I am thrilled to welcome fellow Swanwicker Andrew Marsh to the blog today. I’d also like to congratulate him on the launch of his new book, Jack Janson and the Storm Caller.
I love to hear about the processes other writers use to create their work.
Here, Andrew gives us a lovely insight into his own writing process. I hope you find it useful:
I take my writing seriously, just like a job. So when I am writing I am fully connected to what I am doing. If I am writing a novel, I will usually read through the last page or so of the previous day’s writing so that I know where to pick up from and start. I don’t finish at the end of something because then you have a vacuum, a ‘what happens now’ moment? It is far easier to pick up from a place where you can see the action and move on than looking at the end of a chapter and wonder what you were going to write.
I will have my notes and ideas pages at my side and any timeline diagrams or key information that I need. This is particularly the case in the Jack Janson series that I am writing where there are lots of different places, tribes and names that I will need to keep tabs of and how they all fit together. There is nothing worse than losing your thread because you can’t remember a character’s name or tribe.
With everything to hand, I start and when I am in flow I just let it happen and keep up the momentum. If I pause and think of something that is interesting for later, I make a quick note in my notebook, date it and get back to what I was writing.
I will usually start writing first thing in the morning and just keep going until I am hungry, grab a quick lunch and go back to writing. For new writing, I make quick edits of typos as I go, but don’t get hung up about missing a few; it is better to keep the flow and write than continually stop to correct. I have a minimum daily word count that I aim for – 1500 words – but frequently surpass that and get well into the thousands each day. For a novel, my focus is on writing that book, so I sit down every day and keep writing.
I print as I go, usually chapter by chapter and put them in a lever arch file specific to that book. I always back up, usually to a pen drive and, when I have finished, I do a full book backup on an external hard drive. I don’t leave things to chance with my writing; I save and backup at all times.
I keep index cards of my writing progress and transfer that to a spreadsheet every day so that I know how I am progressing. When editing for a new draft I update my spreadsheets with what I have changed and when and also make notes on the front cover of that version what has changed. I never over-write anything, and make a new draft each time I edit. Each draft is printed off so I will end up with a shelf full of lever arch files for any book. Again, backed up each time.
I keep good electronic records of each draft and progress for each book. Writing should be treated like any other profession and with that comes planning, focus and organisation.
Thank you so much, Andrew for sharing your tips with us.
You can buy Andrew’s new book, Jack Janson and the Storm Caller, on Amazon here.
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