Consider this description of a writing process at ashmash.com:

The sensationalist way to describe my drafting process is:

• I don’t complete a first draft
• I never draft in order
• I never draft from outline
• My work constantly surprises me
• …And, yet, I never get writer’s block

Now that you’re solidly not on my side, here’s what this actually means.

I encourage you to read the entire post. Descriptions of writing processes always fascinate me. Huang writes well about hers and that leads me to reflect on mine. Trying to capture what we do as we write is good because self-reflection makes improvement more likely and the history or evolution of a process is interesting in itself (at least for me).

Is there a collection of writers’ descriptions of their process or processes? Something like Daily Rituals: How Artists Work edited by Mason Currey but more focused?

I like this quotation from Tana French’s In the Woods: “What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this–two things: I crave truth. And I lie.”

This is an interesting character because, in part, he knows himself well enough to just state an internal tension. Other internal tensions that he might not be as aware of are certainly possible as are external tensions (he’s a police officer). I have not read the whole book yet, but it already suggests a way to complicate characters. The explicit can be as fascinating as the hidden.