Process

One of my nerdy obsessions as a writer is process. Specifically, how do you (or I) go about your creative process? What works for you?

I credit some of my fascination with this to Edward Vilga, who I’ve known forever in many guises (yoga teacher, friend, author, producer, etc…) but, most importantly, in this case, in his capacity as a creative coach.

I’ve worked with him on a couple of projects now, and in this process, have come to see, recognize, and refine my own process of getting from A to Z creatively.

Among the things I’ve learned…I’m visual. Give me a pack of markers, pencils, a sharpener, and a paper planner and a blank notebook, and I’m a happy camper. There’s something about the tactile feel of pencil against paper that helps me think. Digital calendars/planners are death for me--out of sight, out of mind. I may fill them out, but it will never occur to me to look at them again.

I am so visual that I can’t read text beyond a certain number of pages on the computer, I have to print it out. With my first book, when I could not figure out how to integrate different aspects of the narrative (interviews, experts, reporting, my own memoir), I literally cut pages apart and pasted them back together in different order on bulletin boards. I did the first few chapters that way. My living room was a sea of bulletin boards with shards of paper tacked on with thumb tacks.

After that, I’d gotten the hang of it enough to do it all on the computer.

Now I use foam board (lighter, cheaper) and start projects by pinning index cards with ideas, chapter headings, pictures, quotes, etc. to them….Eventually I get around to sorting them into an order that makes sense to me.

I also collect books and movies related to the themes I’m writing about…and will often read an entirely different genre of book than I’m writing as an antidote to what I’m writing about. For my first book, about sibling loss, which was an emotionally tough process, I immersed myself in Harry Potter.

I can’t remember what I read during the second book, but I know it had nothing to do with cancer. Stephen King is my current go-to.

I also watch horror movies while I write. I have no idea why this works for me. I think it’s a mood thing. The opening music and scene in The Shining, when the VW bug is winding its way up the mountain, is perfect to me. (This is also why my kids are horror fans…because it’s hard to turn a movie on and off fast enough when toddlers are around.)

For this project, thus far, I’ve got a notebook devoted to it, as well as a column in my paper planner, a few smallish foam boards going, and a growing pile of books to read related to isolation and resilience. (Just started a resilience book club with my friends Bri and Anna to help me get through them.)

I’ve also re-started Julia Cameron’s exercise, the morning pages, which work a weird sort of magic in freeing me to actually act on ideas.

I’m also still working with Edward, so who knows what new piece of process I’m going to find. I find a real joy in figuring out how my brain likes to work, and working with it rather than against it. I also love hearing about other people’s process, because it gives me ideas to steal.

Much as I love all this, it does makes me a little sad for all the time I spent NOT knowing all of this. And even sadder for my kids, who, in school, have so often been taught there’s one right way to do things. Like writing, especially.

I recently found myself trying to instill a little rebellious “maybe that’s not the way your brain works” instinct in my eldest son, re: some of his schoolwork. Not sure he was listening, however. And I probably would not have at 14, either. Hopefully, he figures it out sooner than I did.