One thing I’ve learned about my writing style over the years is that methods don’t work for me. How I approach one novel doesn’t work for another one. The lifespan of one book doesn’t look anything like the lifespan of another. For example, during my marathon writing sessions on Sing, Sweet in November I watched a lot of movies. I don’t know why, but I did. Working on my previous project, I usually wanted silence. Now? Bring on the music.
Maybe it’s because music is an integral part of the book, but I write better for these characters listening to my iPod. Listening to songs I love is helping me write songs for my bands and helping me imagine their life and their story. It’s working so well I’ve written about 20,000 words just in the past few days. But will this continue? Who knows. The scariest thing about my mind is not even I understand how it works.
What is the point to this post? There are a lot of people and books and sites that will tell you they have a “foolproof” way you can write a book in three days or a month or three months or whatever. The truth? There’s no such thing. What works for me may not work for you. The best thing to do is take all these suggestions in, try them out, and throw out the ones that feel more or less worthless. If you can, try to develop a system that works for you because you’re more likely to have consistent results, but don’t lock yourself into a “method” thinking that it’s the only way to get the job done. The most important things are the words in your mind and how best to translate them onto paper. Or computer screen… Whatever. You get the idea. 🙂