My Writing Process
In the year and a half that I've actually explored being an author, I think I've been pitched 10-20 different writing workshops, apps, or workbooks to be the best writer. The second I publicly announced my intentions to self-publish and made my author's email public, I started getting these pitches.
I find these products unnecessary. I typed in "How to Format a Book in Google Docs" and got a series of free answers. There is a little bit of a learning curve (getting the page numbers right, formatting chapter headers, and page breaks), which was a little guess-and-check.
The biggest downside to using Google Docs was uploading the book to KDP only to find out that the page break didn't take and that a chapter started on the left side instead of the right. It's inconvenient but certainly not the biggest issue.
Then, I came across various writing processes that each person deemed 'essential' to get a book right. Every approach was different. So I asked myself: What is the right way to write a book?
The right way, I learned, is the way you want to write.
That's not profound at all. That's the point. I think there are a series of people who approach writing as the smaller part of a grander scheme. The book is the idea, but the process is the product. That's why every software claims to be the best, the biggest, and the most innovative.
Gatekeeping appears to be rampant in the industry. Will millions of books being published every year, it's clear that gatekeepers are only influencing a fraction of the aspiring authors.
You can use Google Docs. You can use Canva or Photoshop to make your cover. You can use a search engine to ask questions. Or, you could hire a person to format, design, and upload your book.
I don't think there's a wrong way to do it. The same, I think, goes for the actual writing of the content, especially in the first draft. And I say there's no wrong way to do it because every word is one word closer to a published book.
If you're sitting there and asking yourself if everything you write makes sense, the only thing you'll get is discouraged. The first draft is vomit, that's the point. There will be spelling errors, and there will be continuity issues. That's part of the process. The great thing about a written piece is that it can be expanded or shortened. You can't do anything if the words aren't there.
My chosen process goes as such:
I don't keep a bible. Rather, I keep two one-sheets. The first is a character sheet to keep their personalities consistent throughout the book. The second is a beat sheet, where each chapter gets a two-second summary. Some beat sheets go further, but I find it constricting.
From there, I write in a stream of consciousness until that stream runs dry. I tend to be able to do this in bursts. When I first started, that meant daily bursts. Now, I tend to write twice a week. It's the most I can do while balancing work, exercise, and leisure time.
Why stream of consciousness? I find it freeing. If I write down an exact plot line, I risk sacrificing a unique idea. Getting too in the weeds about consistency, at least in the first draft, stifles my creativity.
Feedback used to make me sick. Even if it was about the work, it felt personal, like I was a failure, not that someone wanted to see a better version of it. When someone provides feedback, they're championing you. It's the most important tool in your arsenal.
I regret skipping the feedback portion with 'Flower,' as I ended up missing spelling errors and sentence fragments. It felt horrible that I'd let the book be released like that. Spelling errors happen, and they can even slip by your readers, but this step simply can't be skipped. I'm fortunate that KDP allows for updates to the product, and I offered free copies to any purchasing readers.
I also encourage developmental editing. Having a professional or freelance editor review your work can enhance even the slightest detail, helping make the work more realistic and true to the world it's told in. After developmental edits are made, they move on to heavy edits, which address sentence structure and grammar.
Again, there are many right ways to write a book, but this is my way.