Plotting

For whatever reason, whenever I'm asked for advice about writing, plotting seems to be the part of the process that aspiring writers are most resistant to. I've gotten comments like, "it takes too much time; I'd rather spend that time writing," or "I like to be much more organic with my process; I like to see where the story goes naturally," or "It doesn't seem to make any difference to my writing, so why bother?" or "I write short stories; what good is plotting going to do for me?" or "I never stick to my outline anyway, so I just stopped using one." In an attempt to convince you to at least do some plotting for your work, I'll address each of those concerns separately. Also, I'd like to say that I don't know a single published author  - and I know quite a few personally, and I read blogs and articles from many others - who doesn't do any plotting at all. While I'm sure there are some exceptions to that, it seems that the large majority does plot. That should tell you that plotting appears to be the habit of successful writers, and like my father told me years ago when I started a new job - look around and find the person in your field you think is the most successful and do what they do until you get your feet under you.

Inspiration

I think the question that I see most often when authors interact with their fans is about their process - how does a story get from an idea to a finished product?  It was a question I often had before I was published the first time and its a question I still ask myself as I feel like the writing process can always be refined.  I think it's a really important question too, because the one thing I think aspiring authors don't understand about becoming published is that writing is less of an art and more of a craft.  Writing is skill - a honed, developed, practiced and REPEATABLE skill.  The key there is repeatable; if you want to be successful (in terms of getting more than one thing published) you have to be able to do it again.

The other thing to remember is that for a publishing house, writing isn't art either: it's a business.  They won't accept your manuscript if they don't think it can make them money - it doesn't matter how good or innovative or inspiring it is.  That may sound callous, but it's the truth, cold and hard to swallow as it is.  Publishing companies have certain things they look for (i.e. things that have sold well in the past) and if your manuscript doesn't have it, then they don't want it. 

What does all that mean for your writing process?  Not a whole lot other than that you need one that's going to help you deliver on all those fronts over and over again, not leave you with folders upon folders of unfinished or rejected manuscripts littering your hard drive.  I've been asked before the nature of my writing process in both broad and very specific terms and so I thought I'd do a few posts on some of the most important parts of my process.