My Creative Process

I am a “pantser,” not a plotter. This means I write “by the seat of my pants” and do not use an outline. Back in school, when we were supposed to write an outline for an essay, I’d write the essay first, then the outline. I’ve always hated them! For me, structure strangles creativity instead of inspiring it. Above all, I don’t know where I’m going till I get there. I write by listening to my characters. But it’s not as if I sit down at my desk and they speak to me without any effort on my part. At least 60% of my writing time is research: reading the hundreds of resources that help me understand the world I’m (re)creating.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King says “stories are found things, like fossils in the ground…part of an undiscovered, pre-existing world.” This certainly describes my process. I’ve always felt that my stories already existed in some nebulous other dimension; I “just” had to find them.

But I didn’t start out with the skull of the buried Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’d find a single vertebra, maybe a claw. It was years before I could see the shape of the whole. I began by recording what the characters gave me as it “came through,” almost always starting with dialogue. These conversations were completely out of order, like bones jumbled in a box. In The Outlandish Companion, Diana Gabaldon says she does this too: “I also don’t write in a straight line; I write in lots of little pieces and then glue them together, like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Once I’d found the pivotal pieces, a kind of outline took shape in my head. About 2004, I wrote the first draft of the final scenes in my four-book family saga; I’ve known how it would end for a long time, who would not survive the narrative and who would achieve a bittersweet happiness. I knew the saga’s major events. But getting from Point A to Point B to Point C, etc. all the way to the end was quite a challenge. Often the puzzle pieces didn’t fit because I hadn’t yet found them all or because I’d found pieces of other, inferior stories (i.e. most of my early drafts with characters who ended up on the cutting room floor). Only in my last draft did I write the scenes in order, chapter by chapter, not moving on to Chapter 2 till I was satisfied with Chapter 1, etc. 

Alice Walker and Kathleen Grissom have both said their characters speak to them like mine do. While I don’t actually believe I’m channelling spirits, there is something otherworldly about writing for me. In one of his autobiographies, Sidney Poitier talks about tapping into a universal consciousness in acting. Occasionally, I have found myself writing with seeming authority about things I definitely haven’t experienced and cannot remember studying. A cynic would say I did learn about them at some point but I’ve forgotten; this knowledge was simply waiting in my subconscious until I needed it. I’m not so sure.

I recently watched a YouTube video by author Michael La Ronn in which he discusses Dean Wesley Smith’s book about writing without an outline, Writing into the Dark. La Ronn says: “For me, writing is sacred. It’s as sacred as prayer. When I sit down and write and simply trust my creative voice and have full faith in it, I’m connecting with something higher than myself.” I got goosebumps. I understood completely. Inspired by Writing into the Dark, several people in one of my Facebook author groups decided that instead of pantsers, we want to be called “dark writers”—which is especially appropriate for me, who writes best when it’s dark outside! 

I need quiet to write, to commune with my characters and fully enter their world. I have writing friends who can write on trains or in busy coffee shops. That doesn’t work for me. My ideal writing setup would be a sensory deprivation chamber! Financial constraints have meant I’ve always lived with family or roommates. So in order to find the quiet I needed, I did most of my writing after everyone else had gone to bed, between 10 pm and 4 am. (As I type this, it is 2 am.)

This late-night writing plus a genetic predisposition has given me a sleep disorder called Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder. Now, even when I’m not writing, no matter what medications I take or what habits I change, I cannot fall asleep before 4 am, and I can’t wake up refreshed before 1 pm. A sleep doctor said I’m “hard-wired” to this schedule; I seem to be stuck this way, like a sci-fi character trapped on a parallel plane of existence.

So I would not recommend my writing process to anyone who wants to be healthy or successful. A sleep disorder that rules your life isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy. Authors who use outlines and can “write to market” have a much easier time finding readers. I may also be the slowest writer on the planet. I wish I could write in the midst of distractions and that I had more to show for the three decades I’ve had my nose to the grindstone. But I cannot despise my process, because it gave life to characters I love and to four complex books that are my pride and joy. 

Here’s another way I described my creative process of writing historical fiction to a reader:

Research till your pores exude truths about your chosen period. Make your story fit those truths more often than you tweak the truths to fit your story. Write a few sentences and realize you still don’t know nearly enough about ____ to write about it. Return to your research. When you feel you’ve reached critical mass on research, take several days off your paying job and turn off the world, including phone, text, email, and social media. Especially social media. Realize you still need to know more about ____. Order articles and books from your library about ____ and forge ahead as best you can till they arrive. Use the internet only for research. Forgo sleep and meals as your characters demand attention. Drag yourself to your paying job. After you get home from work each day, read your new research materials, fill in the missing details, and revise. The next time you can get a block of days off your paying job, repeat.

Now you know why The Lazare Family Saga took me three decades to write.