We all read finished work. We read this magnificent short story.
And somehow we think that it came out that way.
That the writer sat down in a fit of divine inspiration
and wrote that story in one fell swoop,
and that’s how it happened. And that’s never how it happened.
I have pieces of paper all over the house. I write on napkins, I write on magazines,
and I rip out pieces of paper, and I leave them all over the house.
And my daughter comes along behind me and often gathers everything together
and puts them in a folder. And she’s like… look, I organized you.
And that just… I have to take them back out
and spread them all over the house again. Because it’s not going to work for me.
So it is incredibly messy, but that’s my process.
And everyone else’s process is different.
My organization is sloppy.
I have a Post-it size easel,
giant note cards, and markers, and I go crazy.
I think about the world that I’m building. Politics. Environment.
And then as the story and the characters really start gelling,
that’s when I start getting a little bit more organized.
It really helps for me to stop thinking about the writing, and then I can go home.
And it kind of has shaken inspiration from my bones.
We actually like to break act two in half. So you end up with act one,
act two which goes to the middle of the story,
and then act three and act four.
What we typically start out is something we call the forty-sentence outline.
Because we work in four acts.
So it allows us ten chapters, ten chapters, ten chapters, ten chapters.
Now, that book may end up with 63 chapters, or 28 chapters…
it doesn’t matter.
But getting our ideas in that first four blocks that way,
it really helps us.
We basically have the pillars to hold the house at that point.
I try my best not to organize my thoughts, because I don’t think
that I’m the best person for that.
And so, what I do is I just start writing. I may know what I’m writing it about.
I might have a very simple outline of something.
But the truth is, I just start writing.
And in the writing, I discover the organization.