My writing process changes every time I write a story, whether it’s a novel or a short story.
I always have to pants my way through what I’m writing, even if I’m writing to submit to an anthology with a theme or a literary journal.
Most of the time with short stories, I mull the idea for a long time (can be a month or more) before finally sitting down to write for four to five hours, and that will be the final product aside from editing.
The Artist was different.
With this one, I had such varied ideas going into it that I wasn’t sure what I’d write exactly. I needed to start my first draft on paper and then shift it to the computer (Scrivener) once I had a better idea of what I was doing. I quickly pantsed my way through the second draft, wanting to finish it quickly, which worked out really well because I found out faster that the whole thing needed to be rewritten into a third draft for the final idea.
I’ve had similar things (but not the exact same thing) happen with novels (Brotherhood of Secrets in particular) but not with short stories. My writing brain loves to surprise me with new processes.
In today’s Patreon post, I share the idea behind each of my three drafts and how incredibly different they were, all the way down to the basic topic of the story. Join for $1/month and read it right now, plus you’ll get access to The Artist over a month before others who pre-ordered it get to read it.
Or you can pre-order The Artist and read it on March 30, 2021 when it comes out.
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