On episode #113 of Stacker News Live, Car and Keyan said, “maybe we should talk about everybody’s writing process.” Here's a little bit on that from me. There are many reasons to write. For context, I’ll name a few things that I often spend time writing: Productive: emails, plans, lists, messages, notes Creative: journal, internet posts, poems, greeting cards, short stories, ideas

Right now, I can come up with two essentials to my process: Focus and feelings have to be present. I'll describe these.

An essential for any task is setting yourself up to achieve the focus required. I know this about myself: the library meets my focus needs. There’s another set of things that can be done if no library is available, or if it closes at the inopportune time (which it tends to do), but being at the library is primary. A library’s atmosphere is unmatched in my mind to the coffeeshop or other public spaces that provide quiet, company and beauty. It’s two things that separate it, we’ll call one the cathedral effect and the other inspiration.

For me, someone who has an amorous relationship with writing, going to the library is essential to my process. But for people who aren’t me, I do think it is necessary to understand how you achieve the focus you need and make an attempt to create those conditions. Coffee shops can be great, music can create an atmosphere. Along with the atmosphere you prefer, you need some type of withdraw from the present, a space that’s able to let time slide by in chunks.

Writing is the place where I get to be indulgent with my feelings. Channeling such powerful, confusing, and often incorrect energy into a pen on a page has proven to be the safest place. If you’ve been alive very long, you know how your feelings can deceive you, you know that they will come out of you against your will if you do not reign them. In the quiet of your own mind, you can sit with them. But this is not always satisfying. I find that inviting them to the front of my mind as I try to record them in words interests and eases me endlessly. How can I point you to this process if you’re not used to doing it? The best thing is beginning a practice of journaling. I just recently started up my own diligent practice, and it’s not much effort at all, yet I receive many gifts from it. The way I carry stress has a lot to do with this. I have a low tolerance for misunderstanding my own feelings, it causes stress. So when I bring them up to explore them in kindness and privacy, I gain a lot of insights about myself. I rely on this process when I’m going through difficult things. And journaling can be very boring itself. This is the kind of writing that is not meant to be shared. It is kindling for the fire. Writing a book about my grandpa’s life was a major exercise in bringing my feelings forward. I played back all the childhood memories I have of him, and I tried to see his life through his eyes. I wrote from my feelings so hard, there were several times tears collected into puddles on my keyboard as I typed. It’s rewarding to do this. I wrote a book about my grandpa so that I could go through those feelings, the pain and the joy of them. I came out as a different person on the other side of it. What’s valuable to me about my book is my own experience of writing it, and that’s art for art’s sake, to be changed by the creation, to expect nothing else. Writing from my feelings is the most powerful thing to me in my own life, but it is very hard to rate it’s value to the world. I’m not convinced that it is valuable to anyone else but me, and still I have reason enough to do it. You’ll have to sort this part out for yourself. There are plenty of other things to do than to sit in solitude and parse emotions.

There’s certainly more to this, and I will try to think about my process for poetry next. But I’m curious how anyone may relate, or what other essentials you add to your writing process.