I read a post the other day with insight into Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’ writing styles over on The Writer’s Path in an article by Andrea Lundgren. C.S. Lewis was a planner. Tolkien was a pantser. Best was the comment Lewis made about Tolkien’s style:
Diana Pavlac Glyer adds, “Lewis’s writing process was quite different from Tolkien’s. While Tolkien wrote things out in order to discover what he wanted to say, Lewis tended to mull things over before committing anything to paper. While Tolkien produced draft after draft, Lewis completed his work rapidly once he had settled on a clear idea and the right form to express it. And while Tolkien reconsidered every word on every page, when Lewis finished a story, he was restless to move on.”
That summarizes my writing approach: I’m writing to discover what I want to say. I’d not known this about myself in such an explicit manner.
Further reading on process came about from Jenn Moss’ Meta Monday post about her process. She referred to another process, The Snowflake Method. I enjoyed the fractal snowflake reference enormously and considered it pretty apt to Lorenz’s thinking and the Butterfly Effect. Randy Ingermanson writes about how to design a novel by starting small and enlarging, using triangles and stars and ten steps.
From all this came a better grasp of my process. I like to write to understand what I want to say, as Tolkien did. I usually start small and writing like mad, I create a block of words. That result is typically dense, with poor punctuation and spelling, and ‘<TK>’ with notes where I need more reference or clarification. Although I’ve become more mindful about pacing, voice and the rest through exposure to writing and editing, I don’t want those aspects to slow me down; I’m out to capture the essence of the story at that stage. This is fiction writing at its stream-of-consciousness rawest.
I then begin shaping the finished scene or chapter. Like a wood carver or sculptor studying a block of material, I do the same and begin carving, to see what’s in there, what should remain and what should be removed but added to somewhere else.
The carving process is involved. I’m working on plotting, connectivity with the rest of the novel, flow, spelling and grammar, voice, point of view and character development. It is much like sculpting and carving, taking pieces here and there and stepping back to see what I’ve wrought and what remains to be fixed. I think of it as chipping because I’m sculpting but I’m adding words and changing them as well. That’s where the analogy falls apart, but, oh well. I consider the entire active editing and revising, but it doesn’t replace the editing and revising that takes place after the entire draft is finished.
This is fun and rewarding. Watching that piece being shaped and refined is greatly satisfying. Beyond that, the carving process and active editing and revising provides me clarity about the novel. I especially learn about the characters at that point when I’m doing this, actively questioning how they would react to words, activities and new information.
All accumulated in a herd of new dreams thundering through me last night. I won’t recite them today, as people out there who read me are probably rolling their eyes and saying, “More dreams?”
Reflecting them on this morning took me into fractal thinking, and back into my novel writing process. I ruminated about how our brains are often creatively fractal, something I actively encourage my brain to be: I want new ways to look at old ideas and new ideas to present. To do that, I need to take the variables and spin them into a new direction. Like the butterfly’s flutter, you never know how one small input or variable will produce a new direction, if you can leave yourself open to it.
I call that writing like crazy, to which I owe Natalie Goldberg. Now four shots of espresso blended with chocolate and steamed milk is at hand. It’s time to do it again, at least one more time.
Michael Seidel, writer 