For me, most of my stories end up being “written in my head” before I ever attempt to write them down. So I know fairly well what is going on. Although, since they usually end up as just the important scenes, I do have to figure out how to tie everything together as I go along. But sometimes I feel as though there are so many stories in my head, I couldn’t possibly write them all down in my lifetime!

I am an outliner (even if most of the outline is in my head), and I’ve found that if I talk too much about an idea for a novel before I’ve started writing it, I’ll never write it. For me, sharing the story (out loud or on paper) finalizes it rather than writing it down. (And like Justine, I draft on the computer and think with my fingers–though I sometimes write scenes or notes on paper with a pen)

The exception was my last book (sadly not published yet), where I got really, really stuck on the ending. I realized the ending I’d (loosely) planned did not work. I told the whole story so far out loud to my sister, and somehow just telling it made it clear to me and I knew how to end it. I think because for me the *story* is not the same as the *plot*. Story includes theme and character quirks and the narrator, whereas the outline is just plot, just *what happens.*

I also have to defend brothers. My brother remains the only other person who likes my poetry, proving either that he is the only other person in the world with any taste, or that he is the best brother ever. : )

Also, I love that image of the finished book as a new baby and the idea as conception. Making the writing process like pregnancy I guess, which works. After all, you show it to more people the closer it gets to being finished. : ) (With or without Maenad orgies on the lawn!)

I love epiphanies like this!! Thanks for the very cool post, Justine & Sarah.

::goes off to mutter about book 5::

Interviews/ProfilesThe Agony Column interviews author Jeff Carlson (podcast) and Borderlands Bookstore owner Alan Beatts. (See also: SF Signal’s interview with Alan Beatts.)Steph Bowes interviews Foz Meadows.Justine Larbalestier interviews Sarah Reees…

For me it comes from my scriptwriting and film background where you need to know where you’re going due to the constraints and succinctness needed for the medium. The beats also come from there.

Playing with an idea with a friend has led to another world being born. But I don’t do that for most of them. I have notebooks filled with story ideas and details that I otherwise would remember. I find it especially useful since I’m usually developing several others at any one time and there’s too many other interesting and obscure facts up there as well as the research I’m currently pursuing.

Oh and the notebooks, as opposed to just using the computer, is because I’m also an artist and it’s more the feel of drawing as I write notes allowing me to think as I write and include maps and other relevant pictures.

People with bad memories are handicapped, I say!

I am far more like Justine – I have to keep things to myself & find it very difficult to share my work until I know what’s going on with it. I definitely figure out the story as I write, and that has to be a personal & private process.

1. I write everything longhand. And I edit it long hand. I spend a lot of time transcribing, which is also the step when I get so bored transcribing that I insert snarky things to liven up the process. This is a vital part of my voice.

2. My critique partners can do the “talk about things and critique stuff out loud” route. I can’t. Everything I ever write sounds absolutely insane. I did this once and was told that the only way my book would ever make sense would be if someone jumped out at the end and said, “Surprise! You’re on candid camera!”

… This was the first book I sold.

SO.

Although I do wonder if this Book Which I Must Not Write While I am on Drop-Dead-Line for the Other Book might be easier if I could just get someone else to figure out what happens after the first scene, and before the chicken and the magistrate.

Also, 3. I am no longer just lurking on Justine Larbalestier’s blog.

I am a good story repeater. Once I learn a story (like a fable or a fairy tale or similar) I can tell it over and over again. Sometimes with variations, sometimes word-for-word. (Whether or not I alter the wording in the retelling depends on how well I like the original wording. If I really liked it, it sticks whole. If not, I just carry the gist of it around in my head, and then when I need it the words mostly come back to me.)

But my own stories, when I get to yammering about them, tend to be all over the place. I don’t tell them start to finish. After they’re written, I can. But then I usually just let the other person read what I wrote.

Of course, if some of the players are artists, they can then mine the game for songs and pictures and stories, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it?

(1) And here the metaphor collapses, since, as my internet pen-friend kalquessa pointed out, baking is like visiting fairyland: one has to stay on the path and obey all the arcane rules or the whole venture comes to sticky end.

This was so awesome to read, though! Thanks for letting us in on the conversation.

Justine, I’m pretty much like you when it comes to not breathing a word. When people ask me what my WIP is about, I give the best non-answer I can come up with. Also, I have to say, I’m completely paper-based in the drafting part of things, and have no memory, AND I’m a mad outliner, which means there’s a LOT of paper floating around my house. (Every 30 pages or so, I transcribe it all into a Word doc in case the house burns down.)

Thanks for sharing — this was interesting.