Writing a Book - Ce Jaye Style
Having completely finished one book and completed the first draft of my second, my writing patterns and habits are slowly starting to reveal themselves to me. What was once a vast wilderness landscape, full of potential treasure but mostly the dangerous unknown, is now slowly being mapped.
During this mapping process, I have found six unique stages which occur my book writing process: Inspiration. Leave It Alone. Reoccurring Ideas. Stringing It All Together. Dedicated Writing. Editing. Some of these stages repeat while others happen only once. But each and every one of them is an integral part of how I develop, write, and finish my stories. I hope you enjoy learning about them as much as I did discovering them!
My Six Stages for Book Writing
Inspiration – This is the very first stage of my process and one that most everyone is familiar with. Inspiration can strike anywhere or at any time, but most often it’s when I have an intersection of 1) Boredom and 2) A Full Creative Well. For example, this past month I was house sitting for my parents and had just finished the first draft of my second book. This is, of course, cause for great celebration, but it also completely disrupted my creative schedule. I was used to writing fairly often as well as constantly thinking about Book 2 during my week. But now I had to find something else to occupy my time.
I started in on Book 3 (to my Twin’s absolute delight), but I was quickly side-tracked by visiting friends and doing a lot of research for publishing my first book. Both were important tasks. Both took my focus away from writing. I had also paused my shared writing with Kohai for the month so that I could focus on finishing the first draft. This meant that I had very little writing outlet during most of the month and plenty of time to watch shows and read books I had put off until a later time. As a result my mind began to overflow with ideas. I churned out at least 5 writing ideas to pursue with Kohai once May had begun. I also came up with two personal projects, one to eventually share with my friend and the other as a potential publishing project.
Getting hit with the Inspiration Stage usually looks something like this: There’s usually a scene with the main character that appears along with my understanding of who they are and what they’re like. As I begin to write the scene and details down, other scenes will quickly appear. Additional characters will introduce themselves followed by several scenes that lead to more ideas for scenes. General plot points follow, and it is not uncommon for the plot of additional books (if it ends up being a series) to arrive as well. My potential future publish project reached almost 12,000 words in the shape of a trilogy by the time I was done!
During this time of inspiration, I have to forcibly remove myself from the computer to save my failing eyes and wrists. The ideas come so quickly I often have scene ideas that just stop mid sentence because I had another scene come to me in the middle of writing another, and I quickly jumped to another section to jot it down, completely forgetting to come back to the original scene I was working on. Now that I know that I do this (and let me tell you how frustrating it is to come up on one of these scenes with no idea how to end them), I try to go through and check over my document to ensure I haven’t left anything hanging. However, sometimes this is impossible because I am mentally and energetically drained.
Leave it Alone – This stage is as obvious as it seems. Once the initial spurt of inspiration finishes, I leave the idea alone. As an INFP writer, I have more ideas than I will ever have the time or energy to write. I used to be angry with myself when I would come up with a great idea but not follow-up even having written 30 pages about it. I told myself I was never going to be a real writer because I could never finish anything, only start. I wish I’d known then what I know now. Not every idea is a full course meal. Some ideas are like snacks, fun to eat but only meant to be a brief experience. Some ideas are meant to be experienced for a longer period of time, like a 7 course French meal.
The analogy breaks down, obviously, but it’s true that some ideas just aren’t going to get my full investment. Not because they aren’t worthy ideas, but because I’m not meant to pursue them any further. Instead of being angry with them or myself, I’ve learned to be grateful for how they show up in my life and give me energy and entertainment before going on their way. I’ve also learned to go back through my inspiration ideas every few years and set aside the ones that were fun but aren’t going anywhere into a separate file. This way I can visually (and mentally) set them aside from the ideas I’m going to continue pursuing.
Reoccurring Ideas – When an inspiration pops up more than once, I know that it has become a reoccurring idea. Either characters or entire new scenes will keep intruding on my brain. It’s the equivalent of Navi from Zelda going ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ inside my head. That is when I know it’s a story worth spending more creative energy on. At that point, I’ll give the idea its own document and/or move it into the folder with my active story ideas. Then, whenever I get future scenes and dialogue, I’ll type it up into the document.
This stage of writing can go on for months or even years while most inspiration stages take less than a week. Part of the reason it can take so long is because I have multiple projects on the burner at once. Usually, I can handle several that are in the Reoccurring Idea stage, but far fewer in following stages. This doesn’t mean a project that’s sitting in this stage is less important to me. It simply means that it’s either not ready for me to move forward or I simply haven’t had the time to move it into the next stage. Perhaps as I become more knowledgeable and efficient in my writing, the projects in this stage will start to move more quickly into the next. But if not I rest in the fact that I will never be bored for long!
Stringing It All Together – The timeline for this step is influenced mostly by a mixture of intuition and my interest at the time. Eventually, there will be enough scenes for me to string together into the general shape of a story. I’ll also “physically” organize everything at this stage. My Twin loves making fun of me for this, but I’ll often create new word docs just so I can easily drop and drag my scenes around. When I’m finished organizing, I’ll paste everything back into the original document and erase the temporary one. It’s a bit inefficient, but it works for me.
*An interesting note: Once I begin stringing, scenes that need to be added or fixed are often revealed to me. By putting together the pieces I have at hand, my brain is able to register what is missing from the story.
Dedicated Writing – Now that I’ve strung all the bits and pieces into a somewhat-coherent-whole, the real, enduring work begins. I focus my time and energy on showing up regularly to work on the story. While the Inspiration stage of book writing is like a sprint, this stage is the equivalent of a marathon. My focus is not on word count or how quickly my plot holes are filling up. Instead, it’s the long-term commitment to showing up and seeing if I have anything to add on a given day. The days that are hardest for me to show up tend to be when I’m too focused on perfection. Did I write a good enough scene? Did I get this concept across correctly? I have to recenter myself and remember I’m just here to write whatever comes up and inch my way towards the finish line. Polish can come later.
Even with a plot line to follow, I don’t suddenly begin writing in a linear manner. I’ll hop from chapter to chapter and scene to scene so that I’m always writing something that gives me motivation. In fact, writing in one chapter will often give me ideas for the other books in a series. I’ll (probably) finish whatever section I was working on then hop right into that next book. When I excitedly announce to My Twin that I’ve written in Fay Tale, she has learned to suspiciously ask me which book I’ve been in. In fact, the idea for this very blog post came to me while I was writing in Book 3.
Leave It Alone – This process looks familiar, right? That’s because it was the second stage of my writing process. Once I’ve made my way through the 1st draft, I put the book down. As in, I save everything and move on to a new project. It could be to the next book in the series. It could be to a shared story with Kohai. It could be no story at all as I binge on other media, filling up my creative veins so that I have energy to expend later. The important part is that I allow the story to rest, usually up to a good 30 days. Then I crack open the metaphorical cover again and start on the next stage.
Editing – I love this part of the writing journey. Yes, you did in fact read correctly. I love editing. I love scouring a page and clipping it into something that’s smoother and more direct. Granted, it’s much harder to do this for your own story than someone else’s, but I find the process invigorating nonetheless. When I can set aside my fear of being imperfect that is! For the editing phase, I mostly go in linear order. A strange feeling for an INFP! I start at the beginning and work through the book, making notes about issues I’ve found and fixing weird sentence structures and misspellings.
Leave It Alone, Permanently – This is probably one of the hardest stages of writing, at least for me. Because I know my story could be better. Sure, I’ve fixed all my edits, but I guarantee I’ve missed something, somewhere. And this doesn’t even cover ideas I wish had come to me earlier. Each book reflects the time of life the author is in, and it’s easy to look back and wish I’d been a little less obvious about which part of life I was in at the time. No matter how brilliant you are as a writer, there will always be mistakes. In the end, I have to believe that the mortifying experience of not being perfect is worth the exhilarating experience of writing and sharing these beautiful, sassy characters with you all.