My Writing Process Part One: Rough Work

Many authors will dramatize their writing process, creating a myth

that their effort is akin to a religious experience. I’m here to tell you that although what I

go through to write a novel is often difficult and requires resilience and patience, the

process is similar to much of the work every reader does in their own works. Is making a

fabulous meal less creative? How about putting in the efforts required to build a house?

Or, in the case of my series of posts in May, make firewood.

Subscribe below for more posts to see what I mean

All winter the woods are loud with the sounds of chainsaws cutting down

towering oaks, maples, ash, and birch. Thunderous skidders belch polluting exhaust

into the clean frigid air as they drag bundles of trunks weighing multiple tons out to an

open landing at a woods road. There the trees are deposited in piles tall as a house

ready to be grappled onto the backs of poorly maintained logging trucks to be

transported to an open pasture. As spring approaches the crew of lumberjacks who will

transform the logs into firewood, begin to work the pile.

Two cords of split green firewood were delivered today. That’s half of what we will

burn next winter. Dumped in the driveway, hundreds of 20” pieces wait for me to start

carrying them down to the storage area in very heavy wheelbarrow loads. My annual

binge of cardiovascular torture. I haven’t even considered touching a single piece so far

because the work of creating my fifth novel has priority over wood fires in May. The

driveway is a sunny spot where the wood can dry and get lighter to carry, when I get to

it.

I drove up to the pile this afternoon and the thought came to me of how the

making of cord wood might be a simile for the writing process while making my novel. Yes, really!

For this writer, the work of making a first draft sometimes takes on the rough

nature of lumbering. This winter I have gathered all my characters and story elements

together. There have been moments of heavy lifting, when I wanted to take a chainsaw

to my work. Research might lead me down the rabbit hole of information, both useful

and useless, leaving me with a notebook full of scribbles and sticky notes scattered

about.

Now, spring has arrived. All my characters, scenes, chapters, a hundred

thousand words are haphazardly complied in a long Word doc. I stand before the giant

mass of rough material, ready to process it into the fourth title in the Lizzie Millett Series.

To be continued...