Kit Pearson would be the first writer who comes to my mind when I think. Not because I’m a big fan of hers or anything, but because her book “Awake and Dreaming” was the first chapter-pictureless book I’ve ever read – although I don’t remember much (or any) of the plot.
Kit Pearson gets her ideas randomly, while driving or in the middle of the night. Her stories are mostly based on her own life as a child: things she has observed, learned, or heard about. She finds out about her plot by writing it, not by organizing a story from beginning to middle to end – but by just writing it. She does make notes before proceeding with the story, but doesn’t use them in the actual process of writing the first draft. After the first draft she reads, looks at the notes, tries to fit them in, and reads again. She only looks at the words by the last few drafts.
Nice idea. The first thing I worry about is words, I HAVE to get the sentence in its best shape. And then when it looks perfect to me, I convince myself not to change it when I get a better idea because my sentence already seems ‘just right’. And that’s how let great ideas slip away just because I am too in love with my first draft. It doesn’t happen all the time, but happens a lot with essays. So maybe this is the technique I should learn to grasp at: don’t look at the words until you’re totally satisfied with the outline.
