Writing Out of Sequence Without Scrambling Thy Brain Matter (Or 'How Some Scenes Are Like Stopping at a Rest Stop So Batman Can Pee')

At some point, during my early writing days, I started writing out of sequence. In the beginning, I wrote chronologically like most sane, reasonable people, but then I started skipping ahead. A scene would catch my attention and refuse to let me sleep, so I'd write that part, and then go back to writing the rest of the story in order. Over time, this madness evolved until my only inclination to write even remotely chronologically was to start with Chapter 1.  I still do that. After about 100 words, I'll probably flit over to Chapter 17 for a little while. These days, it's a rare occasion when I write a paragraph in order. This blog post? All over the place.

So how the hell does it work, anyway?

Before I get started, I want to throw this out there to anyone who's curious about out of sequence writing: If you have any questions about specifics, anything you want me to cover that I've completely neglected to, please put them in the comments of this post. Out of sequence writing is pretty much second nature to me now, so I'm not always sure what other writers want to know about it.

That said, I'll cover as much as I can in this post. I've covered a lot of this ground before, having blogged about these techniques here, here, and here. So I'll probably repeat myself a little bit, but we'll just blame that on the ADHD and move on.

Let's start with a little bit on how to write out of sequence, and then I'll get to why, advantages/disadvantages, Batman, etc.

How to Write Out of Sequence

There's no one way to write out of sequence. If there was, that would mean this was a sane, reasonable technique employed by sane, reasonable people, but it's not. So, I'll offer tips and pointers based on how I do it, but please take them all with an entire mine full of salt. Should you try any of them and find they are disastrous on an "invade Russia in the winter" level, then by all means, reject them.

First, let's talk about documents and files. Most people I know who write out of sequence swear by Scrivener. I have a copy, but haven't learned to use it yet, so I can't speak with any authority about how well it works. I know several authors who love it, though, especially if they're not chronological writers.

I'm a creature of habit, and I write in MS Word. Each chapter is its own document, and when a chapter is complete, it's dropped into a folder creatively called "Finished Chapters."

But how in the world do I keep track of what happens in those chapters?

Well...

Okay, we all know what's coming. I know this is going to make a few people hit the brakes and yell "NOPE!", but hear me out, y'all.

If you're going to write out of sequence without losing your sanity, you'll probably want to at least consider outlining. I know some authors do this without an outline, but I have no idea how they manage it, and if I tried, my brain would melt out of my left nostril. In the interest of keeping brain matter out of my sinuses, which have already been mercilessly ravaged by the brutal Nebraska winter, I'm going to let those people do their thing while I do mine. So, let's talk about outlining for a moment.

I know that word is enough to make some authors break out in hives or have flashbacks to high school English. This is because high school is a powerful thing that can turn Shakespeare into something as exciting as dried peanut  butter and reduce World War II to a dull landscape of names and dates. So let's start by evicting everything high school ever taught us about outlines. I hereby grant each and every one of you permission to forget everything your English teacher beat into you about outlines. There are no rules. There are no requirements. You don't have to use letters, followed by numbers, followed by Roman numerals, followed by...you get the idea.

You also do not have to stick with your outline. As I've mentioned in many previous posts, my hard and fast (hehe, hard and fast) rule of outlining is that if the characters and outline disagree, the characters always win. If you deviate from your outline, no one is going to flunk you or leave snide comments in the margins. Remember that your outline serves you. Therefore, it should be written, formatted, and adhered to only inasmuch as it helps you, the author, write your story. If you work best with a strict, detailed outline, then that's your style. If you work best with something vague and brief, there you go.

All of that being said, I'm one of those vague, flexible outliners. Each chapter gets a one-line summary so I remember what's supposed to happen there. It can be as simple as "They meet."  Notice how there's nothing indicating where, how, why, or if there's a malfunctioning cotton candy machine involved. That's because my outline is not there to dictate every detail of the scene. Rather, it's there so I know at a glance the order of events. Do the characters meet before the Corvette incident, but after the fishing trip? Awesome. Now I know whether or not they can make comments about the rabid bass they caught, or if the love interest already has the imprint on his forehead from the Corvette symbol. So basically, the outline helps me keep the story's chronology straight so I can write out of sequence without creating continuity errors.

And to reiterate: If the characters and outline disagree, the characters always win. So if you find yourself working on a scene in chapter 13 that illuminates a fatal error with chapter 4, run with it and change chapter 4. If chapter 7 actually needs to come after chapter 17, rearrange, renumber, and continue.

So basically...

1. Have an outline or at least a vague plan unless you're one of those human-alien hybrids who can do this on the fly.
2. Let thy characters guide you.

Also, precisely how out of sequence you write is entirely up to you. Some people write entire scenes. Some people write a few paragraphs here and there, and eventually sew them all together into a cohesive scene. Me, I'm all over the place. I usually have at least 300-500 words in every chapter of a book before I ever finish one chapter. Then I'll just add 100 or so here and there, and eventually...it's done.

So there really isn't a particular method for out of sequence writing. The biggest thing is just to keep yourself organized enough to know what to write and where, but not so strictly outlined/planned that you suffocate yourself. I know, that doesn't sound terribly helpful. "Just do what you want and try not to get lost."  But that's pretty much what it boils down to.

Okay, but why? It sounds kind of complicated.

So...

What are some of the advantages of writing out of sequence?

A lot of the pros/cons have been covered in the previous blog posts I linked above. Preventing continuity errors, ridiculously easy foreshadowing, etc. A couple of things I'd particularly like to highlight in this post:

1. Some scenes are a pain in the ass to write.
2. Some books are a pain in the ass to finish.

Let's face it: Even the easiest book that's just rocking its way out of your head via your fingers is going to have its moments. It's kind of like being on a road trip with awesome friends and Batman. You're flying down the interstate, having the time of your life with your friends and Batman, listening to the radio and Batman's stories and totally not questioning why a) you haven't seen a cop for the last 100 miles or b) Batman's even hanging out with you, but...

...sooner or later, someone will have to stop and pee. I'm not naming names or necessarily saying Batman's the one who's gotta pee, but one way or another, you're eventually going to have to start watching for a gas station or rest stop, slow down, pull into a parking space, and come down from your high-while-sober euphoria of fun to peruse a dirty convenience store's snack aisle while you wait for Batman to come out of the bathroom. Then it's back on the road for more fun and Batman.

Which is an incredibly long and belabored way of saying...sometimes you stall or hit a not-so-fun-to-write part of the book. Sometimes there's a scene you just don't feel like writing. I've argued many times with people who think that if a scene is difficult or troublesome to write, it's probably going to be difficult or troublesome to read. If I don't feel like writing it, the reader won't feel like reading it. I disagree. Honestly, every single one of my books has at least one scene that I beat my head against before it finally came together. There are some scenes that were so difficult to write for whatever reason, I would literally add 2-3 sentences, then go work on something else. For weeks.

The thing is, not every exciting-to-read scene is exciting to write. And sometimes, in order to get from one exciting-to-write scene to another, you need another scene in between that is necessary and interesting to read, but for whatever reason, excruciating to write. Writing that scene is the Batman pee break of the road trip: like it or not, it's gotta happen.

For  me, the Batman pee breaks are usually sex scenes and car chases. Car chases are seriously the bane of my existence, and for reasons I'll never fully understand, I find sex scenes incredibly difficult to write. But since I write erotic fiction, they are obviously necessary.

But what in the name of all that's good and unholy does this have to do with writing out of sequence?

Everything, my dear friends. Everything.

Imagine, if you will, that you're on your road trip with Batman. Now imagine you're like fifty miles from Vegas, and you are itching to sit down at the baccarat table and out-baccarat James Bond. And a hundred miles after that, you're going to visit Area 51 and are guaranteed to witness an alien abduction complete with televised anal probing.

What if you could teleport ahead, skip the miles of desert and the OMG Batman seriously another freaking pee breaks, and park your butt at the baccarat table? And once you were done with that, you could snap your fingers and be in your front row lawn chair at Area 51?

Guess what?

YOU TOTALLY CAN.

Skip ahead. Write the baccarat scene. Then skip ahead again and write the Area 51 scene. While you're at it, jump back to the pre-baccarat driving and write in a witty, foreshadowy snippet of dialogue that you hadn't thought of before. When those are done, time warp all the way to the end and write the wicked cool epilogue involving a reincarnated Joan of Arc and a disembodied owl brain.

See? Words are flying! The scenes are landing on paper, and they're awesome! A few more scenes, and you're done with this bad boy!

Which of course brings us back to Batman and his temperamental bladder.

Yes, we can skip around and write all the exciting-to-write scenes, and knock out all the scenes that just wanted to happen right now, but sooner or later, you're gonna have to suck it up, pull into a rest stop, and let the dude do his business.

In my case, this usually means going back and writing at least one or two of the sex scenes, or going back and finally finishing that car chase which is currently nothing more than a dozen or so sentences scattered throughout an otherwise blank document because OMG car chases are going to be the literary (not literal!) death of me.

So... really? Now we have to sit down and write the scenes that are really hard to write? Now that all the cool scenes are done?

Yes.  But look at it this way: those scenes are the only thing standing between you and a finished book.

Just last week I was wrapping up Razor Wire, my lesbian  military romance. That book had been flyyyying out of my fingertips, words hitting the page like... like... okay, let's just let this one go before I find a way to bring it back to Batman stopping and peeing again. Point being, Razor Wire was flying.

Except for the second sex scene. I was flitting all over the book, adding 100 words here and 500 there, but every time I came to that scene...crickets.

I couldn't take the scene out because it was necessary for the story. There was nothing wrong with the scene, I just...didn't feel like writing it. It was that simple. Sort of like the car chase scene in The Given & The Taken. It was absolutely necessary to the story, and when it was finished, my betas were thrilled with it and fortunately couldn't tell that writing it was word dentistry.

With both the car chase in The Given & The Taken, and the sex scene in Razor Wire, I found myself in the same situation: the entire book was written except for that scene.

Now, it was still a struggle to finish those two scenes, but it made a huge difference knowing that once they were finished, the book would be finished. It was decidedly less daunting to approach those scenes knowing I'd be done with the entire manuscript, rather than "Okay, now on to the next 50,000 words..."

Bottom line, which I probably could have summed up in far fewer but considerably less entertaining words:

1. Writing out of sequence allows you to write the scenes that your brain wants to write without a) blowing through the less interesting ones just to get to the good ones, or b) completely stalling out because you can't get past the less interesting ones.
2. Writing out of sequence can also put you in a position where the less interesting scene is the only thing standing between you and a finished book.

A few points about that:

1. When I say "less interesting" scenes, I don't mean less interesting to read. Some scenes are just tougher to write, or aren't as exciting to write, but are still mission critical and absolutely interesting to read. Make sure you know the difference. Is this scene just tough to write? Or is your reluctance/difficulty a sign that there's a problem with the scene?  Does Batman really have to pee, or is he just being a jerk?

2. For some people, writing all the exciting stuff first can backfire. For me, it's like chapter peer pressure. All the other chapters are done, and they're glaring at chapters 15 and 23 like "WTF, dude? Get your head out of your butt," and that's enough to motivate me to pound out those chapters.  For others, once the fun stuff is done, they don't feel like writing the less fun stuff, and the manuscript stalls. Know thy mind, know thy limits.

As with anything, if a technique or explanation doesn't work for you, toss it aside and ignore it. Part of this game is figuring out what works, and there is no 'one size fits all' on this particular rack.

Hopefully at least some of this made some sense. If you have particular questions about out of sequence writing, please do put them into the comments, and I'll address them in a future post.

And I make no promises about whether or not Batman and his overactive bladder will appear in that future post...

Writing Fast While Maintaining (Some Of) Your Sanity (Or 'For the Love of Brackets and Grandmas Who Won't Shoplift)

I started writing at speed during NaNoWriMo 2008, and pretty much haven't stopped. My output is roughly 80,000 words a month, give or take 10-20K depending on what else is going on in my life. As such, I get a lot of questions about it, mostly "How?"

So, I decided to write up a post with some tips for writing faster. There's also some general commentary on not driving yourself crazy (and stalling out) with your story because in a lot of situations, the key to writing fast is knocking over some mental obstacles in your writing technique. i.e., spending less time banging your head against the keyboard and more time tapping your fingers on it.

First, I want to preface this by saying that writing fast does not equate to writing better. I can't write slow because I get frustrated and impatient. Other writers are solid and consistent at a few hundred words a day, and that's a comfortable pace for them. Please don't take anything in this post as a criticism against those writers. This is simply to answer the questions of people who want to understand and possibly adopt some of my techniques.

And as with everything, your mileage may vary. These techniques will not work for everyone, and that's perfectly okay. Please also bear in mind that I'm a full-time writer with no kids and very few obligations outside the home. Things like kids and day jobs obviously have an impact on how much time and headspace you have available to write. Hopefully some of these techniques can help you get as much written as possible during the time you have available.

With that out of the way, ONWARD!

How do I write fast? Basically, I...

Write out of sequence. There will be a post specifically about this soon, and I've blogged about it before (here, here, and here), so I won't go into lengthy detail here. Point being, I flit around from chapter to chapter and write bits and pieces, and when a scene really crystallizes, I'll fill in the gaps, sew all the little pieces together, and have a nice cohesive chapter.  More on that soon.

Obsess about word counts. This is how NaNoWriMo really helped me: With daily semi-tangible goals. By the time I was finished with NaNo in 2008, I had fallen into a rhythm of aiming for specific word counts every day. Before long, I had a spreadsheet that calculated how much I'd written that day and how much I had left to meet my goal.

That's not to say word counts are the end all, be all of writing. It goes without saying that quality trumps quantity. BUT... when I'm trudging along and hit one of those "I could call it a day" moments, and I see on my spreadsheet that I'm almost to the next 1,000 or 500 milestone, it's enough motivation to keep me writing until I hit that milestone. And more often than not, whatever I've written to hit that milestone is enough to give me a second (or third, or fourth) wind, which gets me almost to the next milestone, and so forth. It can mean the difference between a 900 word day and a 5,000 word day.

Related to that...

Set goals and keep them. I set daily, weekly, and monthly word count goals. And yes, there's a spreadsheet involved. How do you determine how much you should write every day?  Figure out what's easy for you, figure out what's doable with extreme effort, and find a goalpost in between. For example, I can write 1,000 words pretty easily. If I really push hard, I can write 10,000, but that's not a sustainable daily pace for me. So my daily goal is 5,000. It's a comfortable enough pace that I can sustain it, but also requires enough work that I have to push for it.

Word Wars. If you're competitive and have a writing buddy who's game, do some speed challenges. See if you can both hit 500 words in half an hour. Aim for 1,000 words in an hour. First one to 2,000 words gets a $0.99 song gifted to them on iTunes. Whatever floats your boat, but if a little friendly competition gets your fingers moving on the keyboard, do it.

Multiple Works-in-Progress. This is definitely an area where your mileage will vary. I used to be strict about writing one book at a time, but after some deadlines coincided, I ended up writing two at a time. I don't recommend more than that, but I've found two at a time is a good pace. Reason being, if I'm stalling on one, I can work on the other. If I can't get words out on either book, that's a pretty reliable sign that I'm burned out and have probably forgotten (again) to take a day off for like two solid weeks.  If one book is flying and the other is stalling, then at least something is getting written, and once I finish working on that one for the day, I can devote some time to figuring out what's wrong with the other one.  And then there's the best case scenario: Two books that are absolutely flying. I love it when that happens, and can usually knock out 7-8,000 words a day without much trouble and make headway on both books. Win.

Okay, so that's all well and good for output, but what about the actual writing? Because obviously, quality is important here. 

Don't sweat the little details (or, How I learned to love [brackets]). This is a technique I picked up from author Aislinn Kerry, and it's worked wonders for me. Let's say your character is a wine connoisseur, and is selecting a bottle to go with a particular meal, but you don't know quite so  much about wine, so you're not sure what he'd select.  You're on a roll, though. Do you stop and open up wikipedia or google it? Do you crowdsource on Twitter or Facebook? You could. I've done it.  But what if you have to wait for an answer? What if your expert-in-waiting is offline? Like when I need my husband to answer a military question, or I've e-mailed Aleks, who inconveniently lives on the other side of the world?  Do you stop completely until you know what kind of wine the character would select? 

Bottom line, do you really want to lose your momentum over a relatively minor detail? I don't. In this situation, I write, "He grabbed a bottle of [wine] off the rack," and move on. 

Or what if my character is driving a distinctive sports car, brought to him by the unimportant-to-the-story-but-named valet at the party?  "[valet] brought the bright red [model] around to the front."  My recent military romance is full of "[rank] [name] turned to [name2]..." and "she boarded the [C130?] cargo jet..." because the story was just flying, and I didn't want to stop to figure out names, which cargo jets flew out of Okinawa, what rank this or that person would be, etc.

Then, when there's some downtime -- after I've finished the scene, made the day's goal, finished the entire book, or what have you -- I do a search for "[", and correct them all. It does sound a little time-consuming, but it's really not. Razor Wire had over 50 sets of brackets, and it took me about ten minutes to resolve all of them. I would much rather do the googling/crowdsourcing/etc after the book is finished than stall out while writing it.

Please note this is not limited to single words. As an example, I was recently working on a chapter of Dark Soul, and came to a scene where the characters were pulling up to a house that's described in detail in one of the original books. I was on a roll and didn't feel like looking up the details, so I just wrote: "They pulled up to the house. [more details here]" Later, I added a paragraph or so of details, but the point is, I didn't have to stop writing the scene to fill those in.

When you sit down to write, have a plan. This does not mean you have to outline. Aleks and I don't outline when we co-write, but we usually know what's going to happen in the next 2-3 scenes. Half the time, we're wrong, and somebody throws a giant curve ball that neither of us saw coming, and that's okay! The point is that when we sit down to write, we have at least an idea of where we're going with the next scene. It's kind of like deciding to go out for a drive. It's a lot more fun to jump in the car and go than it is to sit in the driveway debating whether to go right or left. You don't have to have a destination in mind, but it helps to at least have a direction. Just get in the car, get on the freeway, and haul ass, and if something looks interesting along the way, stop and check it out. 

By the same token...

...don't plan things to death. In my fledgling writer days, I wrote a horrible epic fantasy novel three times over the course of about ten years. Each actual draft took about 4-6 months, depending on what else I had going on in my life. So why the hell did it take ten years? Well, a lot of that had to do with getting derailed and sidetracked with other things like jobs and school, but there were some very long periods in there where I planned. And planned. And planned. I outlined. Re-outlined. Built the world. Outlined again. Burned the world to the ground and started over. Filled out countless character interviews/forms/dossiers/bios. For every hour I spent writing that bad boy, I probably spent at least five planning it.  (And it still sucked. Go figure.)

Point being, at some point, you have to put down the blueprint and start building the damned house. You can measure and re-measure every angle and beam, but you'll still have nothing but an empty lot until you actually start pouring some concrete and building the frame. 

Be flexible. I'm an outliner, but I outline pretty vaguely. I know what the characters' motivations are, what they're going to do and why, and when things will happen. But invariably, those things change. Constantly. The rigid outliner in me -- you know, the one who's never forgotten high school English -- still wants to break out in hives at the idea of deviating from the outline that's been written in blood, carved in stone, and notarized twelve times over. But the side of me who's always rebelled against my high school English teachers and doesn't like to be told what to do has no qualms about adjusting an outline to fit the story.

How does that help with writing at speed?  It prevents two things:

1. Time and energy wasted trying to shoehorn a story into an outline it doesn't like.
2. Time and energy wasted rejigging the outline down to the last detail because the story rebelled.

Common denominators: wasting time and energy.

If the story deviates from the outline, go with it. This is kind of like improv. If another actor throws a monkey wrench into the scene in front of a packed house, do you stop in the middle and ask him what the hell he's doing? Or do you take his cue and run with it?  Of course you run with it. For me, writing is kind of the same thing. And if a character throws me a curve ball, chances are, he knows what he's doing, so I let the scene go and see what happens.

I have one set-in-stone rule when it comes to writing, and it's one of the things that helps me write faster because I don't let myself stall out for the above reasons. That rule is:

If the characters and outline disagree, the characters win. Always.

Hasn't led me astray yet.

Now, a little bit of a tangent here about writing in general, which may or may not help you with writing speed, but feels relevant... 

One thing that always comes up on writing forums is the idea of characters hijacking the story. Some writers insist that it's true, that characters are basically living entities who can't be controlled, and the author is just along for the ride. Others think it's utter hogwash and THEY are in control of everything. Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Imagine someone you know really, really well. You know their quirks, their history, their morals, their preferences, etc. Now imagine writing them into a story. Think of something that person absolutely would not do under any circumstances.  Let's say Grandma would never in a million years steal a wrench from the hardware store. Not a chance.  With that in mind, try writing a scene where she's stealing a wrench from the hardware store, feeling completely justified about it and not considering any alternatives. Doesn't work, does it? 

Characters are the same way. They are a collection of quirks, traits, and morals, and at least in  my experience, sometimes those quirks, traits, and morals become clearer as I'm writing the story (versus when I wrote the outline). Then I find them in a position where I'm asking them to do what the outline says, but I just can't get the words to come out. I thought I knew how this character would behave, but then I got to the scene and realized there's no way in hell I'm going to make Grandma steal that wrench. But she still needs the wrench, right? Instead of forcing her to do what the outlines said, it's time to rethink the scene according to Grandma's quirks, traits, and morals, and how she -- your 3-dimensional character -- would acquire the wrench.

What does that have to do with writing speed? Well, allowing some flexibility and giving your characters room to come to life means the story has some breathing room to flow and do its thing, while Rigid Outliner is banging on the Backspace key trying to figure out how to make Grandma steal the goddamned wrench already.

So...don't stall out. Let her find another way to get her hands on the wrench. She'll be truer to her character, will probably come up with a more interesting way to acquire it, and...you'll be writing instead of stalling. (See? Told you it was relevant.)

In closing, it really boils down to:

1. Time management. Spend your writing time actually writing, rather than fighting with a flawed outline or over-planning.
2. Balance. Have a plan, but don't write it in blood.
3. Maintaining momentum. Don't stall out because you had to stop and look up a minor detail.
4. Use the Force. Hey, if you've got it, you might as well.

So there you have it. A few of the weird techniques I've picked up over the years that help me write faster than I did in my early days.

Writing Out of Sequence Without Going (too) Crazy

So I’ve mentioned many times on this blog and elsewhere that I write out of sequence. A lot of people have said they don’t understand how I do it, and like any writing technique, it’s most certainly not for everyone. That said, I thought I would share exactly how I go about writing out of sequence without losing my mind.  

And there will be spreadsheets. I have one I have been honing for the last few years that serves my writing techniques (and my OCD) quite nicely. If you would like a template copy of it so you can give it a try, let me know. 

First, how I write out of sequence. Then, why I write out of sequence. And, as a bonus, I’ll finish by explaining my dirty little secret for getting through those “I don’t wanna write that many words!” days. Because I assure you, I have them. All the time.

Let’s start with the “how” part, since the “why” parts will make a little more sense once you understand my wacky thought process.

Plan Ahead.

Some people can write out of sequence without pre-planning. Marie Sexton does, and obviously has great results, so winging it out of sequence can certainly work. 

I have to plan ahead, though. Even still, I’m probably somewhere between an outliner and a pantser. Yes, I have an outline, but it tends to change a lot as I write. This is, in no small part, because I write out of sequence. So my recommendation if you want to try this is to keep your outline flexible. If your story goes off the rails at some point, be open to the fact that your characters might be telling you something.

I try to keep my outlines vague, too. They’re just a list of scenes, and I have a basic idea of why each scene happens and the consequences of that scene. I don’t plan them out in explicit detail, I just know what will happen. Or what I think will happen. My characters are a contrary bunch, so you can imagine how often that works out. 

So, I recommend planning ahead, but that's your call.

Keep Track of Everything.

Even if you don't outline what is going to happen, it's wise to keep track of what has happened.  I'm writing this post with the assumption that you're outlining, but if you don't, I would highly recommend at least keeping tabs on what you've written, what scenes have taken place, etc.

Whether outlining before or after, I use a spreadsheet. Every chapter is its own Word document and its own line on the spreadsheet. This has two primary benefits besides pacifying my OCD:

1.      It’s easy to add, remove, and re-order chapters when I realize my outline needs to be modified. Just move them around on the spreadsheet, and then renumber chapters as needed. And if you just want to insert a chapter and worry about the numbers later? Insert it on the spreadsheet, give it a decimalized number, and move on. Tip: Windows likes to organize files so that, for example, Chapter 5.5 is ahead of Chapter 5.  That makes my OCD scream. Simple solution?  Rename Chapter 5 to Chapter 5.1.  (The graphic below has some decimalized chapters as an example) Now the files will be in the proper order, which will make life easier when it comes time to renumber them all.  Trust me, it’s not as ludicrous as it sounds; even my OCD doesn’t like renumbering the whole damned book every time I realize I need another chapter, because that happens to me like 70 times per book. Easier to just finish the whole thing and renumber it then.

2.      At-a-glance access to the outline, word counts, and which chapters are complete. 

Anyone who’s been following my blog for any length of time has probably seen my spreadsheet madness, but for those who haven’t, this is the basic gist:

  A detailed explanation of the spreadsheet and all its madness and glory can be found here. Basically: Chapter number, an "X" if the chapter is finished, the current word count, and a brief description of what happens in that chapter. It looks a lot more complicated than it is. 

Once it’s set up and ready to go, it doesn’t require a lot of work. You can easily see which chapters have been started and which have been finished. Handy, right? For me, it’s especially a necessity when I’m writing out of order, mostly because I need to be able to look and double check where I am in the story.  If I’m working on chapter 5, I can glance at the spreadsheet to confirm this chapter happens before the trip to the aquarium, so the character wouldn’t have her manta ray hat yet. Or something like that.  It’s kind of like a storyboard for me: a visual so I can remember the sequence of events. 

Your mileage may vary, of course.This is just how I keep track of stuff. However, if you want to try the "I don't feel like writing but I'm going to anyway" technique I'll address shortly, this will give you a baseline for how I do it. Then you can modify it and do it however you want, but...you get the idea.

So now everything is set up, you've planned as much as you need to plan, it's time to write. So one note about that...

Don’t Be Afraid to Write Way Out of Sequence.

I don’t just mean writing chapters out of order, my friends. I write paragraphs out of order. No joke.  I’ll write a few sentences here, a few paragraphs there, and eventually they come together in a cohesive scene, which becomes a cohesive chapter, which eventually joins forces with the other chapters to create a manuscript that’s like the bastard lovechild of Frankenstein’s Monster and Voltron.

Doesn’t that make for an editing nightmare, though? Believe it or not, it really doesn’t. I actually found I had more continuity errors and such when I tried to write in sequence than when I started writing out of sequence. Why? Because as I flit back and forth between chapters, I can make minor adjustments to keep the continuity going.

And speaking of the benefits of writing out of sequence, that leads me to the next part of this post…

Why write out of sequence? What’s the point?

Well, for starters...

Ever Gotten Stuck on a Scene or Chapter?

Yeah. Me too. All the time.

Ever Had a Scene In Mind That Just Wouldn’t Leave You Alone?

*raises hand* Yep. Guilty.  And in my early years, I wasn’t above rushing through scenes to get to the one I really wanted to write. And yeah, it worked out about as well as it sounds.

So, now, instead of beating my head against a wall to get through the stubborn scene, I just skip ahead and work on something else…like, for example, the one that won’t shut up.

Bonus? It’s not unusual at all for the stubborn scene to get unstuck after I’ve written a later scene. Maybe I’m just not in the mood to write a car chase scene today. Maybe I really don’t feel like writing a sex scene. Maybe I need to write that emotional breakdown scene before it keeps me up for another goddamned night.

Oh, and those scenes that are absolutely necessary but I just don’t want to write? They’re a lot easier to write when they’re the only thing standing between me and calling the book finished.

Writing out of sequence has other perks, too.

Foreshadowing is Now Ridiculously Easy

So let’s say you’re happily working on your story when your character needs to, at a most inopportune moment, have an allergic reaction to something. Let’s say he’s terribly allergic to artificial sweeteners. You’re working on chapter 19, and your character orders a Coke, but the waiter accidentally gives him a Diet Coke.  (Yes, I know, this is a dumb example, but I’m just making a point)  And you stop and ask yourself, “Have I mentioned this anywhere else in the book? Crap.”

Fortunately, that restaurant scene in chapter 11 isn’t finished, and neither is a conversation with his co-worker in chapter 5.  Which means it’s now simple to scoot back to one—or even both—of those chapters, and write a little snippet that will foreshadow his NutraSweet allergy.  Maybe his co-worker offers him some sort of healthy snack, and he cautiously asks if it has any artificial sweeteners in it. Then in the restaurant scene, his date puts Equal into her iced tea, and he suddenly realizes he can’t remember which glass is his and which is hers, so he asks, adding a casual, “Just checking. I’m allergic to NutraSweet.”  

Obviously that’s a ridiculous example, but you get the idea. The point is, if you see something that needs foreshadowing, it’s very easy to go back to other chapters and slip in that foreshadowing without having to rewrite, reorganize, or whatever.

And by the same token…

Sometimes Later Chapters Reveal Things About Earlier Ones

The other day, I was working on All The King’s Horses.  I was having a lot of trouble with the beginning and the ending, because I couldn’t see the characters’ motivations as clearly as I needed to. I did have a pretty solid grasp of some of the chapters in the middle, though, so I decided to write those.  In doing so, letting the characters do what was in character for them, I actually figured out that I had the beginning all wrong and the ending needed a massive overhaul. By the time chapters 9-13 were finished, I finally understood what needed to happen in the preceding and following chapters.  Instead of getting stuck and stalling out, I skipped ahead, and stumbled across the solution.

So those are a few reasons why I write out of sequence. There is, of course, the fact that I’m certifiably insane and have the attention span of a brain-damaged squirrel, but I don’t see why that’s relevant.

And with alllllll of that out of the way...

I promised one final perk. A technique gets me out of the “don’t wanna/can’t make me” rut I get into sometimes. Like yesterday. Whoa, Nelly, I did not want to write yesterday. Knocked out 5,500 words anyway. How? Glad you asked.

Now that you’re writing out of sequence with an OCD-pleasing spreadsheet at the ready, you have a weapon against “meh” writing days. Fair warning: it sounds excruciatingly complicated when I explain it, but it’s actually quite simple to implement. 

As you probably know, I’m one of those writers who aims for a quota of 5,000 words per day. And believe you me, there are some days when I just. Don’t. Wanna.  On a day like that, writing 500 words sounds like agony, never mind the full five grand.

I’m also someone who finds that large workloads can be easier to deal with in smaller bites. When I travel, I’ll sometimes set my GPS to a town 100 miles out, and then when I get there, I’ll set it for the next one, because 100 miles is more palatable than 500. 

Guess what? It works the same way with words. When I don’t feel like writing 5,000 or even 500 words, I can talk myself into writing 100, and it’s considerably less daunting. Think about it. One hundred words is seriously not very much. This paragraph alone is about 75 words. Even on my worst day, when it’s nothing but word dentistry, I can write this much plus a little extra without too much effort.

And this is where writing out of sequence comes in handy. Instead of trying to hammer out a massive chunk of wordage, I go through and write a little bit in each chapter. I set myself a goal of 100 words, and when I write 100 or so in that chapter, I move on to the next one.

But how in the world do you keep track of which ones have their 100 and which still need theirs?

Spreadsheets, my dear Watson. But of course.

I take the spreadsheet I brainwashed you into using earlier in this post, and I modify it slightly. I create two extra columns next to the word count column. Column E is my existing word count column. Column C is where I’ll put the target word count for each chapter.  In Column D, I put in a handy little formula that calculates how much I have to write to make Column E match Column C.  For example, chapter 2 is line 3 of the spreadsheet. The formula in Column D will be =C3-E3.  Do this for every line. (Copy and paste the formula; it’ll adjust the line numbers)

The modified spreadsheet looks like this:

Note: You have to enter Column C manually, which is kind of pain, but it doesn’t take long. Just take whatever number is in Column E, add 100 to it, and type it there. (If you’re feeling a little more ambitious, take Column E and round it up to the next 100, 200, 500, or what have you.)

Like I said, it sounds ridiculously complicated, but I promise it’s a lot simpler than it sounds. Plus, once you’ve put in the formulas and such, you can just hide the columns until you have another “meh” day. Then unhide them, adjust the numbers, and do it again. And you can always hit me up for my template, which will have the columns and formulas already entered.

So, now that your spreadsheet is cocked and ready, move over to your word processor of choice and open up your first chapter.  Write 100 words.  Move on to your second chapter. Another 100 words.  Easy, isn’t it? Seriously, when you set it as a goal, 100 words is really not very much at all. Do this for every chapter. If your book has twenty chapters, congratulations: you just wrote 2,000 words.  Reset the formulas and do it again. Hey look: 4,000 words.

Does it sound ridiculous? Yes. Even I roll my eyes when I’m explaining it, because it sounds stupid. But I cannot tell you how many “Ehhhhh, I don’t wanna” days I have turned into good, solid, quota-meeting days. Not long ago, I was having an off week, and I did this four days in a row. Next thing I knew, I was 20,000 words farther into my book, and a good half dozen chapters were better than two-thirds finished. 

In fact, after I've applied that technique every day this week, this is how All The King's Horses looks right now (with the extra columns hidden so all you can see is the current word count for each chapter): 

 Most of those chapters are at least halfway done, and most of that was done 100, 200, maybe 300 words at a time. I'm telling you: it works.

And one final word, something I cannot emphasize enough about using this particular technique: 

Don’t Cheat. 

You’re not doing yourself any favors if you just write 100 words of garbage in each chapter. You still have to think about what you’re writing. This isn’t an exercise in barfing words onto the page, it’s just a way to break up the large task (daily quota) into something that’s not so daunting (individual chapter quota). No skipping the use of contractions, or leaving out hyphens, or naming every character Mary Sue or Captain Jack, or throwing in some info dumps, just to up your quota. You only have to write 100 words, so there’s no excuse not to make them count. Then move to the next chapter and make those 100 words count.

In closing...

As with everything, your mileage may vary.  It might be as disastrous for you as writing in sequence without an outline is for me. Or it might click with you.  Either way, if nothing else, you have a little more insight into the complete and utter madness that happens here in the land of L.A. Witt and Lauren Gallagher. 

Oh, and by the way? I wrote this blog post out of sequence too.

Sometimes it's a wonder I get anything done.

I keep my spiral notebook next to my computer, and frequently refer to it while I'm writing. Sometimes I also have notes that I've printed or written on scrap paper stacked on top of that notebook, and I flip back and forth between loose and bound pages to get the info I need. This system works quite well for me.

Since I do about as much longhand as writing on the computer, I often have to type up whatever I've done by hand.

Which means I need to be able to see what I've written.

In related news, I'm a total softy when it comes to cats.

Especially sleeping cats.

*sigh*

It's a wonder I get anything done.

Getting Past The Great Wall of Don't Wanna

Around 3/4 of the way through every book, I hit a wall. A metaphorical wall, of course, but were it a tangible wall, it would look a little something like this:
It is at this wall where the doubt demons gather, the wangst wombats play, and the failure fairies do their worst. The book sucks. The story is lame. The characters are atrocious. I'd rather do anything but write it. I...Don't Wanna.

It's also the point when I have nothing left to write except the most difficult scenes. You see, I write out of sequence. I flit all over the manuscript, writing scenes and chapters as they come to me. I have a vague outline, of course, and invariably, there are a few scenes I simply don't feel like writing. Sometimes it's a conversation that's a struggle to work out, or it's an action sequence I'm second-guessing my ability to write (such as a car chase). More often than not, it's a sex scene. Yes, sex scenes are difficult for me to write. I don't know why.

Whatever the case, every book has a few scenes I just don't wanna write. I want them to be written, they're absolutely necessary to the story, but for whatever reason, they're difficult to write. Every time I try to work on them, it's sheer word dentistry, so I go work on other scenes that are more cooperative. Over time, the cooperative scenes wind down and end up in the "Finished Chapters" folder (yes, I have such a folder), and sooner or later -- nearly always at the 75% mark -- I'm down to the stubborn chapters.

Imagine, if you will, your humble author standing in the middle of a dirt road in the Old West, hands hovering above my pistols, narrowed eyes peering out from under the brim of a cowboy hat at my rival who's poised forty paces ahead of me. It's down to this: either the chapter wins, or I do. One of us is going down, gosh darn it, and it is not going to be me.

And here is where writing out of sequence makes things easier for me. You see, sometimes the Great Wall of Don't Wanna is chapter 30, but sometimes it's chapter 10. Sometimes it's chapter 3. When I hit the wall after only writing two other chapters, it's easy to sit there and stare at that wall...unable to move forward, unable to get over/past/under/around/through that wall. I can hear the other chapters on the opposite side, calling to me and begging me to come play with them, but I can't. Because I'm staring at the Great Wall of Don't Wanna. And getting discouraged that early in the game is a good way for me to wind up dropping a book in the Wangstbasket, which is that black hole into which stalled books are tossed and from which precious few ever emerge.

Now, with the way I write, I can get to a wall and decide, "You know what? I don't want to deal with you today." And I go off and write some chapters that are actually team players and want to contribute. Ultimately, I'll finish all those team player chapters, and I'll be down to That One (or Those. Usually it's a handful of chapters, hence happening at the 3/4 mark). I'm staring at the wall, and there's no ignoring it.

But...there's only one important thing waiting for me on the other side:

THE END.

Yes. The end is near. All I have to do is get past this stupid wall, get over the Great Wall of Don't Wanna, and I'm done with the book. I've made it this far. I've beaten every other gunfighter in the dusty street. I've done way too much work to turn back now (once a book passes the 40K mark, it will get finished if I have to write it in blood).

And lo! Here comes my second wind, and I buckle down and write like crazy. Before I know it, I'm over that wall. Sheer stubbornness and the peer pressure of the "Finished Chapters" population prevail, and one by one, the difficult scenes go down. The book is finished. I win again.

Lori, 1. GWoDW, 0.

The chapters comprising the Great Wall of Don't Wanna are never easy. That's why they're Great Wall chapters to begin with. But let me tell you, they're a lot easier to write when I know that finishing them means finishing the whole project.

So that's how I get past one of the biggest obstacles in my writing. Do you hit a wall in your writing? If so, how do you get past it?

There's a story in there somewhere.

This is another "how I do things" post. Specifically, how to get the wheels turning when I can't think of a story, or I just need a little inspiration.

(Also: I am not taking credit for any of these photos. They're images I've collected over the years, and unless marked otherwise, I don't have the names of the photographers. I will gladly remove or credit upon request.)

I've mentioned before that I often use images of people as a starting point for my characters. In fact, I really can't write a story without having a photo of a person to represent each major character; just one of my quirks, I guess. But it isn't just people. Pretty much any picture has the potential to spark a story. Sometimes, I'll see an image, and I think, "There's a story in there somewhere." It's the writer's job to find that story.

Sometimes it's a setting.
Play with that in your mind. Put a couple of characters in that photo, and let the wheels turn. Why are they there? What dangers do they face? How will they get out? Do they want to get out?

Just look at this image (by Jerry Reynolds Photography):
The architecture. The surrounding landscape. The atmosphere. Oh yeah, there's a story there.

And of course, sometimes pictures of people are good for this too. Look at a picture of one or two people, and ask yourself what's going on.
In this still from Walk The Line, anyone who's seen the movie knows what's going on and why, but put that aside for a minute and look at the picture outside of its context. Ignore the movie and the names (even though it's Joaquin Phoenix, who is liquid-freaking-distraction), and just look at the man and woman and the tension between them. He's moving in for a kiss, she's reluctant. Why? What led them up to this point? Is she hesitating because she really isn't interested in him, or is there something else holding her back?

Another example is this still from Women Talking Dirty...
Now, it's not like I need an excuse to stare at a picture of James Purefoy (have I mentioned how much I love my job?), but this is as good a reason as any. Why is he at the door? Whose apartment/office/lair/bedroom/recording studio is it? Why does he have that particular expression? Does he want to be there? Does he have to be there? Is this the last place in the universe he should be?

In a way, it's kind of like asking yourself why Mona Lisa is smiling.
It's anyone's guess, but for the writer, it doesn't matter why she's really smiling. Forget the facts. Forget the speculation. Look at the picture and ask yourself why. Maybe da Vinci cracked a joke at an opportune moment. Maybe his fly is open and she's trying not to laugh. What's going through her mind? Where was she before she sat for the painting, and where will she go afterward? Does she want to sit for this painting? Are she and da Vinci shooting the breeze while he paints? Answer those questions. Run with those answers. There's your story.

But it can be even more basic than settings and people. Quite frankly, I find that the less the picture shows, the better. After all, the less I know, the more I get to make up.
At first glance, it's just a picture of some red wine spilled on the carpet. Oooooh, exciting. But think about it for a minute. Then another minute. Whose hand was it in before it spilled? Did the cat bump it off the coffee table, or did someone drop it upon receiving some unexpected news? Was it knocked over in a moment or passion, or a moment of anger? It's just a glass of wine, but somehow, it ended up on the carpet.

Basically, it boils down to looking at an image of anyone, anything, or anywhere, and seeing where your mind takes you. Find the story no one else sees in that image. Don't just look at the picture and see the pretty face or the stunning view...look for the dots, and look for ways to connect them.

And speaking of wine and somehow ending up somewhere, I think we can all agree...
...there's a story in there somewhere.

Some Crazy Pie (Or, Another of My Weird Writing Methods)

So I posted not long ago about the madness of my writing methods. Did you think that was the only insane part of the process? Ooh, no, my friends. The madness never ends.

I sometimes joke about the crazy things OCD drives me to, but I'm not actually kidding. Officially diagnosed? No. Spend five minutes with me in a room with a crooked picture on the wall, asymmetrically arranged knickknacks, haphazardly formatted spreadsheet data, disorganized file folders, or books not shelved according to some sort of aesthetic pattern and -- I mean, seriously. What the hell. How does that not bother you? It's a rectangular frame hung on a rectangular wall with angular furniture. Is it so hard to raise the upper left corner three millimeters so all the vertical lines are parallel and all the horizontal lines are parallel and when your files are scattered all over one folder on your computer, how do you find anything and--

Annnnnnnd breathe.

See what I'm getting at? I swear I'm not making this up. Honestly, if I need to settle my nerves or bring my blood pressure back down after something upsets me, ten minutes of organizing a folder of photos into subfolders will have me completely zen. Not. Kidding. I could fill up an entire blog entry with nothing but my weird little OCD habits, but I'm going to focus on the one place it's most apparent: my writing goals. The thing is, I found a way to use my OCD to my advantage. Stay with me here...

Before my writing career, I was the queen of procrastination. If starting but not finishing were an Olympic sport, I'd have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. Seriously. In school, I was the Writing Papers The Night Before Ninja, and when I used to show horses, I was the Jedi Knight of Scrambling to Polish My Boots An Hour Before A Class Instead of Doing It Two Days Before Like Everyone Else. Writing was what I always wanted to do for a living, but my arch nemeses -- the Procrastination Poltergeists, Slacker Demons, and Lack of Motivation Banshees -- made it appear I'd never be able to pull this off.

But then along came NaNoWriMo. I'm sure many of you have heard of it. Annual event, November, 50,000 word novel in a month, etc. In 2008, I gave it a try. After all, I had nothing going on that month besides, like, moving to Japan and stuff. I won NaNo that year, but I also learned something about myself: Give me a tangible, quantifiable goal, and I will sweat bullets until I reach it.

Upon this epiphany, I narrowed my eyes, steepled my fingers in front of my chin, and gave the most menacing laugh I could muster. It was pretty impressive, actually. Somewhere between Mr. Burns and Stewie Griffin. The other passengers on my flight were decidedly unamused, but no matter. I'd discovered the cure for my own procrastination: NUMBERS.

Yes. Numbers. Word counts. Daily goals. Monthly goals. Yearly goals.

Did it work?

Yes. Yes, it absolutely did. I aimed for 1,000,000 words in 2009, and I made it. On most days, I shoot for 5,000 words, and I get twitchy if I don't make it. For over two years, this method has worked. It's kept me going for -- to date -- 22 novels, 4 novellas, and roughly 2 million words. This method of motivation may not work for everyone, but it has certainly worked for me.

But how, you murmur quietly behind your hand as you eye this blog warily, does one keep track of all that crap?

The answer is simple: spreadsheets. Obsessively maintained, meticulously formatted, pretty little spreadsheets.

OCD and Excel are a match made in heaven. Of course, spreadsheets are generally boring to anyone besides the one using them, but as you look at these, just remember that they're the manifestation of unspeakable degrees of madness. That makes them kind of amusing, anyway...

First, I have to keep track of the word counts of every chapter. Since I outline in Excel, it's also convenient for adding up chapters, figuring out how much I have to go, and keeping track of which chapters still need to be finished. The result looks a little something like this:
The blurred out information is the outline itself. No peeking!! The rest is pretty self-explanatory. White X = chapter is finished, "EP" = Epilogue, third column = current word count for the corresponding chapter. Oh, and the decimalized chapters? That's because I ended up adding a chapter after I'd already started writing, so rather than renumbering every single Word document, I just decimalize it and straighten them all out later.

But that doesn't address daily goals, now does it? Of course not. We need another spreadsheet:
Plug in one number ("Current"), and all the other numbers adjust. Formulas are a beautiful, OCD-soothing invention. The two columns on the right let me know how much I still have to write today (left) if I want to reach certain milestones (right). 5,000 is my customary daily goal, which is why it's in green. Target EOD WC refers to the end of day word count. In other words, where the book will be at the end of the day if I reach my goal.

Ahhh, pretty numbers. *insert floaty hearts here* If this sounds crazy, let me tell you: when you hit a speedbump when you're only 400 words away from your daily goal, it's amazing how motivating that can be to just sit down, shut up, and reach that damned goal. There have been many, many days in the last two years -- easily in the triple digits -- where the only thing that's kept my butt in my chair and my fingers on the keyboard has been a not-quite-reached goal.

And if that isn't enough to keep me twitching and sweating, there's the day-by-day progress sheet.
(Grey spaces are editing days, days off, or times when I had to work on something else, such as a galley copy)

I swear, my brain starts acting like a high school gym teacher at this point. When today's output is sitting at 2,500, a little voice in my head starts in on the "well, you did 5,000 yesterday, what's the problem? Hell, look at that, 9,000 words. And you can't even do another 500 today? Not even enough so you can shade the box pink instead of yellow? Do you really want another yellow box?"

I'm insane, I know.

And just in case the little colored boxes and that gym teacher voice aren't enough, there's also the yearly goal and monthly goals:
"You really want to make this a 2,500 word day? Want to leave the last 10 days of the month to try to play catch-up? C'mon, woman, you did almost 100,000 last month. You can do this."

Stop looking at me like that. This can't be a surprise to any of you anymore.

Okay, so what's the point of all of this? Because yes, there is a point to it. Well, besides giving everyone the opportunity to point at me and laugh (which you're welcome to do; I'm totally doing it to myself just by writing this blog entry).

The thing is, I've heard a lot of people criticize the idea of using word count goals for motivation. And for some, word counts are not the way to go. For some of us, though, they are perfect. It's not to say we're putting quantity over quality. Not by any means. For me, at least, it's the only way to force myself to put the words on paper. Those words may not be perfect, but that's what revision is for.

The point is, I found a little quirk -- the fact that I sweat over numbers and obsess over spreadsheets -- and used it to my advantage.

So, I will point to my wacky number-tracking methods above, and reiterate my previous statement:

There is no right or wrong...as long as you finish it.

The Madness of My Method

On forums such as Absolute Write, a frequent question that crops up is "can I do it this way?" Writing out of sequence, longhand vs typing, etc. In other words: "If I do things in some off-the-beaten-path way, am I doing it wrong?"

The short answer is, "No."

The slightly longer answer is, "As long as you finish what you write, then no, you're not doing it wrong."

And I say this as someone who, when it comes to oddball writing methods, stops just short of doing my work while suspended upside down above a tank full of sharks. So, for those who want some reassurance that it's okay to do things your own way, I thought it would be fun to share some of the methods (and madness) of my writing and give a little peek at what goes on behind the scenes here.

Over the last couple of years, I've evolved from typing only to doing some longhand. It started with jotting the occasional paragraph in a spiral notebook. Sometimes, when I couldn't figure out how to word something, writing it by hand would help untangle the brain knots.

I also write out of sequence. Like, way out of sequence. It started out with writing a chapter, then skipping around on the outline, writing and finishing this chapter, then that one, etc. Then I started working on multiple chapters at once. It wasn't unusual to have four or five chapters in progress. With time, it got to the point I'd have every single chapter in the outline started, but I'd be 20,000 words in before I actually finished one. As an example: As I write this blog entry, I'm 41,000 words into The Closer You Get. Out of 23 chapters, 8 are done and all but 2 are started.

These days, I also tend to write chapters in fragments. It's not like those started-not-finished chapters are written in any kind of linear fashion. A few paragraphs here, a few lines there, with a bunch of gaps in between. Then I fill in the gaps, and eventually, it all blends together to form a cohesive scene.

For some reason, though, it's often easier to fill in those gaps by hand instead of typing. So, I'll print out a few not-quite-done scenes. Bearing in mind I print single-spaced, a page generally looks something like this:
All those gaps between paragraphs? Yeah. Those all need to be filled in. The filling can be anything from an arrow connecting the two (when I realize they don't need anything in between) to 1,000 words or more of new material. Just depends on what's going on, what's missing, etc.

I take my pages, my trusty clipboard, and curl up on the couch, go to the beach, hang out in a restaurant, whatever...and start writing. Sometimes it's just pieces of dialogue, sometimes detailed descriptions or actions, sometimes just a note to myself ("go from ceremony to reception; note summer heat + wearing tuxedo" or "brief flashback to scene in chapter 3"). I'm not really after any kind of perfect form or prose at this point, so it's usually half "good stuff" and half "crap that needs to be polished a wee bit when I type it up".

In a few hours, I have a stack of pages that look a little something like this:
Or this:
And what happens if I need more space than what's on the page?

Flip it over, of course.
Yes, my handwriting really is that bad. Don't judge me.

Once all the pages are duly scribbled upon, it's back to the computer to type it up. You would think this would be incredibly time-consuming and labor-intensive. Double the work to hit my word count quota, right? For whatever reason, doing it this way, I can knock out my daily goal of 5,000 words in much less time. I really don't know why, it just works for me, and has for the last dozen or so books.

So, the moral to the story: It doesn't matter how you write it. By hand? Typing? Linear? Non-linear? Backwards? Suspended upside down above a shark tank? Do whatever you need to do.

There is no right or wrong...as long as you finish it.