The Writing Process

I’m still toiling away at coming up with new story ideas and excerpts worthy enough for the world to see. However, in my writing process, which I have detailed for you before, I decided to look up other authors whose work I enjoy reading to learn about what they go through when they’re in their writing processes. Hence, here’s Eric Jerome Dickey’s writing process. I came across this while reading fellow blogger Dottie's from California's blog. I found the way he approached his literary works to be quite intriguing.

Dottie asked:

What does your writing process involve (i.e. do you get up early and write, write at night, use a computer or write long-hand) (yes, believe it or not, some writers still do write long-hand)? Do you set limits on yourself (I will write 50 pages today)?

And he answered:

No limits. It’s about quality over quantity. I’d rather have four tight pages over two days than 20 sloppy ones. I work a scene at a time, a chapter at a time. Writing a book is not a race. It’s a journey.

There it is, simple and plain. When I wrote my novel, “As I Wait,” I gave myself assignments. I’d write at least ten pages a day, no exceptions. I wrote the book in a month (it was almost 200,000 words); it was good but certainly not great. In the end, I was actually quite disappointed with it. I wasn’t trying to meet a deadline, I just wanted to get it done so people could read it. Although the reviews were pretty good (from my friends and family), I knew my quality of work spanned much farther than that. Therefore, I made no real attempts to get it out there. Same thing with my novel “Edge of Sanity.” They are both well-written novels however, they are both not accurate representations of my level of writing. Hence, I may tell people I’ve written them but I do it in  a way to put it out there so I don’t have to talk about it later. When people ask, “Really? You wrote a book?” I tend to speed through the explanations and sort of roll my eyes at the enthusiastic compliments.

I appreciate the flattery but I’d rather be complimented on work that I actually put the time in; work that I spent a journey on and not a half-hearted race.