You are so very welcome, Sara! I think it’s great that you’ve evolved your process into one that helps you know which stories are important for you to write, and which ones you maybe let go. Bravo to you!

And yes, there are some famous Story Quilters out there. Maybe one day we’ll be on that list!

For the last few years, my process mostly involves free-writing for about 1/3 of the story, mostly to test out how far can I go, how much do I really love this story, how much depth does the story have? Then I stop somewhere along the way and sit down and write out a sort-of-outline, and often times that outline changes as I continue to fill in scenes.

Great post thank you for this description!

Thanks for taking the time to answer! I look forward to reading it!

Usually for me (having those Plantser tendencies), I make a scene card/folder in Scrivener with the scene idea. A few words like, “Character name 1 & Character name 2 fight in the file room” or “Character name 1 goals for opening scene.”

It’s very loose because I usually have the basic ideas for 5-10 scenes before I’ve started writing the whole story. As I write those early scenes, I start seeing pivotal scenes and big moment scenes that need to be there for goals, motivations, or conflicts and I start making more folders. Every so often in the process, I’ll move those folders around, so they feel more logical, and that will start showing me plot holes, which is a whole new set of folders.

And now I’m going to have to write that post, Lindsay! Because I’ve thought of 5 other ways I trick my unstructured brain into structure. 🙂

That would be an interesting read! I was wondering if you write the whole scene out or just an idea of what the scene will be? I’ve tried save the cat but tend to be more of a pantser myself.

Smart!

It is worth it, because it’s usually genetic. As we’ve dug deeper, my dad had it AND his brother had it. There is at least one of us from each of them. I have my eye on my kid who is a procrastinator. Not a terrible one, but the tendency is there.

For me, it was important because I stopped beating myself up about how I do (or don’t do) things, and put systems in place to overcome areas where I have poor organizational/executive function. Just like I broke my writing into smaller pieces, I broke ALL the organizational tasks into smaller pieces. It made a difference about how I approach them, and how many of those pieces I can offload to people who are better at it.

Both my kids were recently diagnosed for ADHD, and they are in their mid-late 20’s. Because they didn’t fit the traditional symptoms, this is something I never even considered when they were kids. It makes me wonder about myself and if I have anything, just as it’s very easy for me to fall into procrastination, it takes me a long time to get some things done because I think a lot about how to do them well, and things like that. Scott doesn’t see the point of testing for that now, and I explained to him that it’s worth it sometimes to have a diagnosis because otherwise you just think there’s something wrong with you, something that you should be able to fix but you’re just lazy or uncommitted.

I still haven’t gotten tested, but it is in the back of my mind to do so. And I’m so glad you discovered this about yourself. It’s good to have answers.

I didn’t even know I had ADD until like 10 years ago. My husband and I were talking to a long-time counselor friend and he says (all casual-like), “Well, you know you have ADD, right? I do too. They just didn’t diagnose it all that much when we were young unless you were hyperactive.”

I was like, “NO I DID NOT KNOW THAT.” But it made all kinds of things make sense. It also made me stop beating myself up for my 13 (yes, THIRTEEN) unfinished novels that I’d tried to write like me linear pals. Once I made changes and wrote in tiny out-of-order pieces I started finishing books. It was a revelation for me.