My writing style

My writing process is a bit chaotic, but I do have a process.

Step 1: starts with roughing out a basic arc of the book. I'm more of a pantser than a plotter, so this is really just a basic synopsis - to make sure it has all the exciting plot-points and I haven't missed the rising tension or other main beats.

Step 2: my first draft I write long-hand. Yep, pen and paper. It gets me into Flow much easier than typing and I spend less time staring at an empty page. Pictured right is a page from The Conjunction to show you what I mean. I ususally write with no paragraph breaks, just everything on the page and sort it out later.

Step 3: after most writing sessions I'll also dictate some of what I previously wrote. I'm usually behind by a few scenes. I copy that up into Scrivener, which is how I keep track of all the writing for my book. Then I go through it to fix the autocarrot mistakes.

Step 4: after dictation, I print out a copy for editing and take to it with a red pen. I find reading it on hard-copy to be much easier to spot mistakes. I use this to spot typos, repeated words or ambiguous/confusing grammar, but also badly described sections that need a bit more explanation.

Step 5: at this point, I'll export to Word format (not my favourite but it tracks suggested-changes better than any alternative), and send to my editor(s).

There's usually a couple of rounds of back and forth as they suggest changes and I'll fix them. The wordcount usually drops significantly at this point - as I remove slow scenes and tighten the pacing. We go back and forth until I call a halt because it's good enough for now. I try to live by the philosophy of "the perfect is the enemy of the good" to get past my perfectionism.

In the meanwhile (usually around step 5) I'll also get in touch with my cover designer and work with them on a gorgeous cover.

So now I have all the pieces ready - I just need to put them all together to create the book ready for kindle. Thankfully Scrivener has sone great formatting options to make that easy.

Then when I have the completed manuscript, I push it live!