Why I Don't Blog About Writing

I feel that publishing advice is something concrete I can give. I mean, I've worked all sides of it and I network a lot--I know, more or less, how things work there.

But I've always been hesitant to give writing advice. My reasoning is...everyone is different.

I *loathe* people who give advice about something like writing as if it's the gospel truth. Every time I hear a writer talk about something that "all" writers need to do, it irritates me. Most of the time, I don't feel like it's true for me. And then I wonder that if I wasn't *me*, and I was a total newbie just starting out and I was given a picture, by an "expert", showing what a writer was supposed to be...wouldn't that be rather devastating? Wouldn't I then kinda feel like...well, maybe I'm not a writer after all, since clearly I'm doing it wrong.

I was asked by a CotA reader recently about my process. I got pondering it for awhile, and thought maybe it wouldn't hurt to talk now and then about what works for me with writing, how I got started, and all that stuff. You can take it or leave it.

Here are a few notes on my process...

I write quickly.

I joke that I have ADD, but in reality, poor attention span is part of my bi-polar disorder. When I'm manic, I can't focus at all. The rest of the time, I do jump from project to project quite a bit.

I have about a maximum of two weeks to accomplish things. If a task goes beyond that, it doesn't happen. Video games, TV shows on DVDs, exercise routines...you name it. I have a two week threshold. My interest tends to start waning by the end of the first, and by the end of the second, you couldn't pay me to keep it up.

It's the same with writing. I can't spend more than two weeks on any given project. If I can't finish the first draft of a novel in that amount of time, there's no telling when I'll get it done. (Case in point: River took twelve days of intense writing to complete the first draft. Wolfe took three years for just the first draft because I didn't get it done when I first started.)

Typically, when I go to write a book, I have to sit down and write intensively, almost non-stop, for two weeks. This involves writing sessions of ten to thirteen hours a day with only brief breaks to eat/walk the dog. When it comes to something like National Novel Writing Month, I prep ahead of time by stocking the cupboard with crackers and slicing up some cheese, and buying stuff like pizza pockets.

I do *not* like to be disturbed during this time. The need to sleep irritates me. I hate cooking. I won't socialize. My ex used to somehow psychically know the LEAST opportune moments to wander over and say, "What are you doing?" and totally screw up what I was doing. (If you've read River...know the final bit emotional scene? I was a couple paragraphs from finishing that, nearly in tears, and he just strolled in. Ass.)

This is why I have the next Bloodlines sequel, Lineage, sitting here at 30K. I've done that over...um...a year and a half? I need to spend two weeks and finish it, but it's really hard to do that with something half finished.

My eSerials, obviously, work a little differently. My max word count on one project was for NaNoWriMo--90K in about three weeks (50K in seven days, 30K in the next seven, and the last bit over week three when I didn't want to do it anymore). Children of the Apocalypse Part Two, however, hit about 120K. I'm not convinced I can do that in two weeks.

What I tend to do there is, every few months, sit down and seriously write three or four chapters. I'll spend a week or two doing that, and then drift onto something else for awhile. Yes, it's occurred to me to try that on Lineage, but it's not working yet because the main character is a bitch to deal with and I mostly want to kill her and go back to writing my vampire Zara.

(Crazy writer rant over now.)

So anyways, that's kinda my basic process. I sit down and write a whole fucking lot or I get bored. YMMV.