What Works For Me

As you can imagine, I follow a lot of blogs/authors/sites having to do with the m/m community. It’s a great place to be and most of the time there’s a lot of fun and entertaining things.

Sometimes authors talk about their processes, how they get the words on the page, what weird quirks they have, and I love that. I love hearing how other people’s brains work. So these posts/conversations alway catch my interest. 

But sometimes they turn into instructions, about how one HAS to write or should be doing it and that’s when I’m left feeling inadequate. Like I’m doing it wrong. 

I hate that. 

It’s only recently that I’ve come to accept that my process is what works for me and it’s not wrong or bad or anything else. It’s right, for me, and that’s all that matters. 

Look here’s the thing. I don’t write everyday. Sometimes it’s better for me not to write for a whole week, even two, and then really get into the zone and write non stop for ten hours on a Saturday. 

I need concrete motivation. I like to set the timer for an hour and write like mad until it goes off, and then take a break and play a game or something. Yes an hour. Not 15 or 20 minutes. Yes an hour is a long time.  But that’s what I need. That’s the sweet spot, the amount of time that works best for me. 

And I need accountability. Which is where my rough outline of major plot points comes in handy. Not only does it give me a basis to write off of, but it allows me to hold myself accountable for what needs to get written. And once I gave myself permission to view that outline as completely and totally changeable I was able to use it in that manner and to get stories written. 

So this is what works for me. I’d never presume to tell anyone else this is how they should do things. It took me a lot of trial and error for figure out what I need as a writer to work, and it took a long time to accept that this is okay. Because there are a lot of how tos out there that are very specific about what should be done in order to be successful. But we’re all different and our brains work in different ways. This is how mine writes a story.