You’ve heard it said that every bestseller was once a germ of an idea. Ask ten authors how they brought their ideas to life, and each would tell you their not-so-similar processes.

While most authors—me inclusive—would swear on coffee and a select few on alcohol, most would agree that the process is never clear cut, nor cast in stone.

For me, the process almost always begins with a recurring fantasy of living in the world I’m dreaming of creating, then coffee to obsess over how I’ll start, more coffee to do nothing but stare at a blank screen, and an immense desire to remain in the fictional world while avoiding the actual act sitting down to write.

I won’t lie, I’ve toyed with the idea of smoking a blunt to see if that would draw the words out, get me deeper into the woods of my character’s mind.
I shit you not.

However seductive the fantastical world is, I somehow always manage to find the will to place my fingers on the keyboard and let the words flow.

Sounds awesome, yeah? Not really.

Because moments after letting my fingers fly across the keyboard, I’d do the one thing, break the cardinal rule of reading what I wrote instead of jumping right into the next chapter.

When that happens, I do that stupid thing that got me wanting to smoke weed in the first place. I loathe what I wrote and obsessively fret about every undotted I and uncrossed T. I sometimes ctrl-A-delete the entire draft.
Yeah, I’m that crazy.

The thing is, I’d read and even made tons of post-it notes to remind myself that the first draft mustn’t be perfect, the first draft ought to be shitty, and whatever writers tell themselves to birth a book.

Still, I obsess.

I worry about lines, facts, sentence structures, the story’s practicality, and so forth.

While this “process” often gets me totally burned out and give in to that nagging voice of not being good enough, it does nothing to stop me from sitting in front of my laptop the next day to grind, grind, and pound on the keyboard until I create a draft worth reading.

See, there’s no sugar-coating it. Writing is hard. I mean, it should be. Here you are literally playing God. You’re creating entire human beings, reimagining world events, activities, and reenacting real-life situations. Surely a feat like that would require run-of-the-mill craziness, not to add anxiety.

But you must tell the story, right?

I mean it’s burning within you; the characters occupy a larger part of your brain cells. You read about or experience something and picture different scenarios of “what ifs.” You read books and feel you should write yours too, tell your version. And if you’re honest with yourself, this feeling won’t leave you until you satisfy it.
And if left unsatisfied, it would hound you to your grave.

So, you say, “Darn it, why not?” And then you begin, giving little thought to “process” but just showing up daily to give voice to the people in your head. When you complete a book, you, like a mother, forget the pains of delivering a baby. You celebrate your published book and eagerly anticipate jumping right into your next one, forgetting the previous process (steps) and charting a new one.

There you have it then, there’s no “actual” writing process.

Seriously, there isn’t. All there is a burning desire to tell that story.
Doubt it? Write your next book and let me know if the “process” mirrored the previous one. While you do that, I’ll be out here in the boonies obsessing—I mean—writing my next book.

Winks.