There are millions of processes that a person could put words on paper. Now, for me, I always have an idea. A thought. Something that doesn’t quite fit in the world, or a ‘what if…’ kind of thought. But I also read, in a book about writing, that they had a situation with one of their student writers, where she had written a whole book, but had no main story. It was just a collection of various people, all doing different things, without a single thread to tie them all together.

While this is writing, and, yes, sure, you’ll get a book out of it, it probably won’t get you far as a career. But for some, this is their process.

And that is OK.

The only person who knows how their mind works is the person with the mind. I often hear people say, “This is how I do it,” and they show me some awful way they do something on the computer. Like selecting text and then left clicking on it with the mouse to select the ‘copy’ option, to copy it, and left clicking where they want to paste it. And I’m just wondering why they don’t use Ctrl C and Ctrl V (or function on Apple)? But this is how they prefer it. Sometimes you have to shrug and let things go.

We have this old hiking club here, in the town I used to live in. These ladies, who were, let’s say, more blue in blue cheese than cheese, were trying to get ‘with it’ and send out newsletters and WhatsApp messages. They wanted me to get involved. I had already learned my lesson about getting involved with non-tech people a few years prior, and so I simply smiled and made noises like a truck backing up, as I exited the room.

But, a little while ago, I overheard them talking because they had problems. They couldn’t send a Word document out via email. I made the mistake of asking what the problem was and discovered that the reason why the document couldn’t leave the inbox was that it was nearly a hundred megabytes. They had inserted over a dozen high-resolution images of themselves and their hiking trip into the Word document. They were then attempting to send it to their friend, who did the odd design work back in the 70’s, who was going to convert the Word document into a PDF, which they could then email to their members, as the ‘newsletter.’

I cringed to the point I almost had a complete body spasm that they had to take me away in a stretcher.

Now, I understand that the technology age only pitched up halfway through their life and that they are adjusting as best as they can. I also understand that what comes easily to me might not come easily to others and vice versa. While I find their technologies’ shenanigans unbearable, I am sure Elon Musk would watch me at the computer and possibly compare me to a mammoth trying to type with his trunk.

So, I say nothing. Because that’s how they do it. And that’s what they are happy with.

It’s the same with writing.

A person who wants to spend a year filling up a notebook on world-building ideas, before writing an entire backstory to each and every character, before even getting to the proper first sentence, well, that’s their journey. Tolkien spent years creating languages and working out every single detail before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and let’s face it… Those were some pretty awesome books.

Real custard walking to read, though. I mean, just pages and pages of the different autumn-colored leaves before we even met any person. But worth it. Apparently, I heard, a journalist said he went for a walk with Tolkien once, to talk about his writing, and it was the most painful experience, because Tolkien kept stopping to peer up at twigs, and poking the grass with his stick to find mice. His writing, knowing that about him, makes a lot of sense now.

But, however you want to write, and you want to get your story down, is between you and the story. I must, or rather ‘feel’ the need, to insert here in the more ‘mindful’ or ‘inner workings’ section in this book, that while social media distractions are not great, neither are inner world distractions.

If you like to write and meander, to see what characters do and what your brain concocts, that’s fine. But you do need to manage your thoughts to ensure they do stay on some sort of path. Otherwise, you will have to do far more drafts and rewrites than the average writer, and the problem with that is that boredom will come and prevent you from finishing.

Because, let’s be honest between these pages, most people don’t finish a book because of the fear that they aren’t good enough. And the second biggest killer of would-be-authors is that they start writing and get bored.

That happens to authors as well. I’m sure Stephen King has a whole dungeon filled with half-written manuscripts.

A creative mind is great. and an independent mind, free from reality, is fantastic. But you need to be able to manage it.

And before you go off and buy scented candles and load up endless loops of ambient music, I am not talking about writing rituals. I’ll deal with those in the next section. No. I’m talking about ensuring that you follow one, two, three (maximum!) threads in your book. Keep them like a lifeline. George R. Martin probably has about ten threads, with each family and their story, but reality check. He started writing the A Song of Ice and Fire series (better known as Game of Thrones) in 1991, and I’m writing this in mid-2026, and he still has two books to go. I suspect he might be suffering from what I was talking about earlier, which is boredom. The hype is gone. He waited too long. He’s probably burnt out because the pressure got to much (see previous chapter). He got fearful, since there was such a backlash on the series, that he over-promised the books would be better, and then probably blanked out. And now… now he’s bored. I’m just guessing here. I could be totally wrong. Maybe he is a textbook procrastinator and has struggled since the very beginning.

Anne Rice, who wrote Interview with a Vampire (made into a movie), wasn’t a fan of structure. In her early career, she had an editor, most notably Victoria Wilson, for many, many years. But then, I guess maybe after the success of Interview with a Vampire, a seed got planted in her head that she doesn’t really need one. Her work, gradually, according to critics, got wider and wider, in terms of the story and character development. Her post-1990 books were considered ‘lacking,’ but she was pleased with her full control over her narrative.

The point I am trying to make is, J.R. Rowling created hand-drawn spreadsheets, which is almost an equivalent of an Excel spreadsheet, which we all know is the kryptonite of creatives, so that she knew what character was doing what, when, and how she should incorporate it. I’m sure other writers have something similar.

The story can be free spirited, like sheep, but you need to ensure that your mind is the sheep dog and you are the shepherd. You need to take your story over that hill, you don’t know what you might find, or what the latter half of your day will be like, but you need to be able to guide all your characters/sheep there.

What happens, though, if you do wander off? Well, similar to if you were knitting and you started adding more and more stitches to your row, you would probably have to unpick it, all the way to when it made sense. Which sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Deleting hard-earned typing. But that’s what I’m giving this tip. Staying on a course helps you, not only in focus, but also in the editing process. You don’t have to trim the fat as much if there isn’t much of it to start off with.