Do you set aside a time each day to write? Do you write five pages stream of consciousness then trim it down into something that makes sense? Are you a planner? Do you write in a notebook? Do you write once, edit once? write twice, edit once? Write once, edit thrice?
I don’t have a consistent process. I’ve been experimenting with writing in a basic markdown editor, maybe 500 words at a time, then stringing together multiple entries as best I can. What I find is I have lots of ideas and thoughts that are separate, and critical to my ability to form complex thought is correlating multiple seemingly unrelating things, which then creates a new more complicated and hybrid whole. I can’t sit down and write 5,000 words on one thing, but I can write 500 words on ten things, and then use that as the basis of a mosaic piece that (when edited well) comes together into a unique whole.
My process is influenced by my story’s nature/how I am publishing it: I am writing a serial on Royal Road. This means I am writing chapters of about 2000 words, and are generally a fair amount over (I try to not let a chapter be less than 1800, but some chapters just are short before the next section that will be long is going to start).
Each chapter roughly represents a scene, 2-3 very short scenes, or a significant piece of a very long scene and I need to find a suitable break point.
So that is what I am aiming for when I sit down to write. I want to complete a scene/chapter. I don’t want a dangling thread. I want someone to be able to read this chapter and not feel like I just randomly stopped somewhere.
It’s in my not-writing time that I think about the rest of the plot and potential future scenes etc. Well, I try to organize it that way, which doesn’t always work. But this is how I focus my writing overall.