By Atlin Merrick
"What’s your process?"
What’s my……what?
If anyone’s ever asked you this question, about how you go about writing, and then took a minute from their so-busy lives to tell you a ‘better’ way, may I kindly suggest you ignore the right royal hell out of them?
Because if you’re getting words on the page, your process is aces.
Me, I go to cafes. I’ve written hundreds of articles in cafes. I’ve written two books in cafes. When a cafe gets noisy with someone tap-tap-tapping at a glass with their spoon or a child is weeping as if their hair is on fire, I put in my earbuds and listen to cafe noise.
That’s my writing ‘process.’
You? Maybe you sit on the toilet lid while your spouse feeds the kids and puts them to bed. You get a solid 500 words out. Your process is perfect.
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You? Maybe you take one long weekend a month off from everything and live in your mum and dad’s basement. During that time you write 10,000 words. Your process is perfect.
You? Maybe you write 100 words on the bus to work, another 100 during your lunch break, and a solid 200 during the news. Your process is perfect.
The point is this—lots of times people who tell you how to do something don’t themselves actually do it. That doesn’t stop us from feeling we’re doing it wrong by not doing it their way. But we’re not. If you want to write and you found a way to write, then there you go, you’re doing it. There’s no correct way. None none none.
Hell, if you write best sitting in the middle of playground where children are screaming, a dog is gnawing at your shoelaces, and you have a coffee at your hip so hot you’ve burned your mouth twice then THERE YOU GO. Please keep it up. That’s your way and it works.
(Though chill that coffee maybe?)