought I should type a few words.

I have already written a series of seven novels. The first three are sort of in limbo at the moment, one published but open to tweaks, the next two ready to publish but needing feedback.

That has left me rather twiddling my thumbs, so yesterday I finally got down to writing, you guessed it, anther novel. This one however, is totally new, nothing like the series I wrote between 15 and 3 years ago. It has been itching away inside my head for a while now, so pencil has finally hit paper.

So how do I go about it?

Well, for a start, I am not a plotter, except inside my head, which if you opened it up you would see is full of angry little devils going about their business, so you would soon close it again. I believe this is normal for people called pantsers. I have a clear plan of where it is going, and I know how it should get there, but trying to write that down is a bit like watching a two year old splatter blancmange onto a wall.

I write on A4 pads using a pencil, and today my place of work was the dining table rather than my desk, with music going, away in my own funny little world as the pencil does its stuff. After maybe one, two, or even three chapters, I then rewrite into the keyboard. I have written entire manuscripts onto paper before going anywhere near the keyboard, and this seems to be a decision based entirely on what mood I am in. My current mood is writing until I run out of the right mental vibes, then I can type for a while which requires a different way of thinking.

As I said. I have no set way of approaching this.

A good way to help get my thoughts in order before putting pencil to paper is to go for a good walk. I can do a round trip of around three miles, five kilometres, which takes me to the sea and back, and I usually take bread for the crows. I like this type of thinking time even in the rain like today, and so do the crows, who get bits of wholemeal lobbed into the air. The really crafty ones know to hover just in front of me, then I can flick up a bit of bread for them to catch. I usually end up with about a hundred or more crows following me along the sea front like a cloud, which many people enjoy immensely, and others see in a more Hitchcock fashion and are not so keen.

So there is a little insight into what this particular writer is doing at the moment. In two days I have written four chapters, three of which are now typed up. I have no idea on word count because I do not need to know for this one. It is much faster paced than the David Hammond stories, with shorter chapters, so I do not need to keep an eye on the count to see if I should give the reader a rest.

Most important of all, I am absolutely loving it.

If you are a writer, of novels, short stories, poetry, anything, take a few minutes to describe your way of going about things. It is much more interesting than all the clickbait and stackbait blather that fills up this place, and both readers and writers enjoy finding out how we all tick, because we are all different.

Thank you for reading.

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