I’m more of a panster writer, most things seem to put down unconsciously and stay as a thread throughout, though sometimes I do write the dreaded out of order scenes which are a pain to have to go back and put in the story.

I recently discovered Alltheweb, and I’m pretty much hooked.

What is your favorite trick for getting the pages done?

Morning meditation for thirty minutes before I start working. It resets my brain and sharpens my focus.

…are there any changes you’ve made in how you write that you never thought you would?

Writing from a male character’s POV always spooked me a little until I tried it a few times in short stories. That gave me enough confidence to write a novel with a male protagonist; something I never thought I’d do.

I have trouble writing stories out-of-order as well, since each scene builds on the one before, in my head. When I’m revising, though, I can flip back and forth between the story and add/subtract with wild abandon. I always seem to end up adding more than subtracting, unfortunately; part of this is due to the original draft usually leaving things out that I realize should be addressed. But hey, this is the purpose of revision!

I am a very messy writer. I’ll leave it at that.

What keeps me focused? Music. I just bought an iPod (my son is in a snit because I didn’t buy him one while I was at it) and next on the “to be bought” list is in a AlphaSmart with no internet access.

I mainly write without plotting, but I can’t say never, just because there have been a couple of books that I’ve finished lately that I did end up plotting out, to some extent. mainly just the beginning, the main conflict, and the end, but for me… that’s ALOT. A year and a half ago, I would have said, I just can’t plot anything out in advance.

My favorite trick for getting the pages done is also a change I’ve made that I never thought I would, which is, in dialogue heavy scenes, first writing the dialogue only, with no tags, no narration, nothing but what the characters are saying. Dialogue is easier for me to write than narration, so this gives me a lot of forward momentum in those scenes, and it also helps me feel that I’m writing it in “real time,” closer to the pace it would be spoken. Conversations become more natural, and I don’t lose focus of what I’m trying to accomplish by them.