Everyone’s writing space is different. Not just the space, but the means to make writing happen. Everyone does it differently. It’s important not to let others’ rhythms and dances around writing make one feel they are not doing it right.

The one thing a lot of writers do well is to make excuses about the reasons they found no time to write a particular day, week, month or… for years on end, really. Writers’ folklore abounds with stories about writer’s block, finding the muse, and all kinds of writing talismans and superstitions.

I love to read about writing, and one of the things I love to read the most, in this huge topic, is about writers’ habits. I love finding out about all the different ways of doing it. Because, after the few commonalities – you have to actually write something and do it consistently, if you want to come up with a product – there is little that writers have in common. Everybody’s modus operandi is different. Everyone has their own quirks and conventions that work for them and that have been tried and tested, tweaked and adjusted over many years of trial and error in the quest to become a writing being.

The interesting thing about all these stories is their richness, and sometimes that an apparent element of nonsense may one day make a whole lot of sense. I remember a long time ago, in writing classes, my writing teacher told us all about a famous writer (whose name escapes me), who would write an entire novel from start to finish. At the end of this first draft, he would set it aside, and write the entire novel again. And at the end of that second draft, he would set the novel aside, and start again –  from the beginning, that is! – and write it another time. Three entirely new drafts, each born of the previous one, but each not an edited or re-worked version of what came before. I struggled to understand why he would do what seemed to be such a time consuming thing. But now that I have put a few words on the page myself, I understand that what that writer might have been doing (and I don’t really know, because this is purely my own conjecture, based on what I know) was getting to know the story.

When I write, I often don’t know what is going to happen past the first few lines and a shaky premise. I have tried to plan, but it doesn’t work for me, so this is how I do it. I presume that writer was also a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of guy. So what happens is that as I write, I get ideas, and by the time I’ve finished the story, I have worked out quite a few things about characters and their motivations that I did not, could not, know at the start. I write to work through the story, finding shape and purpose as I go. Once I have finished the first draft I have a much better idea about what the story is about, and about my characters’ motivations. When I re-write, I do so armed with the knowledge of these motivations, which is more than I knew as I set out on the first draft. I can then work to build in these previously unknown elements, incorporate them into the narrative at more opportune moments, so the story is a lot stronger, and hopefully, a better read.

So, in a nutshell, we write to understand, and we write to discover. Well, that’s the way I see it, anyway.