#the circus' logo is now a luna moth i am very clever

[marypsue]

2 and 10!

from this meme

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

At the moment, I'm most excited to have something done to the standard where I can start sharing it with other people. I've had ideas for a handful of (what I think are) very cool horror scenes for Circus Luna involving bugs, though, and those are gonna be fun.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

'Haphazard', probably.

Actually, that's not so much true anymore. For a number of years, I've used a method that I lovingly refer to as 'plough straight into the thing and go forward chronologically until the steam (and the plot) run out', and I genuinely do not know how I managed to finish anything that way, even though my AO3 profile shows that clearly, I did.

The last twooooo-ish? years and the process of writing the monster longfic, though, have - not totally overhauled, but maybe evolved my writing process. I actually made notes to make sure I could replicate what I'm calling the 'high beams method', so named after driving with high beams on after dark. You know where your destination is, and you should know the major twists and turns along the way, but you won't see the whole path illuminated until you drive up close enough to it. It's a method that involves a lot of outlining, but in short bursts, getting more detailed as the drafting catches up to the outline (and sometimes changing or detouring depending on the conditions, so long as it'll eventually get you to the right destination). And then of course one must apply structural and stylistic edits; that's the part I'm still working out how to do effectively, though I think I've got enough of a grasp on it now to make something serviceable.

Possibly this is what more experienced, more famous, more successful writers have been talking about all along when they say 'the first draft is just you telling yourself the story' and 'the first draft of anything is crap' and all that stuff about first drafts that aren't polished or readable or written in chronological order or whatever. Perhaps what I am here calling 'a detailed outline' is what they've been calling a 'first draft'. I don't think I would have a method that actually works for me if I hadn't worked it out for myself, though, even if all kinds of smart, knowledgeable people had already told me to do it in exactly the same way I 'worked out for myself'. Some things just don't click until you think they were your idea all along.