Blog Hop: My Writing Process

I'm so excited to jump on board this whole blog hop thing. I've never been on a blog hop! So, here's how it works: Last week, we had the cat-owned, amigurumist, Jody Wallace tell about her writing process by answering these four questions. Check out her blog at: http://blog.jodywallace.com. Now it's my turn. Check out the bottom of this post for the next set of victims. It's like an electronic chain letter! (Did you ever feel slightly rebellious with the real chain letters because you heard they were illegal? I did.) How cool is that?!

My Writing Process
1) What am I working on?
At the moment, I write approximately three book reviews a week. For the amount of time I have, that's a lot of reading and writing. Also, I have a super secret, maybe-it'll-turn-into-something, story that I'm working on. It may have some magic, music, sex, and geekiness. I keep up a family blog for the grandparents, so all in all, I write a couple thousand words a week.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I find that my reviews tend to focus almost totally on the heroine and her growth. Somehow I only take stock of the hero in terms of how he relates to the heroine. By himself, I don't think he's normally that interesting and I spend very little review words on how hot a hero might be.

For the story, well I have no idea. It's really, really rough at the moment and the characters talk in mono-syllabic words and grunts because I'm terrible at dialogue at this stage. I also think my characters are twisted and abnormal, but I hope they resolve themselves into a lovable abnormality.

3) Why do I write what I do?
I started writing reviews in order to gain back some word recall power after having kids. I felt like I was only talking in toddler vocabulary all day and I couldn't come up with adult words to say even when I could feel the words in my brain. As I kept writing, I found I enjoyed the process and wanted to get better at putting down my thoughts. It feels like it's getting easier to write and I'm coming up with more thoughts the further I go.

And the story is so complicated. I didn't write much growing up because I didn't have any writing autonomy. Any attempts I made at serious stories were rebuffed as not-that-good, so I never had a good feeling about it. I'm always talking to people in my head though, and I think it might be healthier to make up characters to talk to than it is to pretend I'm having conversations with actual people and then get upset that my real-life interactions didn't follow the script. I'm hoping the story itself is something that I would enjoy reading. I end up reading a lot of contemporary romance right now, but it's so hard to find magic and music stories that sound appealing to me. I figure I should try to piece together what it is I'm looking for and see what happens.

4) How does your writing process work?
I still have one pre-elementary age child, so he's in preschool three afternoons a week. I help out at the boys' schools one afternoon a week each, so that leaves me with one, two-hour period a week at my computer, writing. I also have a very encouraging husband who takes the boys out most weekends for a few hours so I can write. That gives me about four hours of writing a week. Mostly it seems like never enough time, especially when I have to spend a little bit of it working on home stuff too.

I've also found that I can plot a little during my boys' after school activities, but only if I already have an idea in my head (it's sooo noisy sitting at Tae Kwon Do). There are lots of plans and plots that get thought-time just as I'm falling asleep, but I have too much to do in the morning to get up and write late into the night. I have big plans for writing in the fall (when the Smaller Person starts Kindergarten). I'm hoping I can spend at least an hour or two writing most weekdays, but we'll see where life takes me. For now, I try to live in the moment and enjoy each bit of free time where I get to create something.

And for your hopping pleasure, next Monday (March 24th), visit the following blogs for more peeks into the writing process.

- Michelle Moore is the co-author of the Ylendrian Empire science fiction series that includes The Balance of Silence, The Slipstream Con, In Discretion, and Peripheral People (summer 2014).  Her solo projects tend towards the sweet paranormal romance side of things (Enchanted Grounds and If Wishes Were Coffee).  She can be found at http://www.michelleandreesawrite.com/.