Sounds like a quote but it came to me one night while I was sleeping. I woke with the words in my head. They weren’t quite arranged in that way when I first heard them. I wrestled for a while, like one might wrestle with the opening stanza of a poem, until I was satisfied they said what they were supposed to say. Then I went down to my desk and wrote them in my notebook.

They’ve been there for perhaps a year.

By this stage of the game I don’t worry about happenings like this. Somehow I’m involved in a process of developing a text. I don’t know what the text is about. It’ll be a novel, in all probability, because that’s what I do; write novels. I suppose there’s an outside chance it might be a short story or a poem or even an essay. But I believe it will be a novel.

I hear things people say; I read surprising passages in other people’s books; I see a shadow in a film; think a thought; I wake with words in my head, and all of these things go into the notebook. Many of them seem unrelated, but I know that they are related, only I’m blind to these relationships at this stage of the process.

Slowly, over time, as I dispense with my notions, convictions and opinions and open myself to language and experience and memory, my mind and imagination will stir and rumble and I will begin to make signs on a page and all that is now hidden, as if behind a veil, will come tumbling forth.

* Phases of Creation

* Let the poem guide its creation.

* I wonder if the Biblical God had a master plan, or when he saw he’d created birds did he only then think of fish; when created earth only at the instance of that wonderful sight did he imagine water.

* God may have created the universe in seven days. That seems about right in the number of phases I can detect.

* Perhaps, the initial input is inspirational but it could come through creative reading – a term you once used. Books lead to books.

* Reading an excellent poem inspires me to attempt my own.

* The transition from reading to writing is hardly direct, but involves numerous other influences that inform the emerging poem, when I’m sat at my desk actually writing.

* This unlegislated element that actually writing or typing seems to not only to reproduce the text, but help create it. * It doesn’t surprise me that ‘unwriting’ readers think in dualistic terms of individual inspiration or a formula; either way the reader can’t imagine the power of the text to direct its own fate. Yet to me this departure is a key moment in creation, when I stop listening to my ego and other poets, instead to what the scribbles in front of me on the paper are saying ‘themselves’.

* The Biblical God rested on the seventh day. Perhaps he rested every day after an instant of creation or an hour, or as Dylan Thomas said, you can’t achieve much after two hours.

* Letting the poem rest in fallow seems essential in creating a finished work. Does the poem work on itself? I don’t know but I know that when after a week, month, better longer, I return to the poem it has changed, is more naked in one sense and full of more potential in another.

* Time-creation helps disrupt formulaic tendencies; because new influences have reached me: new poems read, new experiences felt, new observations made, and new language streams have been waded. When I return to the poem, these fresh influences come into play, are applied. One new word can change a whole poem; can open potential unseen at first.

* Editing is an enduring joy and pain. Mostly my poems must undergo this inspection, enhanced by feedback from honest readers is part of this phase.

* Reading poems out loud in public is a significant stage; how does the audience respond to your voice and words, also you hear the flat notes much better when in the pressured moment of performance.

* God may’ve been satisfied after seven days but some poets rarely are. I have to spend sometimes years in re-writing, reading and gaining feedback before I’ll believe the poem has any quality. I must change and refine it in some way.
This is a result of a work ethic; it’s very difficult for me to separate the notion of achievement from timed effort. But Michael Longley read from his collected works a poem that took five minutes to write. Perhaps as I become older – and am weaker sleepier – I’ll accept reward from less exertion.

* The general reader -as I did – finds it hard to believe the number of hands that go into creating a piece of work; like one God, to the general public, there must be one author. Yet experience shows that the comments and reflections of friends as interested readers is part of the creative process. A classic example is the Waste Land which I believed was Eliot’s work alone, very Newtonian; not a collaboration of editor and author and a remarkable reader. It appears disturbing for the devout reader to think that they must seek a handful of signatures; especially if you throw the question back. I mean if you imply that they have helped create the book. Perhaps one day books will be seen as the product of a communal creativity and the artist as its conduit; I think in ancient Greece this could’ve been the case, at least sometimes. Yes, queues at book signing would disappear if the reader was expected to write their own signature. It’s that question of authority, authorship, if this illusion was replaced by a collective ownership the whole publishing industry would collapse.

* The cult of the author’s supreme power must prevail, either as single inspiration or the master of a recognized formula, though both are remote from what I consider the complex phases of creation.

* God then is a sole authority figure, but even the big bang suggests a distant one act to creation. From genesis or an initial explosion a formula is produced that’s only repeated. The complex, difficult path of interaction, relativity, one event affecting another is still difficult to sell in places of worship as it is in a bookshop.

* I enjoy the evidence of collaborators or co-conspirators; enjoy being seen as the author.

I’m a relative creator who welcomes and uses other influences to create. The initial inspiration is often suppressed under the strength of the poem (creation creating itself) and formula becomes distorted as I struggle to be true to what is emerging as ‘my’ poem.

Paul Sutherland is a poet and the editor and founder of the international literary magazine, Dream Catcher.

I have been thinking about your question. I think my first creative phase comes visually – I can see a picture very clearly and then normally an idea or a theme will come, either in discussion with a real person or from the page which brings the image into techno-colour, if you like. It’s only when I have the two things that I feel there’s enough to carry on. Normally there’s some tension between the two, so in my short story ‘Chains’ for example, I was thinking about the daffodils that have been planted in very straight lines in our park and knew I wanted to do something about them. And then a friend said something about chains which I misunderstood and which made us laugh a lot, but after that I knew the two – the straight edged daffodils and someone being misunderstood could work well together. Another time another friend gave me five random pieces and somehow, once I had picked one – Stockholm – I knew what the story was going to be about. I had such a strong image of the harbour there. Does that make ANY sense?

That’s about all I need to start because really the creative process for me, once I have got started, comes in the writing. My first drafts rarely make much sense, and I edit and edit, which I see as very creative too. Like polishing a stone until it’s a jewel! Another key creative aspect for me is finding the right voice for the piece. Sometimes I think this comes instinctively – Verity’s voice in Something Beginning With felt very natural until, six months later I had to come back to the manuscript, and couldn’t ‘get’ it at all. It was only when I played the same music as I was playing then that it came back to me, so there was a rhythm involved there, I think, as well as a mood. Recently I’ve been playing with changing my endings. They can feel very firm and fixed to me, so carrying on, or giving a different feel did, at first, make me feel I’d crossed some awful line and might get shot or worse. But hey, it now feels amazing. I try to link up my beginnings and endings, either with an image or with some words – I’ve been really excited looking through my bookshelves to find other writers do that. I guess I was away from writing school the day they taught that and have had to find out the hard way! Of course it’s made me want to do the opposite. I guess that’s another creative phrase – reading and thinking hey, that’s not how the story should go, there’s a much better story in this. And writing something completely different, but which nevertheless has its creative roots in another piece.

That’s very exciting to me – I love the idea of writing and reading as a conversation between us all.

Sarah Salway is a poet, short story writer and author of the novels Something Beginning With (ABCs of Love in the US), and Tell Me Everything (both published by Bloomsbury in the UK and Ballantine in the US). She blogs at: www.sarahsalway.blogspot.com

It’s like sculpture.

You start with a huge block of stone and the idea that you would like to sculpt an elephant. You might even have some drawings that you have spent a while working on, capturing the essence of elephant. So you chip away, trying to find the elephant you had in your mind. But the stone does not always split the way you want it to, and the ears aren’t quite working out the way that you thought that they would, and part way through you realise that you’re trying to make something that just isn’t there in the stone. But it is the beginnings of a reasonable buffalo. So you change direction, and work away.

One final tap of the hammer, and it’s done. Come see the buffalo, you tell a few people: friends, other sculptors, curators of galleries. Tell me what you think. And so they do.

You weigh up what they tell you, and you listen to your own doubts, and with a weary heart you decide that yes, you need to work on it some more. Maybe de-emphasise the buffalosity of the whole thing, head in a more equine direction. Before long, you realise that although it’s going to take a lot of work, a horse is what’s really there in the stone, what’s really there in your mind. So you make it the best horse you possibly can.

(Of course, when you finally finish, and your stone horse is on public display, you can see where that flank is slightly too curved, that nostril not quite flared enough. But other people tell you they like it. You are happy. And then someone tells you it’s a great horse, really a very good horse indeed, but you know, shame it wasn’t an elephant. Big market for elephants).

Iain Rowan has published many short stories. His crime novel, One of Us, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association 2006 Debut Dagger. He blogs at: http://www.iainrowan.com/

Lightbulb/Eureka moment: it might be a title, or a theme, or a character that ‘pops’ up from nowhere or at least, the sub-conscious. Often it’s a combination of different ideas or preoccupations that have been bubbling away in my brain.

Greenhousing: this is where I try to move from the vague idea into something that works as a narrative, even vaguely. I have dozens of ideas a week and this is my attempt to see which have ‘legs’ and which are good ideas, but perhaps not for me. Often I might write the blurb of the imagined book, or a chapter or few pages. My books tend to be in the first person so this often doubles up as character development

Building Blocks/Plotting: if the story does survive to this stage, I might brainstorm/mind map the themes and some initial ideas for key scenes or characters, as well as the central journey or quest my main character might be engaged in. If I am about to write the book, I’ll do this in more detail, but ideally not long before I sit down to write the project, otherwise I will be bored by the time I get round to working on it… I have a short attention span

Writing: at this stage, the themes and concepts and plot are all liable to change but probably not dramatically. I generally write pretty quickly after the planning, perhaps completing a first draft in 3-6 months. I may also do some research but I tend to focus on story rather than detail

Re-drafting: this is where I will try to reconnect with those initial themes and inspirations.

Kate Harrison blogs at: http://chicklitworkinprogress.blogspot.com/; her website is at: www.kate-harrison.com

When I started writing (short stories) I used to carry a notebook around and make endless notes: ideas for current works in progress; ideas for new stories; overheard conversations. I still carry a notebook but rarely make notes. They tend now to be from books I am reading, a particular word I like, or a style element. Whilst research can trigger story development ideas, I discovered fairly early on that too much research and too many notes can become more of a time-wasting procrastination exercise than a contribution to progress. For me it’s not so much the characters who take on a life of their own as the story itself. Like most writers, I have far more ideas than I could ever turn into stories. It’s when an idea refuses to go away; when the story itself takes on an embryonic life and nags to be written that I have do something about it. It’s one of the most fascinating and intriguing things about being involved in the creative process. My first piece of creative work was a film. Situations arose that weren’t ordered by me or thought up by me. They simply arrived, looking for all the world like I’d been smart enough to consciously think of them. Writing is far more of an individual journey and these connections, coincidences, signals that I’m on the right track, never fail to fascinate me and are a huge part of the addiction.

Getting the story flowing isn’t straightforward, especially when writing has to be fitted in with work, family and the rest of life. Martin Amis said recently ‘your unconscious does it. Your unconscious does it all.’ I completely agree. When a story is in full flow I find myself in the happy state of waking up with the next scene in my head waiting to be written down. All I have to do is get up and write it out with little, if any, conscious effort at all. Before I get to that stage it’s a matter of turning up. Experience has taught me that there will be bad days, bad weeks, but so long as I keep going the words will, one day, flow again. When I’ve left the desk to do something completely different, the subconscious, churns away behind the scenes. The sound of a voice, a piece of dialogue, the opening line of the whole book, a resolution, a need to cut out a whole scene will pop up as if from nowhere. I have never been able to go out for a walk, say, to think over a scene. I either have to be writing down words or thinking I’m thinking about something entirely unrelated.

The best way for me to start is to get my characters up and speaking. No lengthy character profiles, often using random names that might stick or be changed later. I’ll do several chapters trying to keep to dialogue. Snippets of description will creep in, to be enhanced or deleted later. Chunks of plodding exposition will always get through. I see them more as notes to self rather than part of the finished story, to be deleted later or changed into dialogue. In the first quarter of the first draft I’m finding out what it’s about as I go. The only thing I have to do is keep going. My writing methods are constantly evolving. My first published novel was written using few of the craft techniques and little plotting, but with detailed character profiles and piles and piles of research notes. It went through at least 6 full rewrites. As I’ve become more experienced I want to cut down the rewrites. For my latest novel it would be possible to spend months and months on lovely research but I’m holding back as best I can. For the first time I’ve diagrammed out 12 or so scenes with the opening, the point of no return, the big complication, the climax and the end. These have already evolved in some places but the bigger structure remains in place. At the final rewrite I’ll check for colour, light and wind (any breath of movement I find very effective at bringing scenes to life). As for the completed novel, I agree with Susan Hill, who said recently that she sees hers as a creature apart which goes off on its own journey to make its way in the world.

Amanda Mann has published two mass-market paperback novels and two non-fiction lifestyle books. She blogs at: Confessions of An Author.

Before the creation of a text can begin I have to do a fair amount of work on research. This may involve visiting places to see what they look like, get a feeling for atmosphere, to see how people use their streets and squares, to see people interacting. In some cases I will conduct interviews. For instance, I wanted a range of views on terrorism so I found a factory director in Morocco who allowed me to interview her workforce from financial director down to night watchman. On other occasions I’ve just conducted vox pops – asked people in the street in Seville what it’s like, say, to live in an area with a lot of Moroccans. I will also do some library work: reading books both general and specific and ranging over all points of view.
Throughout this process I am thinking about my story and the characters who will people it. Occasionally I make notes about possible plot developments. I rarely write anything down about characters. This is something that always comes out in the writing.
By the time I get down to developing the text I will have in mind several major scenes which will occur in my story. These are big ‘plot direction-changing’ moments or major ‘character development’ moments. I have no plan to adhere to. I tend to write from beginning to end, although if I have a chapter that is central to the idea of the whole book I might start with that and then go back to it again and again during the writing process. In The Hidden Assassins Chapter 20 took about 50 drafts, during the year it took to write the book. The task was to consolidate and update the issues surrounding terrorism, whilst delivering a crucial element of the story.
When it comes to writing a text what I am trying to do is to move everything forward at the same time. That is plot, setting and character have to evolve together, not one after the other. This is especially important at the beginning of a book where you are trying to draw a reader into your world. The writer must give them as little excuse (or time) to slip away as possible. If a reader feels they are putting in too much time on stormy weather, baroque architecture or rocky escarpments their mind can wander. If you go into dense characterization or, worse, heavy back story, you will hear the thunder of readers hooves moving off to new pastures. I reckon you have a maximum of ten pages in which to position your central character in his/her life with friends, family and relationships, in an atmospheric setting with a plot up and running. You can (partially) fail on the first two counts but you must not fail with plot.
Luckily, because we are in the business of writing crime stories, we don’t have to think too hard about where a plot is going to begin. It could be with a dead body, a bit of violence, a robbery, whatever. But that is not enough to engage the reader. You have to intrigue them sufficiently to get them to read on. There must be something odd about the dead body, or weird about the bit of violence, or the robbery has to go badly wrong. Whatever it is….something must happen. This is the most difficult thing about creating a text. Something must happen all the time and what’s more it has to happen believably. You’re only allowed to cheat once you’re loved and even then you’ve got to be careful or you’ll get dumped.
These first ten pages will probably need a lot of work to get it right.
So, writing a text: how am I going to tell it? In the first person or the third person? Whose point of view? Reliable or unreliable narrator? Is it going to be a fast action sequence? Should this all come out in dialogue? How important is the setting? Would this be better told with a completely different technique – journals, letters, undiscovered manuscript, screenplay left in a typewriter, message in a bottle?
A friend of mine once said that writing (in his case poetry) was like trying to play three dimensional chess. He meant that the decisions that have to be made are incalculable. So what do you do? You have to have a sounding board. Something that tells you the answer to the questions – is this going to work, does this work and has this worked? Everything my brain comes up with has to pass through my stomach and my stomach tells me whether it’s right or not. When I get that special tension and excitement in my stomach I know it’s working. My stomach makes all the important decisions. If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be able to start. Sometimes I have to coax it into telling me things. I write something and it says nothing. I write something more, still nothing. I write a whole chapter and it finally says, that’s crap, start again. This is an important part of writing a text: reading it. I read everything I’ve written over and over again. Does it stand up a minute after I’ve finished it, two minutes, half an hour, an hour, a day, a week, six months later?
What am I trying to do with a text? As I said earlier, I start writing a book with a beginning and some major scenes. So most texts are attempting to link those major scenes in the most interesting way possible. I am trying to make small things happen so that when the big things happen they are not only gripping but believable as well. Of the six hours a day I spend writing about 100 minutes is spent actually putting words down on paper. The rest is spent thinking of believable sequences of events which deliver to the reader: atmosphere, setting, character and the next step towards the big scene. When I’m not writing or thinking, I’m reading and re-reading. The interesting thing is that big scenes have a way of writing themselves. I’ve been thinking about them in such detail for so long that when I get there I write them in one sitting. So what writing is all about is linkage. At the risk of sounding like E M Forster – I’m just trying to get things to connect.
When it comes to the detail of a text I always remind myself that the point of a crime novel is to permanently engage the reader and I apply that to every paragraph, sentence and word. The reader must have as little reason as possible to put the book down. So I try not to induce subconscious boredom. I try to start paragraphs with a different word. If you’re not careful you can find that every paragraph starts with the name of your protagonist. This can induce subconscious irritation in the reader. I also change the construction of sentences so that the reader isn’t constantly getting subject, verb, object. I also look for the right word. I’ve been known to spend half an hour digging out the right word for the circumstances. I only stop when it occurs to me that I’m insane to be spending such time on one out of 150,000 words.
Having created the text I move on but I will go back to it three or four times over the next few days to check it out. Six months later I will transfer it from longhand to the computer. The longhand text looks like the diary of an axe murderer with notes all over, circles, stuff up the margins. Deciphering it is not easy and a major edit takes place at this point. I strip out as much as I can. It’s never enough, but it’s all I can manage at the time.
The text then goes to my wife who makes her observations. Another edit takes place. Characters and scenes are reworked.
My editor finally gets her hands on it. She makes her observations. It usually takes a month or more. I am thinking about the book constantly. I know all the changes that have to be made. They come to me as I distance myself from the text and they almost all coincide with my editors notes. What she doesn’t tell me to do is to cut everything that is not strictly necessary. In the final edit I go through every chapter, paragraph, sentence and word and ask myself whether it should be allowed to remain.
So, from the moment I’ve created a text, it becomes an exercise in survival. Can it make the cut?

Robert Wilson won the CWA Gold Dagger for A Small Death in Lisbon; he is the author of the novels, The Company of Strangers, The Blind Man of Seville, The Vanished Hands and The Hidden Asssassins, among others. He has no website as his location in the middle of nowhere is not well-served with speedy internet connection.

I’ve had discussions like this with writer friends — there is the perception that we are divided into the planners and the dreamers, those who just let the story develop on its own. I think if you’re working on a novel, you need to incorporate both, although it’s always a personal formula, whether a lot of dreaming with a little tightening up of plot
points, or a complicated plot that opens out in places.

I’m sure that there are parts, but not that they come in any order. Stories for me can begin with an idea, a character, a title, sometimes a plot. My story, In Charge of the Letter M, began with that irresistible title.

I’m even willing to believe that there are authors whose method varies from
book to book, and story to story.

Ann Marie‘s story, In Charge of the Letter M, will be published online at www.ghotimag.com in the summer issue. She blogs at: www.zenofwriting.com.