My writing process

Now that I’ve submitted two more stories for consideration by Battlecorps, I can take a couple of minutes tio write something about my actual writing process.

A story idea can start with a "What if?" question "What if someone had been the only survivor of a lance multiple times? (The Lance Killer) Sometimes it’s taking a faction I’ve not seen any stories on (The Outworld Alliance in Groundpounder). A couple have been written in responce to a call from Jason the editor for an anthology (Salvage and Family Ties) Wherever the story idea comes from, I note it down and it goes on a spreadsheet.

As I am writing this, I have nearly a dozen stories in different stages of being written. One story has only three hundred words written, while another has nearly thirteen thousand written. I may finish all of them one day, but whenever one is completed, another one is raised from another list and started.

Why so many at once? Because it keeps me fresh. I don’t get bogged down in one story. Sometimes, if its for an anthology, I will concentrate on a story until it is done, while another week might see me working on three or four different stories. That is why you may see a couple of stories from me close together, then several months past before you see another one or two from me.

As for the actual writing process, I am a discovery writer: I have a starting point, an idea of what’s going to happen, and where the story will end up. But I don’t plot every action, or character in detail. Sometimes, I don’t have a character’s name picked out beforehand.

I write a first draft, put it away for a few days and work on others stories, then come back to it. I go through, rewrite some, and then send it to the workshop, and go back to the other stories. When I have enough feedback from the workshop, I look at the comments they have made and decide what to do with the comments. I make changes to the grammar and rewrite when the I think the comments make sense. I then send the story back to the workshop and the process repeats.

After a couple or three passes through the workshop, it gets sent off to Jason and I go back to working on other stories. There is no end: it’s a continual progression, a cycle of writing, rewriting and submitting. I have three more stories I’ve recently submitted to Battlecorps, which I’m still waiting to hear back on. In the meanwhile, I write.

Craig