How to Find a Writing Process That Works For You
I realized I hadn’t done a personal writing update in a while, and the reason for my recent progress is directly linked to the podcast episode I’m going to talk about in just a moment, so let me fill you in.
My daughter and I finished planning our pixie story and wrote the rough draft, but she moved out the fairy stage so we are on to writing another. This one is about finding friendship and Halloween. We plan the chapters during our Friday morning coffee dates (lemonade for her, double shot of espresso for me), and Birdie (her nickname), who has my old laptop, types up the first draft, and then I edit. So cute. Yesterday, she was typing away in the living room while I was in the kitchen, and I heard a frustrated yowl.
I chuckled—solidarity, kid.
As for me, I’m still swimming in the first draft waters with my YA suspense. You might remember I stalled out in the summer after taking a novel intensive workshop. Not the workshop's fault. In fact, it was exactly what I needed because I went there knowing something wasn’t gelling. Something was missing.
Turns out what was missing was a character. A character who was dead, needed to be alive. Yes, I ALIVED someone! HAHA. Very Mary Shelley of me. And that particular someone needed a POV and a different backstory. All of this changed the book significantly. So that took some time, (like two and a half-months) a lot of character noodling, reimagining backstory, and patience which is not really one of my strengths.
I mean, I can be patient, but I HATE IT. I’m a high-focus person: I see the goal, run like hell to the goal, and obliterate the goal type of gal.
BUT…I cannot do that with this book.
I was pretty frustrated by the end of August. As in, for the love of all that is holy, someone find me dumpster, a match, and some gasoline. I’m gonna torch this baby. Burn the entire idea down!
Of course, I didn’t.
What I did do was get some outside help. Mindset help specifically geared toward me as a writer and my particular orientation of skills and talents.
You’ve probably heard me talk about CliftonStrengths before. It’s a personality assessment of sorts, similar to the enneagram. Through a series of questions, it assesses your unique patterns of thought, behavior, and emotion and then categorizes them into thirty-four possible strengths. Typically, the top 10-12 are the ones you’re working with most of the time.
What is unique about CliftonStrengths is that it zeros in on your strongest traits and lets you see when they are helping and when they are hindering.
My top five strengths in order are: Learner, Achiever, Empathy, Responsibility, and Focus. Thus the reason I’m so driven to learn and accomplish tasks. Unfortunately, it also set me up for burnout and behaving like a robot. So I do have to be careful there.
But I’m also incredibly high in connection strengths, with Empathy at #3 and Relator and Developer in my top ten. In writing, this means, it’s really hard for me to write or find the plot if I don’t know my character at least a little bit, and in the case of my working draft, I didn’t know much about this girl. She was supposed to have died 10 years before the start of the story. My main character had only known her as a child.
So after a pep talk or two with my strengths coach, Roni Loren (who you might have met in episode twenty-eight of the podcast) I knew what I had to do.
It was time to tell Achiever and Focus to take a backseat so I could lean into my relationship-building strengths and get to know this character.
I’m happy to report the book unlocked. By slowing down, focusing on using a manuscript time block to track progress instead of stressing about word count, and doing the work to get to know this new character, I found the story again. It’s now a dual POV, dual timeline. Tricky, but it’s coming and I’m happy with it—well, for a first draft. LOL.
So, with all of that, let me introduce you to my next podcast guest, Becca Syme.
Becca is a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach and has been coaching success alignment for more than a decade. She is the author of the Quitbooks for Writers series and the popular Write Better-Faster course.
I was introduced to Becca and the CliftonStrengths back in 2020 and got serious about using them in my writing process a couple years ago.
In Episode 34 of The Write It Scared Podcast, Becca and I talk about using CliftonStrengths to find a writing process that works for the individual.
I’m so excited for you to learn more about this writing enhancement methodology because it works. But a warning: it is NOT a quick fix. As Becca would say, there are no silver bullets.
It's a tool that takes work to understand and implement and you can get bogged down in the weeds by overfocusing on explaining your feelings and actions, instead of trying to correct what’s not working.
So just be mindful of that if you decide to look into this for yourself. If you are interested in taking the CliftonStrengths assessment, I recommend going through Becca and her website. Unfortunately, the test isn’t free, but it’s a worthy investment.
You can connect with Becca through her website, follow her on Instagram or check out the QuitCast for Writers on Youtube
I hope you enjoy this episode! And if you do, please share about it so more writers can find the podcast.
