Why Kelly Will Win

My writing process is FAR too messy.

I was driving home from taking my kitty, Ms. All Ball, to the vet this morning and I had one of those epiphanies I always seem to get right about two-thirds of the way through a novel. This is what it was:

I don't know where I'm going.

Oh, you say, really, Tate (Lyda)? Again?

Yes, again.

Look, I just have to surrender to this moment because it seems to be part of my process. I always seem to end up here, no matter how much prep I do before I write a novel (and, despite appearances, I do do SOME. I at least have a completed proposal, which is supposed to be a rough outline of the plot.) My biggest "problem" is that I'm a very organic writer. Things just sort of come out in the process of writing, and, unlike Kelly (or at least what I understand of his process -- he can, no doubt, correct me if I've mischaracterized him), I don't "fire" characters that stop behaving the way I'd planned. I just... run with it, and that can lead all sorts of weird and unexpected places that then fundamentally change the course of the novel.

And that's kind of where I find myself today.

In fact, my writing process is a lot like this post. It's rambling. It's messy, and full of parenthetical phrases (subplots), and in great need of revising.

So my plan for the day is to do some re-reading. I'm going to read what I said I was going to do in my proposal and compare it to what happened so far in my novel. Then I might have to do a little thinking about how to adjust the two so that a novel I can live with comes out at the end.

My word count may be in the negative numbers tomorrow.

Ode to Joy.