What is your writing process?

It’s an awkward question for a writer/author who doesn't really know. Hello, it’s me, I’m the author, it’s me.

Unfortunately, it’s a question authors get asked quite a lot - "What is your writing process?"

It sounds like a perfectly reasonable question. In fact, it sounds like the sort of question a proper author should have a very good answer to. Is there a notebook involved? Maybe a carefully planned routine. A particular time of day. A favourite chair. A certain number of words before tea. Some sort of colour-coded system involving index cards, spreadsheets and a large wall planner.

Unfortunately, I don't really have one. At least, not one I can explain without making it sound much more organised than it actually is.

The interesting thing is that I used to think this was a problem.

Apparently, there is a way to write a novel

Even before I thought I had a novel in me, when I was just beginning to think about writing I looked, of course, for advice and guidance. It seemed the sensible to do. If you don't know how to do something, you find out how other people do it. So, I listened to authors talking about writing. I read articles about writing. I looked plotting methods, character arcs, story structures, beat sheets, scene structures, three-act structures, four-act structures and probably several other structures that I've since successfully forgotten.

And they all seemed to know what they were talking about. The problem was that they didn't agree.

One person would explain that you absolutely had to know the ending before you started. Someone else would tell you that discovering the story as you write is the whole point. One method would tell you that a novel needed to follow a particular structure, while another would explain why that structure was completely wrong for the kind of story you were trying to tell.

There were rules about characters, rules about chapters, rules about beginnings, rules about endings and rules about when various things were supposed to happen.

The more I learned about how to write a novel, not only the more confused I got, but it also made me feel I couldn’t write one. My head simply didn’t work with how ‘they’ were saying I had to write. So, I didn’t.

It was like being told there was a correct way to make a cup of tea, then discovering that twelve experts had twelve completely different definitions of correct. All of them made my head hurt, so I made a coffee instead.

It did however make me very good at something, not writing.

The tyranny of the right way

I think there’s something really dangerous about being a beginner and being surrounded by people who are absolutely certain that there is a right way to do something. You don't know enough to challenge them.

If somebody tells you that a proper novelist does this, you assume that proper novelists must do it. If they tell you that you need to understand your character's entire backstory before writing chapter one, you start inventing backstories. If someone else says you need a detailed chapter outline before you begin, you start outlining.

Before you know it, you’ve spent several weeks preparing to write the novel without actually writing the novel.

And then, just as you think you've finally worked out what you're supposed to be doing, somebody else explains that you're doing it wrong.

It became paralysing.

I had ideas. Plenty of them. I could think of characters, situations, strange possibilities and questions that might make interesting stories. But every idea seemed to arrive carrying a large invisible instruction manual.

How are you going to structure it? What's the character arc? What's the midpoint? What's the inciting incident? Where is the turning point? What happens in the third act?

And, perhaps most frighteningly of all, what happens if you don't know yet? Which in my head turned into, if you don’t know, you aren’t ready to write it yet.

Eventually, something changed.

I stopped trying to work out how a novel was supposed to be written and decided to write one.

That sounds ridiculously obvious now. At the time, it felt almost rebellious. Actually that’s not quite right…it felt freeing.

I didn't suddenly discover the perfect method. I didn't have a revelation about story structure or learn the secret formula that professional authors had been keeping from me. I simply started writing without knowing exactly where the story was going.

And something rather strange happened. I enjoyed it.

I could write a scene because I wanted to know what happened next. I could introduce a character without knowing everything about them. I could change my mind. I could follow an idea that turned out to be useless. I could write something that didn't work and go back and change it.

And just as important as simply starting to write…

I stopped trying to write one book at a time

The other thing I eventually discovered was that I don't seem to be particularly good at having just one story on the go. That’s an understatement. I’m incapable of writing one novel at a time.

I have several on the go.

From much of the ‘advice, out there this isn't what you're supposed to do either.

There is a certain logic to concentrating on one book, finishing it and then moving on to the next. It sounds efficient. Sounds disciplined like something a serious author would do.

I’ve tried. I really have, but another idea always arrives. And suddenly I'm thinking about another story.

For a long time, I thought this was another sign that I wasn't doing things properly. Surely I should finish the current book before starting another one. Professional writers don't abandon one story halfway through because another idea has turned up.

But I don't necessarily see it as abandoning anything anymore. Some ideas arrive fully formed enough to demand attention immediately like The Other Story or The Archive of Ashes. Others sit quietly in the background for months or years, changing shape while I'm doing something else like The Awakening and A Life in Pieces.

Having several stories on the go means I can move between them. If one isn't working, I don't have to sit there staring at it until it starts working out of sheer frustration. I go and work on something else. When I return to the first story, I see the problem more clearly.

Most of my novels didn't start with a plot

When I look back at my own books, this becomes even clearer.

The Awakening didn't begin with a carefully constructed plot. It began with a question. What if trees weren't as passive as we assumed? What if the natural world could respond to what we were doing to it? That question led to research, characters, environmental ideas and eventually a story about trees waking up and fighting back.

The Other Story came from the very issue I’m writing about here. Someone asked me how I can write several books at once, across genres and keep the stories separate. That’s the whole plot of the novel and I simply started answering the question in my mind: what if the stories didn’t stay separate?

None of those ideas arrived saying, "Hello, I'm a novel. Here is my three-act structure." They arrived as questions. The novels came later.

The danger of forcing a story into a structure

I think this is probably the biggest thing I've learned. Structure is useful.

I'm not against structure. Quite the opposite. Once a story exists, structure can be incredibly useful for understanding what you've actually written. It helps identify where something is dragging, where a character's motivation isn't convincing or where the ending hasn't earned what you're asking it to do.

But I don't always want to start with the structure. Sometimes the story needs to find its own shape.

It's a bit like deciding what shape a tree should be before planting it. You can certainly prune it into a particular form. You might even create something beautiful. But you're no longer allowing the tree to decide what it's going to become.

Stories can be like that.

Sometimes a character does something you didn't expect or the thing you thought was going to be the main plot turns out to be a distraction. It happens, I promise. I’ve even had a story whose ending I’d planned six months earlier suddenly felt completely wrong because the story simply demanded it.

If you've allowed yourself to discover the story, those changes can be exciting. If you've convinced yourself that the story has to obey a predetermined plan, they can feel like failure if they don’t fit.

What actually is my process?

This is the point where I'm supposed to give you the answer.

I could tell you that I write every morning from nine until eleven, then spend the afternoon researching and editing or that I write exactly 1,000 words a day and never stop until I've reached my target.

It’d sound reassuring but it would also be absolute rubbish.

My process is much less tidy. I notice things. I ask questions. Some of those ideas disappear. Some come back. Some refuse to leave. I write scenes because I want to see what happens. Sometimes those scenes survive. Sometimes they don't. I get stuck, I work on something else. I come back and I change things. I realise I've been writing the wrong story and discover the right story somewhere underneath it.

That's probably the closest I can get to a process.

Perhaps the question is the problem

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether "What is your writing process?" is actually the wrong question. Perhaps the more interesting question is, "What helps you write?"

A process suggests something repeatable. A series of steps that can be followed from beginning to end. If you do A, then B, then C, you eventually arrive at a finished novel. But writing doesn't always work like that.

What helps one writer might make another writer miserable. Some people need detailed plans because uncertainty makes it difficult to move forward. Others need uncertainty because that's where discovery happens. Some write in complete silence. Others need music, noise, coffee, snacks or maybe a small orchestra.

None of those approaches is automatically right, or wrong. They're just different ways of getting words onto a page.

Finding your own way

I wish I'd understood all this earlier. For years, I thought there was a secret doorway into novel writing and that everyone else had been given the key except me. I kept looking for the correct method, the correct structure and the correct sequence of steps.

What I eventually realised was much simpler. There isn't necessarily a correct way.

There are methods and techniques. There are brilliant books about writing, and experienced writers whose advice can save you an enormous amount of time and frustration. But advice is not a set of laws.

And here we are again, so, what is my writing process?

Maybe I can answer the question now.

My writing process is to notice something, wonder about it, become slightly obsessed with it and see where it takes me. That's probably why I have never been particularly good at explaining the process. The process isn't really a sequence of steps. It's more like following a trail.

I notice something, follow it for a while, discover something unexpected, get distracted by another trail, occasionally lose my way and eventually find myself somewhere I didn't expect to be.

Sometimes that somewhere is a finished novel.

And looking back at the books I've written, I think that's probably the most useful answer I can give.

The Awakening began with a question about trees. The Other Story with a question about my own process (wow, that’s convoluted), and the Archive of Ashes started with the question of what perception is.

The common thread isn't a particular structure or writing routine. It's curiosity. I notice something. I wonder about it. I ask "what if?" Then I start writing to find out.

If I'd waited until I understood my writing process before I started writing, I’d still be waiting. Instead, I stopped trying to write a novel like people said I should and started writing novels in the way that worked for me.