Confession Time: My Writing Rituals

Despite anything I’ve ever written or said about my personal writing experience, this here is the up-to-date truth. FYI: Occasionally writers should insert this admission, or confession... take your pick, because there is one aspect of writing that remains constant. It is a fickle, sometimey beast. It’s one profession that can turn your words against you, and give you a real good spanking; incidentally, the primary reason I enjoy playing around with words. I really don’t want to get caught up in taking myself too seriously. Sometimes I have to push back from the screen and kind of turn my head sideways.

At any rate, I promised to share some of what I’m working on, and how I spell success.

Without leading into how many pieces I actually have lined up on my checklist, I’m blogging only the novels that reasonably look like they’ll be gettin’ written sometime soon.

On the Y-axis it appears that I am working on thirteen (13) promising novels. The X-axis shows the percentage of completion for each.

Now, here comes the entertainment; my confessions about a few of my writing rituals that might explain the illustrations.

Like most who want to write a book, I am no different. The IDEA generally comes first. This is the period where I see the entire novel fully, something like remembering a movie I’ve watched, where everything looks like all you have to do is transcribe the picture into words and whaala, one book be done.

The early phase of WRITING stories isn’t all that bad either. Typing ‘once upon a time’ really isn’t the hard part.

The hard part is getting to roughly 10,000 words and hear sounds like rRrrr... when you start looking even stranger. It's no myth that writing isn't pretty. Thankfully, as the caption shows, I’m past that ugly point for almost half of the novels I have lined up.

The SPATIAL BLISS cycle is where I start posting all positive upbeat posts; and retweeting everybody else’s happy news.

And the SUCCESS image… the face wearing the hat... well, this is the stage where I am no longer dreaming, wishing or hoping. The stage where I have forgotten most of what occurred before this point. The stage where I have actually achieved what I set out to do. The stage that spells S-U-C-C-E-S-S!