The Writing Process Blog tour

Thanks to the fabulous and friendly Jody Holford for tagging me in this challenge! Jody is the author of the romantic Forever Christmas and is also published in Holiday Spice - a collection of spicy romantic stories. Like me, Jody is a Gemini and prone to worrying. You can read more about her writing process here and find her on Facebook and Twitter.

I'm fascinated by the writing process of other authors. It's always the question I ask at book launches and in interviews and no two answers are ever the same. I'm fascinated by my process, too, because I don't seem to have one. The way I write each book is different - partly driven by the age range and genre, and partly - apparently - dictated by the Muse! The great thing about this challenge is that it reassures writers that there are endless ways to skin the story cat, and no one way is the "right" way!

1.  What am I working on?

I'm about 12k words into the third in my Turtle Walk series for teens. The girls are a year older and things are getting serious! I recently finished the second in a Young Adult dystopian trilogy and am percolating the story and character arcs for the third in my writerly brain.

I'm very excited that my Publishers will soon start translating my dark and twisted psychological thriller for adults, Dark Whispers, which was released this year, into Afrikaans. I think the process is going to be so interesting - how do you preserve the characters' and the author's voice when you translate into a different language?

As usual, I also have a new YA romance idea bubbling in my subconscious - watch this space!

2.  How does my work differ from others in the genre(s)?

Initial reaction to this question: "Crap, I have no idea! You tell me."

More considered response: In my day-job, I'm a psychologist in clinical practice. Although I never base characteries or stories on what I hear in that confidential sanctum, I think my training and experience in psychology helps me deepen my characters. Usually, at least one of my main characters has some psychological problem, but in general I think I understand how people react to trauma or grief or stress, and this gives my novels a thematic depth and character complexity which you might not always find in other books. Unless I just flatter myself. Which is entirely possible!

I also love humour, and so whether I'm writing an angsty teen romance, or a dark adult novel, you'll always find something funny, because that's just how life is - for me at least!

3.  Why do I write what I write?

The wand chooses the wizard, Mr Potter. 

Yes, I know that's another story, but the principle holds. The story chooses the writer. Or it does with me :)

YA romance seems to find me most often, usually in the form of a dramatic image whose story I need to explore. But sometimes a bizarre news story hooks my attention (as happened with Dark Whispers), or I'll be watching something on TV which just strikes me as surreal and I'll start thinking... "What if..." (as happened with the dystopians I'm working on).

I started my Turtle Walk series because I was tired of most books for teens being fantasy-based (I've never been a fan) and featuring male leads with helpless, decorative, pink-princessy girl sidekicks. I have a daughter and wanted her to read better stories, featuring kick-ass, resourceful, intelligent girls who care about some really big issues and aren't saved my boys or adults. I couldn't find them on the bookshelves, so I started writing them myself!

4.  How does my individual writing process work?

Ah, the million dollar question!

As I said above, my process varies for every book. I usually start with a couple of ideas which I think would be fascinating to combine (in a hypnosis session, a psychologist uncovers the sick deeds of a ObGyn at her hospital), and the idea for some interesting characters (psycho doctor meets empathic psychologist who has a saving "thing"). Then I think of 5-10 "tentpoles" - events which need to happen to get the story from the activating end to the climax. I might generate these as a spider-diagram on a big piece of cardboard - I don't use online tools like Scrivener.

I usually know how it will end (vaguely), but this almost always changes. With Dark Whispers, I put (another) twist in the tail after reading a non-fiction magazine article in the dentist's office, which gave me an excellent idea! A popular song sparked an idea to change the ending of one of my YA romances, so I like to stay flexible and open to new ideas.

When I know the beginning, some of the main points of the middle, and maybe the ending, I begin writing.

Except when I don't.

Some genres and books, I have discovered, require me to have a much more rigorous plotting process. With Dark Whispers, I had to go into more plotting detail because there are red herrings, hidden reveals, plot twists, and the requirement to be medically accurate. Man, it nearly broke my brain! I plotted this one in a notebook and on Word, but that doesn't always allow you to see things at a glance.

In one of YA romances, I used index cards and I found that very useful. Laying the cards out on my big coffee table, I could immediately see the gaps and the lags.

For the dystopian trilogy, by brain has been doubly-broken, because I need to plot the story and character arcs for each novel, but also plot the overall arching story. So I need to plant things in book one that only become relevant in the sequels, and I need to be very careful about what I reveal so as not to give things away. Here I experimented wiith the Save the Cat plotting method. I wrote each interacting story-line (there were 5!) in a different coloured pen on a series of index cards, and then ordered them. What was very useful was being able to cluster crises from across the five lines in single events, to get some truly brutal and exciting scenes! After I'd written the first draft, I printed it out according to the Shrunken Manuscript method and could immediately get a better feel for the overall structure and pace. 

I like experimenting with different methods, so sometimes I write in marker pen in notebooks, sometimes in MS Word, and I often quickly rescue ideas by dictating them into my phone's voice recorder. I tend to have the general story in my head when I begin, but I think up the detailed scenes as I go along - like that metaphorical car with the headlamps lighting up a little of the way ahead.

For me, the best way to dream up the scenes is literally to dream them. I lie in my bed, an airline mask over my eyes, and deep-breathe myself into an alpha dreamlike state. (Does this sound crazy-eccentric? It does, doesn't it?!) Then I imagine the story as if it was a movie playing out in my mind. Great images and some punchy dialogue come to me this way. I've never actually sure how much of this I'm actively creating and how much is "taking dictation" from the muse and the characters. If I think about it too deeply, it begins to worry me - some of the characters I write are foul and I can't decide whether it's worse that these are products of my own mind, or that there's some other explanation... dah dah daaaah!

I spend a lot of time on editing, incorporating suggestions from my beta-readers and agent, Michelle Johnson, and then I leave it for as long as I can stand before coming back to reread with sort-of fresh eyes.

I can't write on days when I do my therapy work, or my training development (my other other job) because they put my head into different modes, so I do my different jobs on alternate days. I can't write at my practice office (don't know why, just doesn't work), so I write at home, spread out messily on the dining room table. I like to wear sweatpants when I work (a writer's perk!) with fingerless gloves in winter, and when I handwrite in notebooks, it has to be in purple, blue or green markers. I write best when I'm home alone, and uninterrupted.

That's it - and it's probably more than you wanted to know! (Blame Jody, lol.)

Here are the writers I'm tagging...

Michael Sears

Michael Sears is one half of the writing partnership who, with Stanley Trollip, forms the writer Michael Stanley, author of the fabulous Inspector Kubu novels.

Michael is a mathematician, specializing in geological remote sensing and was born in South Africa. He has travelled extensively in Africa, having adventures such as tracking lions at night, fighting bush fires on the Savuti plains in northern Botswana and being charged by an elephant! His love for the bush works its way into his writing.

Read more about him here or follow Inspector Kubu on Twitter or Facebook.

Next Up, Gail Schimmel

Gail Schimmel is talented and has a great sense of humour. It's no surprise to discover that she's been writing stories since she could put pen to paper. 

Now Gail fits her writing into any spare moment she can snatch, when she’s not busy running her own consultancy as a specialist in advertising law and raising two children. 

In 2007 she published a children’s book, Claude & Millie, under her married name Gail van Onselen. Her first adult novel, Marriage Vows, was published in 2008, also by Kwela Books. Gail lives in Craighall Park, Johannesburg, with her family.

Catch her on Twitter or visit her blog.

 And 3 for 3, Fiona Snyckers.

Fiona Snyckers was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she studied English Literature. She has been writing fiction since childhood and is the author of the new adult Team Trinity series and the YA prequel, Trinity Rising. She is awfully fond of cats and handbags, and is one of that rare breed of authors who can write without the help of coffee.

Catch Fiona on Twitter or at her website.