Happy… I guess by the time this posts it will be February, but (full disclosure) I’m writing this about two weeks ahead of that.
I’m currently in the biweekly Gaming Groupies Writers’ Club session with the person I said I needed to pseudonym going forward. (He’s asked that I refer to him as Kalen in these posts.) We’ve done a bit of writing (more on that in the IN PUBLIC section), and a lot of chatting. We argued a little about AI. We both had a go at the MCU’s insistence on calling itself 616. Kalen and I are having a grand ol’ time in this new and improved version of the GGWC.
We’ve talked about where we generate our ideas. And that got me thinking about my own writing process. How I come up with the big concept and ultimately decide on how to fail at presenting that concept.
What’s my process? What tools do I use, both mechanical and procedural? And does anyone really care?
(The answer to that last one is no, but I’m gonna tell you some of it anyway.)
The one unbreakable rule of writing is that no two writers are exactly the same. So as I discuss my process, please do not infer that I’m advocating this for anyone but myself. If I say something you find useful, feel free to adapt and incorporate. If everything I say sounds like utter nonsense, jettison it all right out of that beautiful brain of yours. You will not write like I write. (Lucky you.) I don’t write like Stephen King writes. And he doesn’t write like you.
And that’s a good thing.
On Ellen Brock’s sliding scale of writers, I fall somewhere in the Methodological Pantser square of the dual spectrum. (I’ll link to her YouTube videos on the subject at the end. They’re worth a view.) I’m pretty far on the extreme end of Pantser (versus Planner/Plotter), but near the middle of Methodological (having a decent number of Intuitive moments).
To put it plainly: I know story, can make my stories fit into a given structure, recognize when my stories go awry, and know full stop that the endings stink like a skunk. But I plan next to nothing ahead of time and somehow just make it work. Except the endings.
Because of this, one of my great thrills as a writer is learning just the right piece of information at just the right time that will make the entire narrative come together and make sense. (It’s happened once, maybe twice. It counts.) I get to watch each scene play out in the movie theater of my mind, and I’ve even jumped a few times when something startling happened because I didn’t see it coming.
This is what makes writing fun for me.
And then my story structure brain has to take over for a bit during revision and editing, and that part isn’t as fun. But if Person A doesn’t turn the prince into a frog, Person B can’t kiss the frog later to turn him back into a prince.
For mechanical tools, I’m pretty simple. I use notepad. Yup, the text-only, no-frills app that has come standard with every version of Windows I have ever seen. I don’t need Bells and Whistles for a first draft. I just need a way to get words on the virtual page. And, because Notepad saves these files as plain text documents, they’re ultra portable. I save everything directly to Dropbox so that I have them available no matter where I am in the universe.
Once this first draft is over, I transfer the text to Open Office, where I save it as an ODT file.
Back in the Text document, I create a v2 and begin revision, still in Notepad. I make the overarching changes needed, such as removing all of my “this sucks” navel-gazing, the duplicate paragraphs (still not sure how I managed that one), and all the bits and bobs one changes in a revision. Then that gets sent to a v2 ODT file, then also saved as a DOC file for an editor to look at.
When the notes come back from the editor, I use Open Office to make those changes in a v3 file (or v4 if I needed an extra pass before the editor step), save the v3 DOC, save it again as ODT and TXT (because I do that), and move on to the final revision stage:
I go through in OpenOffice and punch up what needs punching with italics and any other formatting things I need. Things that a TXT file won’t save. I run the OpenOffice spell checker one last time.
Then finally, I’m ready to get it ready for publishing.
There are a billion different fields of thought on this topic alone. Some people like to go to every conceivable platform and individually load their books. Some go to Long River directly and only publish there in the special Select program they have. Some go only to an aggregator (such as Draft2Digital) and distribute to a large segment at once.
I’m in between. I go directly to Long River (but not in their Select nonsense), Kobo, and Google. And I use D2D for everywhere else.
And that’s just the ebooks.
It’s also widely recommended that, no matter your ebook strategy, you also have print books available for your readers. There are a wide variety of Print-on-Demand (POD) services out there, including Long River, D2D, Ingram Spark, and a newer voice in the field, BookVault — though that last, as I understand, is better suited for direct sales than as a standard distribution channel.
Print books can be paperback or hardcover. Or both.
I have my paperbacks on Long River (without extended distribution), D2D for the extended stuff, and one of my books is available in hardcover through Long River only.
(Audio is another beast, and I don’t really feel qualified to try to go into detail on that. But I also have both my books in audio, via different means, one of which is pretty controversial. I have previously detailed that controversy in another blog post.)
TWO WEEKS LATER…
It is now the weekend before posting this monstrosity. Kalen and I are here in the Writers’ Club again, and we have discussed some goals. We’re having a blast, cracking mutual whips and keeping each other accountable. It’s all gentle and kind, the way Rachael Herron recommends, and I can really see this being a viable long-term thing for us.
In the last two weeks, I haven’t done much. But the good news is, I’ve done enough in weeks prior that I’m still in pretty good shape on my writing goal.
WRITING IN PUBLIC
As threatened: One of the new facets of the GG Writers’ Club is that Kalen and I have been writing during our meetings. We set a timer for 20 minutes and just write. Then we rest for a bit, shoot the proverbial breeze, and then set another timer. We do that three or four times.
Even better, in the January 17th session, I spent most of those sprints writing revisions that my AI editor helped me come up with. All told, there are about 2,000 new words on Best Enemies Forever, with an unknown number to be removed later as I slot the revisions in, thereby changing the narrative. In the last sprint, I started this blog post.
I can’t tell you how excited I am that the revision has actually started on the novel. Better still, with the help of a chatbot, it actually seems halfway doable — at least here in the early stages. Maybe as I have to drill even further down and rip the book entirely to shreds it will feel less doable. But for now…
And I know. I know, I know, I know.
AI is evil. AI is the enemy. AI is a blight on the creative world.
Bleep you and the high horse you rode in on.
As long as the words are mine, I have no qualms about AI helping me figure out how to get there. I would never ask an AI bot to write a book for me. And even here in the revision process, I have not asked the AI bot to rewrite the book for me. I’m having discussions with the bot, and we’re doing a back-and-forth on possibilities for how the book can be improved.
And then I write what needs writing to improve it. I will remove what needs removing. And I will make the final decisions on what the book will be before it lands in the hands of a human editor. The bot will guide me. The bot will help me spot the things I wouldn’t be able to on my own.
But I am still the author. And I defy anyone to tell me differently.
GAMING THINGS
Unfortunately, in the gaming realm of things, Pathfinder is on hold because the Workaholic member of our group is on a deadline that won’t allow her to leave work at work.
However, the remaining three of us have been Jackbox Gaming our way to fun and laughter, with the Squares game in Survey Scramble, Tee K-O 2 (which created a shirt I’m interested in, but have not bought yet), and Blather Round. We’ve also spent a lot of time just chit-chatting, which is also a fun time.
Alas, no major fun stories to share, thus a very short segment.
WRAPPING UP
Now that I’m getting back into the groove of writing, I’m enjoying myself quite a bit. Sure, I don’t know what the future will hold as far as actually finishing what I’ve started, but this momentum thing feels pretty danged cool. For the first time in years, it feels like a very graspable thing. I can actually feel Best Enemies Forever happening in 2026.
Of course, now that it’s been put to paper like that, I’ve jinxed it.
All semi-jokes aside, though, 2026 feels like it’s shaping up to be a pretty good year for my writer persona. I still feel the lethargy trying to pull at me, and comics and TV have taken a lot of my attention — but especially on GGWC weeks, once I sit down to put words to the screen, nothing can stop me. That inner critic who’s always trying to tell me I’m not good enough is silent. All that matters is me and the words.
And by Gorshin…
That’s pretty danged cool.
THE PROMISED LINKS
Overview: The Four Types of Writers
Type 1: The Methodological Pantser
Type 2: The Intuitive Plotter
Type 3: The Methodological Plotter
Type 4: The Intuitive Pantser