The Creative Writing Process

How on earth do all the creative people in the world come up with the stuff that they do? When I was in high school, I took a class called “The Creative Process”. I really doubt that I had any idea at that point what it was all about. I’m not sure that I have much more idea now, several decades later.

I have a “suggestions” list. I put stuff on it and add to it. When an idea gets developed enough to look like it might make an article, I put it on its own page and plug away. It still may take a couple of weeks or longer until it is done. Or it might not work out at all. This is not my full time job. I will have days or weeks when I can get lots of things on paper. Then I won’t be able to write for a while.

I often write in the middle of the day in my office. If I get interrupted in the middle of a sentence, I may have no idea what I was about to say. Or I will forget to save, go see a patient, and lose what was a “brilliant thought”. It makes for interesting digressions. Then it gets too long. Or a paragraph will get too long and I have to figure out whether to break it up.

I hate the technical part of writing. I prefer to just sit down and let it fly. But I have to go back and check if the verbs are all in the same tense, if the sentences are complete, etc. All those things that your English teacher gave you grief about in high school need to be fixed. Spell Check and Grammar Check don’t fix everything. Sometimes I want to break the rules. It makes for better story telling. It sounds much more “conversational”. And my 8^th grade English teacher would have taken out his red pencil and had a party!

The writing part gets easier the longer I do it. The editing part is a little bit easier. It is much easier to edit my own writing than what someone else wrote. Of course, there are days that something will look “funny” and I have to ask for a “second opinion”. My office staff is wonderful about looking at my articles. They make sure the articles make sense and aren’t too technical.

There are days when the ideas just flow. There are days or weeks when nothing at all comes, or I don’t have time to sit down at the computer or even jot something on a piece of paper. Some articles sit for days or weeks before I get a chance to finish them. There are articles that I have started that as of yet don’t have enough “meat” to them to get finished. And they may never get outside my computer.

I go back to those articles and try to put something in them. Or I will take parts out and try to go in a different direction. Maybe they need something to happen. I just finished an article that started out to be about a choir I sing with, and ended up to be about the “season” or semester that we worked together. We had our final performance. We are done for now, so the article can finally be done.

Most of my articles are about things that happen in my life or medical subjects. I haven’t really tried fiction. There is enough excitement in my life to keep me going for a while. I have teenage triplets! I also have patients that keep me interested and fascinated. Plus, I need to put down all those speeches that I have been giving my patients for many years now that they are danged near perfect. After all, I’ve been refining a few of them for almost 30 years. I’m learning new things all the time, too.