Sarah Kanning

I was talking to my mom the other week, and mentioned a teenager I know who was agonizing over a college admissions essay. Some things never change, and yes, students still have to provide some written proof of their essential humanity and worthiness to study at whatever institution of higher learning to which they are seeking entrance.

Mom laughed and said she remembered me sweating and staring at my own dreaded admissions form. That was in 1989, so it was a paper form — typed? handwritten? I have no idea, but I think I hand-wrote it — no internet, no web sites, no word processors (I had used a Mac IIe at my high school newspaper, but didn’t have one at home). Very old school.

Mom said I was driving her crazy because I just sat there, staring at the box where I was supposed to provide my answer. She thought I was merely freaking out (a reasonable suspicion, considering me at 17). Then, after the better part of an hour, I wrote the thing, in ink on the form. She read it and was amazed to see it had a beginning, middle and end, and precisely filled up the space available. “I would have written it out on a scrap piece of paper first,” she said. I shrugged. My process worked.

It was a timely reminder, because this month I’m writing two short stories, and have already spent half of the month working on…stuff…but not exactly writing drafts. I was wondering whether I should start to freak out (I’m still pretty talented at it), but after my chat with Mom, I said, “Oh yeah. Prewriting. That’s what I’m doing.”

That said, methinks it’s time for the drafting now(!). Otherwise, prewriting will have morphed into procrastination.

Also, this kind of thing works for me for short stories, but NOT for novels or screenplays. It’s just too hard to keep the whole thing in my head, especially with all the other stuff competing for brainspace. But keeping a scene in my head while I go for a walk or cook dinner is easy and helpful — I can smooth out the dialogue, ratchet up the conflict (or at least recognize that I need to ratchet it up), and flesh out the sensory details and blocking/action (who does what, when, and what are they doing while they are talking).

I’m a process junkie, and very interested in how other writers do what they do. Tuesday I’ll be talking about Negotiating with the Dead, which is Margaret Atwood’s very process-oriented book about writers and writing. Another good one for process is Stephen King’s On Writing (a book many writers swear by, including a  writer I spoke to recently who has a string of successful narrative nonfiction books to her credit) — you may hear more about that one later as well.