My writing workflow

Hello there - and welcome to my blog. I'm Drina, author of the Books of Lightness (you can read the first book, "On Virgin Moors", in serialised form on Royal Road, or purchase it on Amazon as either an ebook or a quite hefty paperback). Presumably, if you're reading this, you're aware of my work. If not, I'm very curious to know how you came by my blog - feel free to leave a comment saying!

In any case, the purpose of this blog is to share writing updates about the Books of Lightness series and other projects that I may work on in the future. I could just drop a number - be it a wordcount, a number of pages, or a rough percentage. But numbers on their own don't tell us much. So I thought, for this debut post, I'd do a rundown of my writing process. Hopefully that contextualises my future updates.

So, first thing's first: I write as a hobby. My job takes precedence, and that means sometimes I might be unable to write for lengthy periods of time (I normally work in TV; on some projects in the past, I've found myself working 70+ hours in a week on top of a lengthy commute - on weeks like this, it's simply not feasible to say "I'm going to write 15000 words"). I do also fall into the trap of rising and falling motivation. In the past I've gone months at a time without writing more than a few pages, because the motivation isn't there. Nowadays I've developed a strategy to mitigate this: I aim to write every single day (sometimes this is impossible, but as a target it ensures that I get into good habits). On every day that I write, I set myself a minimum wordcount of 250 words, roughly a page [NB: later on I'll explain the phases of writing, some of which negate my minimum wordcount].

Now, on a good day I'll write a lot more than 250 words. The average day where I have nothing more than minor obligations, and where I am able to really get into my writing, I'll turn out about 3000 words, give or take a little bit. My record is just over 14000 words, and 6000+ isn't uncommon if I get a day where I am literally able to devote my time to nothing but writing. And even when I'm struggling to get to 250 words, I'll usually do a bit more than that. It's rare that a sentence ends exactly on 250.

If I achieve my minimum, I count it as a good day's writing. Over the course of a year, these good days add up.

When it comes to the Books of Lightness - especially now that I've finished the first book - I have a workflow for each book:

1. The first thing I do is gather any material I've already written for the book. During revisions for "On Virgin Moors", I took about 6000 words including one complete chapter from Book 1 to Book 2. There were also a handful of fragments (normally no more than 250 words at a pop; often when I have an idea, I tend to write a little tiny bit in prose form). This is not final material but it's a starting point. And crucially, it takes my project's word count off 0.
2. Drawing on the already-written material and my notes - I have a document of broad-strokes plans, and more in-depth notes on certain storylines - I work out the rough framework of the book. At this point, that framework is basically just a list of the core POVs and where each should be ending up. I then populate this framework with a chapter list, broken down into individual scenes, as well as the core characters present in each scene (including specific character interactions I want to happen).
3. When this is done, I'm left with a broad list of chapters. (You can see in the example image how that looks; the main difference is that at the start of a project most chapters are empty.)
   
   
   
4. I write. I tend to go through the chapter list scattershot, writing scenes that stick out to me. Sometimes I'll go through a character's entire arc in quick succession. Other times I'll just jump from one core scene to another. For the first chunk of the book, there is no logic; I'm basically discovering the book as I go. Storylines change, some get added, some get removed. It's at this point that I figure out who the minor POVs are - a change from "On Virgin Moors" is the addition of secondary POVs, some of whom have just a few scenes, others of whom have a full arc but do not carry on beyond this book.
5. When I approach two thirds of the way through, I start to focus on tidying things up. I'll take the most complete POV (for "The Burgeoning Storm" that was Bessily) and prioritise that until it's complete in draft form. I also add in linking scenes to nearly-complete chapters.
6. Towards the end of the drafting process, I start thinking about going through the book systematically. You'll notice in the image some chapters are boldened. These are incomplete chapters (meaning: I haven't got a complete draft; no editing has been done whatsoever at this stage!). My first 250 words of the day are always on the first boldened chapter on the list. Today, for instance, I'll be working on David II | The Protection of the Reeve. Once I've checked off my 250, I will jump around again to whatever I most fancy writing - but crucially, I'm always getting closer to finishing whatever the next chapter is. This is the point in the process I'm at right now.
7. When I have finished drafting every chapter, I take a break, so that I can look at the text with fresh eyes. But before I do, I note down where the core characters/storylines ended up - so I can do some jotting for ideas for the next book.
8. I then go through the entire manuscript systematically. The first pass is entirely tightening up the prose, and fixing incomplete bits. The second pass, which I do one character at a time, is concerned with making sure that the individual arcs flow. While I'm doing this pass, I make note of any temporal description, any time a character's physical attributes are described, and anything which references an event in another chapter. I also note down any continuity errors. After the second pass, I action these changes.
9. With notes of every time a character is described, I can then easily check against what I've previously written, and make sure everything is consistent. The temporal notes allow me to make sure the chapters are properly sequenced. Which is important, because at this point I reorder the chapters into a rough sequence. Some might still move around, but broadly speaking they're in the right order.
10. I do another two passes, one going through the book in its theoretical chapter order for any continuity errors, and another for spelling/grammatical errors or things which are unclear.
11. Then, I'm ready to think of the book in terms of its place in the series. I look at what events need foreshadowing, and try to seed in little hints of what's to come. (I want all the big reveals to be theoretically possible to figure out ahead of time. For instance, one character's true identity could be reasonably guessed from "On Virgin Moors" alone and there's ample evidence by the end of "The Burgeoning Storm" to figure it out.) I also think about arcs for the next book, and make sure characters are in the right place. I got burned by not doing this for "On Virgin Moors". A couple of characters are not where they needed to be (one having gone somewhere, another having not gone somewhere) and I had to jig events around to bring them back on track.
12. That done, I take all the extra material and put it ready for use in the next book; keep the character glossary accurate; and make ready for publication. I read through an author's proof in case having a physical copy helps me notice anything, then go once more through the digital project.

So it's an involved process - and just because I've written 'x' amount of words doesn't mean that much of the book is 100% complete. Almost all of it has never been revised at all (there are a few passages that have been revised while linking them to other scenes, and the chapter pulled from "On Virgin Moors" had four editing passes while still a presumptive part of that book).

The good news is that revision doesn't take nearly as long as writing.

In any case, for "The Burgeoning Storm" I'm expecting the project to clock in at somewhere in the region of 335k words at the end of Draft 1. I'm currently just north of 309k. So I'm closing in on finishing this bastard of a draft. With a bit of luck, I'll have it done by the end of the year.