Louise Marley on "How I Write a Novel"

[deborahjross]

Louise Marley is one of my favorite writers, and I love how she talks about the process of writing. Part of my delight is that she is also a musician and the relationship between the two creative processes make a lot of sense to me. Anyway, I just discovered that she's been blogging on how she writes novels. She says something I need to hear over and over:

"One of the most important lessons I've learned from the past twenty years as a writer is that each and every one of us has to respect our own process in accomplishing the enormous task of writing a book. I have a colleague (the fabulous K.W. Jeter) who once shared with me an 80-page outline of a proposed novel. Eighty pages! My role model and mentor, Connie Willis, outlines an entire book in great detail and then write her scenes out of order. The redoubtable Stephen King, in his essential book On Writing, says the only time he tried to outline a novel it was a disaster. (It was Rose Madder, and I have to agree with him that it wasn't a success, though I still acknowledge him as a master wordsmith.) Each of these great writers has his or her own way of doing things, and a list of achievements to prove that it works--for them."

Here's the first part. You can noodle around her blog site and find the rest.
How I Write a Novel: Part One | Louise Marley | Blog Post | Red Room

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Fascinating. I always love to learn how other writers work -- I find it informative and supportive and just plain odd in about equal amounts. But always useful.

[equesgal.livejournal.com]

I always love to read this stuff. I write in layers....many, many layers. I'm trying to find a new way to work since that results in waaay too many drafts and buckets of paper. But I think I'm stuck with my layers. LOL