“You remind me of the babe…” or How My Labyrinthian Mind Makes Stories
Words are always changing, being turned into slang, and revised in meaning as our collective understanding grows. The same can be said for our understanding of thought processes, cognition, and mental health concepts. Where these overlap (well, there are many places where these crossover) is with Creatives, particularly talking about authors.
There are so many paths to use in writing stories and books. No one method is a hard and fast rule. That being said, some ideas/practices are considered more “tried and true” than others because great numbers of writers have found them helpful. However, No two authors think, or process, the same way. Some may come close, but unless someone’s plagiarizing, no two are exactly the same.
We know this, Keana. So what?
This means that approaches to writing are as individualistic and numerous as the folks joining our community. Some of us are wired a little differently.
We’re writers; that’s a given.
Okay, but hear me out. For example, I come from a time (yes, yes, the Jurassic period, I know) when science had not come so far in understanding the mind and how it works. To be fair, we still have a long way to go on that, but we have learned many things. Some have said that I’m a classic example of neurodivergent, which means I process, learn, and think unlike a “typical” person. I’m perfectly okay with this (no shade on neurotypical folks). So, having grown up in a time when people didn’t know such things, I had to adapt, learn how to feed and train the beast that is my mind.
As an author, what this looks like for me (YMMV) is that I work on many projects simultaneously. Some colleagues need to work on one at a time; there are a few I know who do even more than I do—which, wow… That’s no mean feat. For me, I have four projects in the drafting/research phase, two back-burnered, three in edits, and one in proofreading. As a single, working mom, I’m always going, so too is my brain. Working on so many different projects helps keep me engaged even when I’m wiped.
Would this be something that I recommend for new, baby authors? Probably not. It takes a great deal of discipline to stay on top of the writing, editing, and research. There are times when I don’t want to work on a particular aspect of the writing process for one of the projects, but I have to because: deadlines. However, I can sometimes push a piece farther out for a little while and let myself tinker with a “new” idea. Other times, I have to use that “gimmie the shiny” moment as the carrot to dangle before myself so I get my stuff done. It’s a give and take.
But how do you keep track of all those characters and stories? Don’t you mix them up?
Curiously enough, no. It’s not a problem for me. I’ve just always been like that (see what I mean about being wired not like everyone else?). Just like my juggling all of those projects, my “am reading” list on Goodreads is roughly 17 books at any given time, and I know what’s in all of them. Now, ask me what I had for lunch yesterday. I couldn’t tell you. Ask me where I left my cup of coffee. Not a clue, but I can tell you that it’s probably cold by now, with only a couple of sips missing.
What has inspired you to make up stories?
Well, it’s always been a combination of things: books, tv, movies, people, and boredom. For real, not kidding. Having grown up in an age of no mobile phones, etc., we got bored a lot. So, entertaining myself became a way to pass the time. If you’d said to 8 year old me that being a professional storyteller was an option, I would’ve told you to “shut the front door!” Let me just say, allowing your mind to wander is usually a good thing. You never know what you’re going to find.
With such a tremendous variety of minds in this world, in our writing community, and everyone holds onto different aspects that are important to them. I was telling myself stories when I was a little girl, and I will undoubtedly be doing the same thing even when I’m old and gray. Keep telling your stories!
