For most of my life, my writing process was more like gestation than construction; an essay or story would grow in my head until I put it on paper fully-formed. When a high-school English teacher wanted us to include a “jot outline” of rough ideas along with the essay, I would do the outline after I finished (sometimes as late as the beginning of class) because writing down half-formed notions was simply not part of my writing process, and even in university I typically wrote my term papers at the (manual) typewriter, and the only necessary revisions could be accomplished with Liquid Paper. When I got my first computer in the spring of 1989 this process became even quicker and more seamless, because with a word processor I could revise without even leaving a detectable trace. And while this may sound wonderful to those of you who struggle to write, it meant I never developed the cognitive tools to write anything more than a few thousand words long, just as I never developed the cognitive tools to gain understanding of any topic I couldn’t master by simply paying attention to the book or teacher.
It has certainly not escaped the notice of my long-term readers that most of my fiction is in the short-short category (< 2000 words), with only occasional forays into the full-length short story category (< 10,000 words). So last summer, when I wanted to tell a story that needed more time and space for character and setting development, I needed to learn a new skill: actually plotting a story rather than simply shouting “Eureka!”, reaching up to grasp the light bulb over my head, and quickly inserting it into a document. Most of the work was still done in my head, and my first two novellas were written all out of sequence, with each scene or section written as it developed in my mind, then put together in proper sequence and polished. And what I learned from that process made me confident enough to embark on a still-larger project, a short novel (in the 45,000 word range) set in the spring of 1925 and tentatively entitled The Big Boom. So far, I’ve finished the first draft of the prologue and first three chapters, and yesterday I started chapter four (which will trigger some additions to chapter one). This story seems to be developing more in sequence than the other two, though it may not continue in that wise; still, given that “Hellhound” was written in sequence to a greater degree than “Until the End of Days“, who knows? I’m taking my time and enjoying the process, and I hope y’all will enjoy the result.
