My writing process – Getting started

For the most part, I’m an organised soul, so when I decided to create a writing process that worked for me, my first step was to establish:

  • My goals – what I want to accomplish
  • The method – how I’m going to go about the process, and
  • The tools I’m going to use.

It took a little less than an hour, and (so far) its been an invaluable framework on which to base my explorations and measure my success.

Goals

Deciding what I want out of this process was fairly easy. What I want is a writing process (and by process I mean a series of methods and techniques in the form of a workbook1) that will allow me to write a book, from idea to final draft, in the most efficient way possible.

For me, efficient means working up to producing two really good books a year. Why? Because there’s a backlog of books that need to be written, taking up space in my brain. Also, most successful (as in, making a comfortable living from their writing) authors are prolific.

For example:

Method

  1. Explore books, blogs, journals and articles on writing
  2. Experiment with various techniques to see what works for me
  3. Modify, if necessary, the techniques I like and incorporate them into a Scrivener writing workbook
  4. Plan, write and edit and book using my writing workbook and revise the writing process/workbook as necessary
  5. Repeat the process, quite possibly, for the rest of my writing life 🙂

Tools

  • Notebook
    • Evernote
      For web clippings and stuff
    • Physical notebook
      For random musings, articles, templates and other printed stuff
  • Writing journal
    To document the process, I’m using the vJournal app, which syncs with Evernote, on iPhone and iPad
  • Scrivener
    To create my novel-writing workbook.

Progress

I began this process at the start of the year, and so far, it’s working out well. My method isn’t as linear as it appears in the steps above and life has derailed my explorations once or twice, but it all goes to building my own writing process.

  1. If you haven’t noticed already, I love templates, they’re like cheat sheets for writing, and a workbook is a template on steroids. []

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