The Writing Process - Apparently mine changes based on ....

Graphic courtesy of Warwick University

The Writing Process - it's as individual as the writer. Are you an outliner? Are you a pantster? How do you handle revisions? How many times do peers review? So many different ways to approach the process of telling a story - is there one right way?

Obviously, the answer is no. The creative process is different for each of us and what I've found is that my own is ever-evolving.  I've written a couple of fantasy stories and  in each of those cases I wrote in a linear fashion - from beginning to end. I didn't write any scenes out of order - I just wrote in a straight line.   I also wrote in silence - no music playing, (and I always have music on!) no TV and preferably no talking! (I get locked in my room a lot at home...)

Well, what prompted this post is that recently I've been writing a realistic contemporary story and guess what? My process is totally different! I have a playlist that I listen to whenever I write, I wrote the last chapter when I only had about a fourth of the book written, I'm writing scenes out of order and I'm pretty sure when I get my first draft done that I will go back in and add a few chapters in the middle.

WEIRD, huh?

I feel like the difference is totally related to the genre. When I'm writing fantasy - I'm in that fantasy world and my stories tend to be set in the past. When I'm writing contemporary it's today, it's now, it has a different sort of relevance. However, this is the first contemporary story I've written, so it's a limited comparison.

Or maybe, it's just this particular story and these characters. They're talking to me all the time (that sounds a bit cracked, doesn't it? :-) so I'm just trying to keep up.

Anyway, what about you? Do you find your writing process changes from book to book? From genre to genre? Has one story been different than another in the same genre? Please share!

~Kiki