The Definitive Essay About 'The Process'

I don’t care what anyone else says; only I know the truth about how to write.

Photo by Aleks Dorohovich on Unsplash

I can already feel you reaching for the comments section. But hold off on the keyboard warrior thing for, like, five minutes.

I promise this will be worth it.

Seems like everyone has an opinion on the writing process. Not only that, but a lot of them treat their process as The One True Way. Like, only they are the arbiters for what constitutes a successful writing career.

They’re all dead wrong. They’re also completely right.

Because here’s the thing: there is no writing process.

Yes, you read that right. There is no process. At least, no process that works for every author on the planet. This is not a baseball cap; there is no one size fits all. The process does not exist. There is only your process.

In his pseudo-memoir On Writing, Stephen King notes that he writes almost daily, for four hours a day. Kelly Blanchard, author of the Chronicles of Lorrek series, mentions in Unleash the Writer Within that she usually writes 2,000 words a day.

Which is great for them. But if you don’t do the same, don’t sweat it.

Some people merely squeeze the words in whenever they can. On their phone during a quiet moment waiting for the bus. Jotting into a notepad during lunch break at your day job. Getting up at 5:30 every morning to sit at their laptop for an hour before everyone else wakes up and they have to start the day.

Or my personal favorite: staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning, because you’re a night owl and that’s when you’re guaranteed no interruptions.

(I guess this one is why so many writers are also coffee addicts.)

Not everyone can write daily. Some writers can only do so over the weekend, or on days when they don’t have to be at their day job. Others schedule off days, treating writing like it is a day job in the sense that time off is as essential as time on.

I’m reminded of this exchange several years ago between King and George R.R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones series. Martin, notorious for his slow writing pace, asks King a pointed question:

I’ll pause as we all get the Martin is slow jokes out of our systems.

…

Done? We ready to go again?

Jokes aside, we don’t know what Martin’s process actually is. We just know it’s different from King’s, yet they’re both incredibly popular and successful authors. Which is the point of all this: you don’t have to do it the way King or Martin do it. You only have to find the process that works for you.

But understand this: your process can, and likely will, change. Because life changes; say you leave the job that allowed you to write every day during your lunch hour, and your new gig isn’t quite as forgiving or understanding. You have to shift your process around.

Example: when I started writing novels, I was very much a pantser (as in, I’d fly by the seat of my pants). Who needs an outline? I’ve got a story to tell, and I’ll find out where the characters are taking me as soon as the readers do!

But as the Jill Andersen series grew, I realized I needed a roadmap of some sort. I’m not a strict outliner and never will be (because in my experience, writing off a detailed outline is a paint-by-numbers experience sapped of everything that makes creating beautiful), but thanks in part to a book from Libbie Hawker titled Take Off Your Pants!, I’ve found an outlining process that works for me.

Key words: for me.

One of creativity’s many beauties is the fact that there are relatively few rules. Creating is a remarkably freeing experience, especially in a world where such freedom of control and expression and input are hard to find. No one can tell you how to carve a sculpture or paint a landscape or write a poem.

Those are things for you to figure out. Writing is no different. In a world that constantly tells you where to be, how to dress, what time certain tasks have to be finished, your creative self is the one instance where the only person you have to listen to is yourself.

Sure, you can ask other creatives for advice. But ultimately, your process is yours. Not theirs.

If you ask me about my writing process, I’ll tell you what it is. But that doesn’t mean it has to be your process, and at no point would I ever tell you there’s something you have to do in order to be a writer (other than actually put the words on the page; that’s pretty much the one rule we have).

That’s the point. And the beauty.

Forge your own path. Find your own way. Take the control being a creative person gives you and run with it. Both your work and your life will be fuller and more fulfilling for it.