Here we are again, this time, examining your writing process as well as—and we’ll get to that soon enough—why you write what you write. Sometimes you can’t exactly say why you’re drawn to a particular genre. You may like romance because you like an HEA (happily ever after), or you like fantasy as you’re always drawn to other worlds. Whatever captures your imagination is something very individual to you, and it’s something that you’ll explore as well as you go along. You discovered this a bit in a previous semester, when you started out writing a straight romance, then found out you’re so much more comfortable adapting those romantic concepts to fantasy. More revelations we come along soon enough this semester, and this will become more apparent when you write a closing paper at the end.

Process is something we’re sometimes slow to discover. It’s the “how” of what we’re writing. You mentioned in the beginning essay you don’t find outlining as helpful as it could be. Well, I’ve discovered over the years there’s really two basic kind of writers out there—the pantsters and the planners. The pantsters write by the seat of their pants—start the story and then let the characters take them where they may. The planners find this process horrifying. They outline, they use index cards, bulletin boards, collages—anything to keep them in sequence and on track. Most writers fall somewhere in between. Your using a journal is a good example of this. I always have what I call my story guide. It’s a kind of a journal in which I list my characters, their names, occupations, descriptions, characteristics, etc. I list the main plot of the story, the conflict, the dark moment, mostly all the things I need to keep straight as the story progresses. For example, you forget how old one of your characters is, or in what town they’re to meet the villain at the end. This gives you something you could always refer back to. It’s also a handy place to list changes you want to adapt in later chapters when you’re editing a draft.

A place to write can be tricky at times when you live with other people. Unless you have a dedicated space at home, you sometimes have to shift around our make compromises. But it could also be outside of where you live. It could be a favorite bench in a park, a table at Starbucks, or in the 3rd floor lounge in the Student Center (I wrote a flash fiction piece there once!) It’s anyplace where you can wrap your head around your story. And that’s only up to you to decide.