The phases of writing

I'm always amused by people who say, "I should write a book." Everyone who wants to absolutely should. What they do with it is another matter. When I first told my former husband I was writing a book, he immediately wanted to appropriate it as "we should write a book." Writing requires more than a solid grasp of grammar, it calls for a thick skin and "sticktoitiveness." Perseverance. My would-be partner lacked all of those traits.

As I'm writing and working with my critique group, the various phases of writing are jumping out at me. When we (my critique group and I) begin our projects, we submit chapters to each other. In the beginning phases, it's mostly the "creative" aspect. Ideas that are still forming. There are lots of errors and issues. The group helps keep each other on track and corrects the ticky-tack stuff along with continuity and plot issues (this is where the thick skin comes in). As the project progresses, we generally get ahead of each other, writing well past what we're submitting, so that by the time we're about halfway through critiquing a project, the author is more or less in the completion phase, which means the work is getting cleaner. Tighter. Accordingly, the critiques are getting sharper, more fine-tuned, because there is less to critique.

In the creative phase I, personally, am less tuned in to the mechanics. I'm trying to get the story from my head onto paper. The details aren't always clear, and I have a much broader picture of the work as a whole. Mistakes happen. Homonyms. Wrong words. Granted, my group is pretty keen to start with so those rookie mistakes are fewer as a whole, but they do pop up, during the creative phase especially. As I move past the creative phase into the fine-tuning phase, those errors become fewer--or at least I hope they do. 

I'm currently in the creative stage with my new work, although at about the halfway mark. The closer I get to the end, the more I know what's happening and the less the story - overall - is going to change. I haven't quite made the shift to fine-tuning, but my partners are closer to finishing their work. In fact, they both have completed first drafts and are working on final drafts. Their critiques are more pointed, because that's where they're currently focused with their own writing. Things they might have not noticed or didn't call attention to in earlier submissions for critique are now jumping off the page because they are looking for those "ticky-tack" mistakes in their own work. 

When I worked the day job, I was a proofreader, looking for errors other people made. I worked with a team, and we were the last set of eyes. The funny part is that by the time we got it, the work had already been through at least three previous sets of eyes looking for mistakes, so there was surprise when we found things that had been overlooked. There are always things that sneak through no matter how many people check you, and that's why you need SOMEONE ELSE to read what you've written - someone you trust to know what they're doing. Someone with at least rudimentary industry knowledge.

I'm grateful for my critique partners who keep me on track, both structurally and creatively. As published authors, themselves, they know what to look for and how to get successfully to the finish line. The critiques always hold value, even if we don't agree with what's been pointed out. If it makes us think, we have the tools to evaluate if what we've written requires greater clarification or if the reader has "lost the thread." There are many times when what we see in our heads doesn't make it to the paper, just as there are many times the reader lost track of what happened in the last chapter. There are also the genre-specific aspects (my partners and I write in different genres) to be accounted for, and we trust each other to know what those parameters are.

As I'm preparing to shift gears in my own work, the shift in focus will naturally apply to my partners' work as well. I hope to add value to their work, as they add value to mine. I couldn't do this without them.