Heather Demetrios >> Mindfulness + Coaching for Writers

Orient /

Flow

Natalya* hated her process. She thought it was inefficient and disorganized and random as all get out. When we began working together, it became clear that the way she orients really works for her because it is the only way she ever gets into flow. No matter how many different strategies she tried, the way this woman flows is the way she flows. So rather than working against the current (get it?), she began embracing this aspect of her process. Here’s a bit of what her process looks like:

• She works in a notebook, writing by hand whatever comes to her. It’s a lot of writing, often pages and pages. We discovered that she begins flowing and the whole scene comes together when she hits on what she calls an “axis point.” This is a striking image that works as a point from which the whole scene turns. We discovered that although she has the setting process archetype, it was more specific than that. Now she knows that the minute she hits on the image, the scene will come - it always does. So even if it takes her pages or days to write her way into discovering that image, she trusts it will come and can enjoy the process of discovering it. In order to induce images to come to her faster, she could explore various visual inspirations (Pinterest etc.), but for her it’s really about just writing and writing until it comes.

Notice how when she stopped bemoaning her process and began understanding what she was doing and why she was doing it, Natalya started to have fun. The writing was better, too. Of course!

Courting Flow & Explore

Brené Brown, the researcher and social scientist, says this about her process in her book Atlas of the Heart:

“A big part of my book writing routine is watching super predictable, formulaic mysteries—even ones I’ve seen ten times. These shows would bore me to tears if I were in a normal mental space. But when I’m coding data and writing, something weird happens.

It’s like the shows lull the easily distracted part of my brain into a rhythmic stupor, setting free the deeper, meaning-making part of my brain to engage and start making connections between things that don’t seem connectable. I actually sit on my couch with a notepad next to me, because the more bored I get, the more ideas bubble to the surface. This has been my process for thirty years…”

Orient /

Trouble-shooting

Lucy, an interior designer when she’s not writing, was intrigued by this question I asked her:

What’s your process for designing a room?

Barely a second went by before she answered: I find a piece that acts as an anchor for the whole room’s concept, and I build everything out from there.

When I asked her if she might use a similar strategy in revising how she uses her process - which we’d had earlier discovered was visual, but wasn’t quite working yet - she immediately agreed to try.

We knew that her chapters were inspired by one clear “moment” that happened in the scene, usually at the beginning, and that that was how she oriented. We knew she was visual and had been bringing in tools to work with that, such as tarot. (We began looking to see what court cards her characters were, which helped develop their power dynamics and tendencies).

And yet…she was still struggling to write bingeable chapters. It was when we hit on this concept of choosing an anchor that she really began to articulate her process. Now, she chooses an image that anchors the whole scene - could be a moment, or an object (objects are very powerful for her - they inspire plot, backstory, and character). Once she hits on her anchor, then everything in the scene is built around that - this affects not only plot and story but tone and setting as well.

Revision

Cynthia Leitich Smith, the young adult author, once shared her process in a small group conversation with me and a few of my writing buddies. Waht she said made all of us audibly gasp: her process, at least at the time, was to writer her first draft, then delete the entire thing off her computer so it is for real gone, then begin writing the second draft from scratch.

She believed that the the first draft was just her telling herself the story, and now that it was in her, she’d be able to really write the thing. I like this idea because it keeps you from getting too precious about your darlings, or falling into tinkering.

My friend, the author Camille DeAngelis (Bones and All, Life Without Envy ) wrote a fantastic post about how her writing process is a “patchwork process,” not unlike how she quilts. Read her post here.

Explore

Rosa* begins all of her scenes with an image. That image is way gets her into the scene, helps her determine not only place, but the tone of the scene and what happens there. We discovered during our dialogue that when she was struggling with a scene, it was likely because the image she had originally chosen wasn’t giving her enough. Once she had the right image, she was able to build out the scene, as though the image became the scaffolding of the whole chapter.

When she’s in Explore mode, trying to get back on course, she knows that it’s time to go hunting for an image.

ORIENT & Revision

Donna begins her day by printing out the writing from the day before and reading it out loud. As she reads, she writes notes on a separate pad of paper for ideas for the next scene, and she revises on the page as she reads, using a pen to add and subtract as needed. Before she writes her next scene, she puts the changes into the one from the day before.

ORIENT

Elise orients based on mood. If she wakes up and is in a darker, more emotional mood, she begins with setting. If she’s in a chipper mood, she orients with dialogue. I mention this in one of the lectures and I think it’s a great way to approach your writing for the day, allowing your mood to guide the way, to work with it, not against it.