I’ve told many people about how I like to write, and I think now is a good time to share it with you. I know some people, actually both of my close writing friends, that are ‘plotters.’ Before Talravan responds to this post and denies this fact, maybe I’ll say that he is an inadvertent plotter. I say this because he has one attribute that plotters have: he knows where he’s going. He’s holding the road map. Maybe the trails will get different from point A to B, maybe he’ll make some new ones and check out some undiscovered forests, but he usually makes it to his intended destination.

Me? Not quite.

If I were to use the analogy I mentioned above, I write as if I were kicked out of a moving car somewhere in the wilderness. I don’t really know where I am or where I’m going. I certainly don’t have a map. I just wander through whatever I see, I go wherever the path looks the most interesting. Most of the time there’s not even a path.

I’m the opposite of a plotter, I fly completely by the seat of my pants.

I carry a small spiral bound notebook. I’ll tell you now that it has Spider-Man on it. No I’m not ashamed of that – I think it’s cool. I’ll tell you about my super-hero infatuation another day. The notebook, though, it goes everywhere with me. I carry a bag with my laptop and iPod and a few other things everyday and my notebook is tucked safely inside. What’s in there you ask? The most important thing a writer has. Ideas.

Hold it right there, you say. I said I wasn’t a plotter. If I have an idea notebook, that means I looked at a world map and pointed somewhere before they kicked me out the moving car. I’m not as lost as I claim to be right? Wrong. Let me explain my ideas.

I’ll use one of the stories I’ve finished so far as an example. If you want to read an excerpt of it, check out the Works page and look for Dance of Change.

One day, I was in Wal-Mart. I go there probably once a week, at least once every other week. Anyway one day I’m in there and I’m reading the back of a Jimmy Dean box. Gosh, that man knows how to make some sausage.

So I’m reading about how much cholesterol and sodium I’m going to get and BAM! this line hits me out of nowhere. So I grabbed the shopping list and scribbled this line that hits me down. Later that night, when I got home and unloaded everything, I transferred the line to my notebook. It said:

“Ronnie walked out to get yesterday’s paper that sat on the front walk crinkled and soggy like urban driftwood.”

About a week later I sat down and wrote a modified version of this line as the opening sentence to a new story. I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t know where I was going. I just liked that line.

It’s here that I’ll tell you how I write. I like to compare it to Stephen King’s take on writing that I read in an article a while back. He said his muse is like a shy creature that hides in the bushes where he goes to write (metaphorically of course). He said that once you’re there for a bit the muse will come out and let you pet it (write something cool). Sometimes it’ll get real comfy and stay out in the clearing with you for a while. Sometimes it dashes back into the bushes and you don’t see it for the rest of the time you’re there. I think this description is spot on. Sometimes I can go on for an hour or so and it’s like I don’t even know what I’ve written until I read it. My fingers can’t go fast enough to relay all the words that are spilling out of my head. Sometimes I can struggle through a paragraph in an hour.

So I sat down with this line and wrote all of a paragraph and a half in an hour. My muse was especially shy that day.

King also says in his book “On Writing” that he likes to plant a seed to a story and watch it grow. He writes like me, with no real direction. He says that there are all these strings and he will just pick one to see where it leads. I think I do the same thing, with a little twist. Sometimes when I stop on a piece, I’ll come back and pick up a different string. Maybe that was the string I was supposed go to all along or maybe I didn’t remember what the previous one looked like. All I know is I switch around a good bit.

So I come back to the clearing a few days later and I look at this paragraph and a half with that one line that kicked it off, and I spot this new string as I’m trying to finish that half a paragraph. My muse comes out and rubs my leg and sniffs this string and gets all excited. So I grab that string and run with it, and about an hour later I have a first draft. Man, I just tied up two metaphors in the same sentence. I hope you get my drift.

That’s how I write. A line comes flying out of nowhere and hits me. I scribble it down (sometimes I don’t even understand what it means or how I could use it) and later I go to my little clearing, plant the seed, and see where the strings take me. A third metaphor! Egad!

I just flipped the page in my notebook and this is what’s on the next page:

“Sweat stood in beads on his forehead, like stubborn raindrops that refused to soak.”

Who knows where that came from or when I’ll use it, but sometimes you never know what a seed will grow until you plant it.