my writing process

i’m just a dozen google docs in a trench coat

Whoa, another newsletter! So soon? What can I say, I guess I’m just feeling inspired by everything I’m reading on Substack lately. I’ve been on here for two years without really using the social features, but it’s like I closed the app in December, opened it again in April, and suddenly it’s bursting with so many writers talking about creativity and craft and how publishing makes you suffer (but, like, in a soothing way that makes me feel seen).

And something Leigh Stein wrote about how to decide what content to create as an author resonated with me:

Is doing this thing (writing a Substack newsletter, posting to Instagram, etc.) connecting me to other human beings or is it alienating me from them?

Social media tends to fill me with such intense dread (it’s something I want to think more about and work on), but man, do I long for connection! And that’s what writing on here feels like right now, so I’m going to roll with this for as long as it feels fun and I have things I want to talk about. I wrote the first draft of this newsletter with my thumbs on my phone as I was standing in the bathroom getting ready for bed, just because I suddenly wanted to—a weirdly nice feeling.

I’ve been enjoying reading about people’s writing processes on here—it’s fascinating to me how different everyone’s is, and I’m always curious about new things I could try out or adjust in my own. And I felt moved to talk about mine right now because I’m starting something new again. This will be my sixth time planning a novel. One of those projects is shelved for good; another is published; another is two-thirds written and backburnered for now, but I’m hoping to return to it one day. And three more (including the one I’m starting in on now) are contracted to come out at some point.

With each new project I work on, I feel like I figure out a little bit more of what works for me. But here’s what my process looks like, these days:

I gather some string. I make a messy brainstorming doc and write down a bunch of notes about what I find compelling, what kind of story my heart is calling me toward right now, books and movies with vibes I want to emulate, ideas I want to chew on, plot and genre elements and tropes I’ve been wanting to try out. I have a longer running doc of ideas that might be fun to write one day, and I keep a Jennifer Lynn Barnes-style “id list,” and I’ll draw on both of those when I start this.

I think of the pitch first. I flew by the seat of my pants writing my debut and came up with the pitch after it was written, and rewrote and rewrote that pitch for, like, years. It was painful! I hope to avoid it wherever possible going forward.

I bounce it off other people. I’ll pitch the book to trusted critique partners, to my agent (and, if applicable right then, to my editor), and see how they respond, or if they have feedback. For the book I’m starting on now, I pitched it to my agent a couple days before we hopped on an editor call for UNFINISHED BUSINESS—and when the editor asked what else I was working on, I pitched it then, too. Luckily she was into it!

I take a first stab at plotting it. This is a messy part of the process that usually takes me several tries—and even when I arrive at an outline I can work with, I know it’s probably all going to change as I go. I do so much replotting along the way, and in revisions, but it helps focus my thoughts to at least have a plan as a starting point. I start in a text Google doc and try to get the broad, tentpole events of the story down, using a beat sheet. I’ll noodle on this for a while. I’ll start a new tab and try again with a different beat sheet. (I’ve used the Save the Cat beat sheet, the Romancing the Beat beat sheet, the rom com beat sheet in Writing the Romantic Comedy). Once I feel like I have the biggest story beats down, I’ll start a new document and try to plan the whole thing scene by scene. If you’re thinking “Wow this is a lot of steps, how inefficient!”—each of these steps helps me think, and the thinking is the point for me at this stage.

The outline spreadsheet. Once I’ve played around with the scene-by-scene outline for a while (days, weeks) and feel good about it, I’ll start an outline spreadsheet, which will be my home base for the rest of the process. I devote a line to each scene I want to write. The columns are things I want to note and keep track of. There’s a “scene word count” column, a “total word count” column, a “percentage to target word count” column (I’m kind of obsessed with percentages and pacing). There’s a place for the date I finished drafting that scene, for notes about what I think needs fixing on the next pass. There are columns to note the purpose of each scene, the emotional turning point that needs to take place, the things that need to build at that point in the book. I’ll change the outline spreadsheet a lot as I go, moving scenes around, deleting them. And as I move into the process of revising, later, I’ll duplicate this in a new tab, clear out some of the columns and start over.

Along with this spreadsheet, there are a few other things I lean on throughout the drafting process:

A chaotic notes app note. The process of plotting will usually make me start getting ideas in between things, as I go about daily life—for scenes, for dialogue, for moments scattered all throughout the book. So I start a pinned note in my notes app to catch all of these ideas.

Character side docs. I generally never manage to figure out who exactly the characters are until I’ve gotten to the end of the first draft, but I like to at least get a few notes down about the emotional arcs and internal wounds I have in mind, and to have a space to gather vibes for each person as I go.

An overall vibes doc. I start a document that will be my compass when I forget what I want the story I’m working on to feel like and what the emotional core is for me. I’ll drop inspiration images, quotes, and comps in here, or lines that feel like they’re at the crux of what I’m going for, and I’ll reread and add to this steadily as I write.

A research list. I’ll brainstorm and look up nonfiction books I can read to help me think about aspects of the story, make a list, and get a bunch of Libby holds in. For UNFINISHED BUSINESS, that meant reading a lot of business nonfic. For my new spooky rom com project, I’ve been reading a lot about bookselling, because the love interest is a bookseller. I’ll read for research in between things, as I can, pretty steadily through the whole process from drafting to line edits.

A scene-by-scene ideas doc. I’ll make a more structured document with a table of contents that links to bookmarked sections for each scene. Basically: I get ideas out of chronological order, and I use this document to put them into chronological order—every now and then, I’ll go through my notes app and place the different ideas I’ve had in the proper places where they should go in the book. When I’m getting ready to plan that scene, it’s nice to have some ideas already waiting for me.

A diary doc. I keep one of these every time I’m drafting something new and every time I do a big revision. At the start of each writing session, I’ll date the entry and just brain-dump the thoughts and feelings and fears that might be jamming me up. Or I’ll write about what I think is going well, or what’s working for me process-wise so I can remember to do it again later. I love going back to my diary docs from earlier projects when I’m struggling, because I’ll realize, “Oh lol it’s okay, I always feel this away around this stage.”

A scene planning doc. Once I’ve done all this, I’ll be ready to start drafting, so I’ll plan out the first scene (drawing on that scene-by-scene ideas doc, so I’m not starting completely from a blank page). I like to make “thinking about what happens, in what order, and the structure/arc of the scene” into its own step, before I properly write it through and worry about making it real prose. I tend to write this scene plan largely in lowercase and italics—I don’t know why that just makes my brain feel safer somehow. It makes it feel lower stakes.

Once I’m ready to start drafting, I’ll start a new Scrivener novel file, create the first chapter folder and first scene as a text file within that, and create a stratchpad text file that I can dump my scene-planning notes into. And when I’m writing, I use the split screen mode, with the scene I’m writing on the left, and my scratchpad notes on the right.

Then I’ll write through the first scene! And I’ll alternate between planning a scene and writing a scene, over and over, until the novel is done. Along the way, I’ll write down the ideas I get out of chronological order in my notes app, and I’ll transfer them to the scene-by-scene ideas doc when I’ve accumulated a few. So far, it’s generally taken me three or four months to finish a first draft this way. I don’t know why that’s my natural rhythm, but so far it is.

I like to get to the end of a first draft without doubling back. That’s because I’ve accepted that, the way my brain works, the knowledge I’ll gain about the characters by getting to the end pretty much always requires some reworking of the whole story afterward. For me personally, there doesn’t seem to be a better way to arrive at that knowledge than by plowing through and making it all the way to the end of everyone’s character arc.

If I realize midway through that something needs to be completely reworked, I take detailed notes about what needs to change in revisions, and then keep moving forward as though I’ve already made those changes. I find that getting to the end gives me an added clarity that makes those changes easier and faster to execute, when I do go back.

I’m expecting to get notes back on UNFINISHED BUSINESS from my editor soon, so I’ll have to set aside the spooky rom com outline for a bit. But it’s been fun daydreaming about a new story for the past month, and I’m really looking forward to the moment I can hunker down again and start drafting something new.

Sending you all the best writing vibes! I’d love to hear more about your latest projects too, whatever stage of the process you’re at 💜

Love always,

Clare