Planning your writing: is it a necessary evil; essential for success; a vital part of the writing process; a killer of creativity – or all (or none) of these?
Journeys vary. We may set off with a firm destination and a route in mind. We may wander and see where the fancy takes us. Or we may know where we want to end up but have no fixed plan for how to get there. And each of these works as a metaphor for someone‘s writing process – what works for yours?
It seems to me that it’s like following threads. Strands of yarn, all different colours, lengths and thicknesses. Like Theseus in the labyrinth, I follow a strand, running it through my fingers to see where it leads. Sometimes it leads to a tangle, a ball of other threads, or a dead end. Sometimes I choose a different thread, or sit down to unpick the knots in the one in my hand. Sometimes I knit a length of yarn into a square and tuck it into my pocket for later, and sometimes I knit strands together and see the beginnings of a blanket growing. And there’s the occasional mass unravelling.
Sometimes it all seems like an almighty mess, but it’s a necessary part of not just the writing process but the planning process as well. I can’t separate planning from writing; they seem to happen alongside one another: follow a thread towards what I think may be the ultimate destination (always accepting that I may not be going where I think I’m heading), write that thread down (or knit it up), get distracted or excited by another bright strand, and follow that to see where it leads – only to discover that it’s connected to the original one in a way I hadn’t imagined at the beginning. It’s the same with research and idea-gathering: I find a spaghetti-plate of strings to follow and make sense of. Eventually I may be able to braid them together into something coherent, but for most of the process it pays to get comfortable with uncertain wanderings.
What’s your metaphor for your writing process?
Verbal Dreaming 