It's a process

I mock commercials. Or I did, back in the day before the glorious addition of the DVR to my life. One in particular comes to mind at the moment, for my candy-drug of choice, about there not being a wrong way to eat it. I disagreed. I still do. Because if you're trying to peel off the top and bottom coating first, you're the kind of person I don't need to associate with in life.

And then there's writing. Everybody and their mother's cousin's uncle's college roommate is only too ready to tell you what you're doing wrong. And how to fix it. Usually for a low, low price. Sometimes just for the satisfaction of being 'right'. 

So what does that make us?

I've bitched and moaned lamented about this ad nauseam before. Opinions are like assholes and the world of writing is no exception to this. 

So there's an inherent... shall I say... danger in asking questions related to your personal writing process. Which is why it's nice, vital even, to carefully accumulate good people to bounce these thoughts and queries off of. Because there is equal danger in being so closed off that you never entertain any new-to-you thoughts. This is not the time/place for a philosophical/self-help discussion about how sometimes you have to block everything external out and just do you. So I move forward with the idea that this is specific to the thought in my mind at the moment. 

The thought bubble over my head about writing of late is what I'm calling layering. Rather like the layers of animation cells animators (at least in the old days) use to flesh out scenes and character actions. 

See, I've got this manuscript. And I'm a fair chunk into this. Character development. Interpersonal stuffs. Dialogue. Some action. Some foreshadowing. But I've left some important stuff out that I kind of need to start addressing. That's needed to move forward. 

I get caught up in my characters when I dive into a project. Who they are. How they think. How they speak. How they interact. How they would approach this or that. And what I'm working on in this particular piece, is the kind of grand epic, an immersive fantasy/horror world that I've always wanted to tackle. But I've been so distracted by getting this collection of characters just so and exploring particular situations that need to happen (until the culling that is editing happens) that I've neglected other areas that I need to start tackling. I mean, if your goal is to write a swashbuckling tale of pirates navigating the globe but after 150 pages everyone is landlocked with no voyage in sight, you may have gotten a little carried away and lost sight of your outline. You may also have ended up writing a different kind of book, but that's neither here nor there. 

And this thought overwhelmed me a bit at first. Like, how do I go back and enrich this landscape, to restructure the world-building? How do I add in what I was oblivious to being missing in the first place?

Layers, I thought. I brainstorm on what's missing and is needed to ultimately move forward. I dump a veritable shit-ton of sand in the box and start digging away. Again. I go back later on and weave in (because, *groan* I've got to edit it anyway) and then onward to where our intrepid heroes or victims were left off and take up as though this nonsense was always there.

And when I realize I missed another part of what goes into this kind of larger scale storytelling, I'll go back and add another layer. Then repeat.

Tell me something I don't know.