Discovering Your Process

Finding Your Way

As you write each day, you discover your own process. You begin to see there is no “right way” to create and that your objective is simply to let the story live. The first draft is a near constant state of discovery. Some revelations may seem counter to the direction you thought your story was heading.

Perhaps you’re noticing little techniques that help your process. Perhaps you prefer writing in the morning, or you like to write on buses that circle the city at 3:00 a.m. You may discover that you’ve finished for the day after a couple of hours. Some writers go for six hours a day, while others put in one hour. There are no rules. Your process is your own and each method is valid. You may have discovered that you don’t need to spend as much time outlining, that after a short while you get antsy and just want to dive in. Or, you may feel greater confidence with a rigorous outline to layout your story.

Everyone’s process is different. As long as you continue writing and make it a habit, it doesn’t matter how it gets done. The most important thing is that you stay curious. Your work, these stories you tell, are simply a paper trail documenting your journey back to your truest self.

Trusting the Unconscious

You may have had the experience of writing something, and getting stuck halfway through.

Your idea of your story is rarely the whole story. It’s not that your idea is incorrect, it’s that it is incomplete. The challenge for writers is to loosen their grip on that idea in order to trust their unconscious to lead them to the deeper truth in the story.

When you trust your impulses, and allow your story to emerge, in spite of the fears that you are doing it all wrong, your story has a chance to live, and you move closer to becoming a published author.

Learn more about marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure in The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, or The 90-Day Screenplay workshops.