My Writing Process By Jasmine Warga
Today, author of ‘My Heart And Other Black Holes’ talks about her writing process.
My writing process is messy. Very, very messy. Most of my writer friends actually find my process to be downright insane. I am constantly abandoning huge chunks of words at will and beginning projects again. I’m sure my process would be much smoother if I would just outline—something my writer friends are always advising me to do—but for me, outlining takes all the fun out of the process.
Writing for me is about discovery. There’s something absolutely thrilling about getting to slip into a skin other than your own, to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Writing, to me, is more an exercise in empathy than in imagination, in curiosity as opposed to creativity.
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I don’t write to put down facts or observations I already know; instead, I write to ask questions. And for me, the process of asking questions is inherently messy, but it’s also exciting, and I need that excitement, that unknown quality, to propel me through the length of a book.
I also have to be ridiculously and completely in love with a project to continue with it. This is particularly hard because I have a fickle heart. One moment, an idea might seem like the greatest idea I’ve ever had, and the next, I have fallen out of favour with it. I’m working on pushing through those moments when you see the rough draft of your manuscript for what it is—full of holes, lacking luster and tension, a far cry from your initial artistic vision. I’m trying to learn how to dig my heels in at that moment and work to make the manuscript better, instead of abandoning it in favour of something newer and shiner. Trying is the imperative word in that last sentence.
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