I really enjoy how the internet lets me follow a link to a link to a link to find something unexpected but interesting or useful. I also enjoy the fact that even though I don't put down a trail of breadcrumbs so that I can trace my way back, I still end up safe and sound in front of my computer where I started. I was on one of those bunny trails this morning and ended up reading about the routines that writers follow when they are working. The last site I ended up on had compiled the routines of authors such C.S. Lewis, John Grisham, and Stephen King. This subject of writing practices has come to my attention several times in the last few weeks, so of course I thought this was an opportune moment to add my thoughts on it to the blogosphere.
Throughout my elementary, junior high, and high school career, the idea was hammered into me that to write anything well (except maybe a poem), one must first put together a numbered outline before sitting down to compose an essay, research paper, or novel. Deviation from writing ideas down in the exact order of the outline was discouraged. Opening paragraphs and closing paragraphs (tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them) were the bane of my existence. Counting the number of simple, compound, and complex sentences in each essay to make sure it was "balanced" was a chore. My writing style was often praised by my teachers, but the writing process they had us follow was excruciating to me. If I had something to say, I wanted to just be able to say it. These rules and regimens did not exactly inspire a longing for "author" status in me.
When the time came for me to take English Composition as a foundation class in college, I thought that it would be more of the same. Students would need to be reading, thinking, and writing on a higher level, but the process would not change. I was right and I was wrong. In the English classes I had taken previously, we had read works of several great authors. We had talked about the events in their lives that might have influenced their ideas. However, I don't remember us discussing the authors' personal quirks and eccentricities in general or specifically applied to how they set about writing. I'm sure I really believed that Shakespeare, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Rand, and Dr. Seuss all started with a numbered outline and did not deviate from the order without first consulting their editor, twelfth-grade English teacher, or the Elizabethan equivalent. They probably sat upright (with excellent posture) at a desk that had the essentials laid out in perfect order but without any frilly extras.
