Friday, February 3, 2012

Work in Progress: Mysteries of the Writing Process

Process questions of the day:

Why was I able to sit at a table in a coffee shop and write by hand in a notebook and come up with roughly 500 words to a one-word prompt in 15 minutes?

Furthermore, why then was I able to continue that piece in the same coffee shop, writing to a one sentence prompt and write roughly 800 more words—by hand in a notebook—in the next 15 minutes?

Finally, why—why, why, why?—is it that when I came home and ignored other deadline work that I should have been doing and I sat down at my computer, with a clear vision of the basics of how to finish this piece, why, why, why did it take me roughly three hours of struggling—hours which were filled with doubt and deletions, hours filled with thoughts of giving up the entire project, hours of telling myself how boring the piece was—to get the remaining 1200 words or so of this rough draft?

Work-in-Progress

DC-area author Leslie Pietrzyk explores the creative process and all things literary.