Monday, January 16, 2006
My writing process remains a mysteryI just started the second in a short series of books -- uh, if you can call two books a series -- that are menage a trois. They consist of two male characters and one female. Unlike A Change of Season, which was also a menage, these books end up with a HEA for all three characters together.
I actually planned to write a different book before I started this one, a BDSM themed book. However, I played around with the plot of Seduced by Midnight, axed the beginning and started the book in a far more compelling place...and whoooosh, away I went. I'm writing like a mad woman, (not that there's any evidence to suggest I'm not a mad woman all the time, even when I'm not writing).
It's strange because I don't seem to have any set writing process. Some books, like Blood of an Angel, I puke out hard and fast and don't edit at all while I write. This is what I seem to be doing with Seduced by Midnight. Other books I write a little, then edit. Write some more, then edit. By the time I'm finished, I only have to make one pass through the book before it's ready to send to my editor.
I'm not sure where the difference lies -- why some books I nurse, coddle and contemplate, and others I just rip through initially and clean up the carnage after.
Seduced by Midnight, like the first book in this "series", is almost pure romance. There's very little of the external conflict/action plot I tend to love to write. With that added hero in there, that's just the way it's got to be. Two heroes and one heroine means there's not much room for anything else.
With this book I have a clear idea of where I'm going, what's happening next, how I'm going to resolve the conflicts. I think that's why I'm flying on it. I didn't know ANY of that with Blood of an Angel. I had the basic plot outlined, but I wasn't sure when I was writing it exactly how everything was going to resolve. With that book, the characters more or less decided it. I set up their personalities and they drove the action because their choices had to conform with their character.
*shrug* I wish I could say I had a set writing process and that I stuck to it every time, but, man, I really don't.
