The process

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

I've never been the type of person to outline or even plan things out too much in my creative writing. When I first started writing the novella, I frankly had no idea how it was going to end; one of its major plot lines did not even occur to me until I had been working on it for about a month. When I plan my writing too much, it sounds trite. To me, the best raw, emotional content comes from writing on the fly. This is virtually the only area of my life where I like to be spontaneous, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Deep down, I think once I have the time to really sit down with this and start formulating sentences, I'll be fine. It's the planning that's psyching me out.

Until I wrote the novella in my capstone and was required to spend a solid month editing it, I always likened my writing style to a flash flood, or a tornado, or something of that ilk. My inspiration would come full force out of nowhere, and I would frantically create page after page without so much as a break. Before I knew it, I would be done, and that would be that. Now I have a better handle at going back and seeing what realistically works and what doesn't, although the major chunk of my writing is still created in a few long, frenetic sittings. After any of these sessions, I tend to feel as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders; in this respect, Hemingway is dead on in his comparison of writing to bleeding, especially since I consider my words to be such a part of me.