Hello There Friends!

May was… well, it was stressful. Not going to lie, I had to go into crunch mode for some PhD research. I’m starting to write my first-author paper, had to quickly fill out an NIH form for my grant (which required me to update some certifications), and had to deal with some noisy neighbors keeping me up.

But I’m going to indulge myself in talking about my writing process. I may ramble. We’ll see!

Blog Post for May?

Alas, I had to turn in some actual PhD writing, which meant that all

Here’s a link to an oldie but goodie to hold you over, though!

Blog post on Elves Here!

SciComm Projects?

I need to work on the next blog post, obviously. I haven’t had any time to write out a single word. Part of me wants to try for 2 blog posts in June to make up for May, but we all know that’s too much for me.

I desperately want to work on this science writing video series. I thought I’d have at least one out by this point in the year. Now that I’m waist deep in my research writing, I’ve become even more inspired to do these writing videos… which sucks because research paper takes priority over my cool video time.

Currently waiting for edits back on my science dungeons and dragons one-shot. I’ve had one round of edits, but I need someone really knowledgable of the game rules to comb through it.

Can I count my silly dragon rider book that I’m writing scicomm? There’s so much science in it, and the main character is such a science nerd. That' totally, counts, right? I’m on chapter 12 now!

How Do I Write?

(I was hoping to have pictures to share of my writing process with my blog post, but since there is no post this month, we’ll use our imaginations 🙂 )

To understand how my creative writing process works, we need to travel back to my high school years, back when I was writing music, or composing.

I never planned my pieces, I discovered my music as I wrote. This is called “discovery writing.” Usually, I would work on one measure of music one day, and then carve out the next measure the following day (those were very slow days; I could usually get at least 3 measures done). All of my writing was also in chronological order; I wrote part 1, then part 2, etc. I never jumped around. I also figured out the melody of my piece before anything else. How that worked was me throwing out test notes and seeing if they sounded good: if they did, I’d put them into the piece. If not, they’d get the guillotine.

While I did have the occasional moment of creative genius (shout out to my older bro who inspired one of my best pieces by throwing a stuffed animal at the piano), most of my composing was heavily based on music theory. I usually came up with the melody first, and then would go back through and add the backup chords.

How does this translate to my writing process?

There’s quite a bit of overlap from my music writing to my creative writing: I come up with the overall skeleton of the plot (the melody), I write chapters in chronological order—only continuing to the next section until I feel like it’s done—and I fall back on story craft to . I’ll probably talk in a later newsletter what story craft is for me.

The only difference is that I don’t do nearly as much discovery writing. That is, I don’t write until I have an ending in mind. This is for both my stories and my blog posts; I won’t start putting down words until I have a conclusion, and then I work backwards from there to figure out what I need to set up said ending. Once I figure that out, then I craft the major scenes of the plot and their order. As I write, I aim to hit specific scenes that are major to the plot, but discovery write

I know I’m talking in terms of crafting a story, but there’s a plot to blog posts. There are major talking points that I want to get to, or major papers I want to discuss. The process of me writing a post and a story is eerily similar.

Speaking of Non-Blog Writing, What Do I Use To Write/Organize Plot and Worldbuilding?

I know some people love Scrivener to outline everything, others love WorldAnvil, and even more use Evernote, but honestly? I use Microsoft Word and that’s it. My current creative works thrive on each chapter being it’s own document, and having extra notes like plot points, previously written scenes, or even names in their own document… And that is the extent of my organization. “Control Find” is my favorite command input for my writing.

For those who know me or have played DnD with me, this may come as a shock that my extensive world building—or even character building— isn’t really written down. It’s all cerebral for me, folks!

Actually, that’s not fully true. I do need images of my characters and settings to help visualize intense scenes (like fight scenes). However, I don’t touch Pintrest to make visual boards; I’ve started to use Hero Forge to design my characters, and use Inkarnate to make my own maps.

(I don’t touch AI images. I have strong opinions on it’s use, but that’s a whole other conversation.

Inkarnate Map!

This was the second map I made with Inkarnate! As such, it has the ever-original title of “Coastal Town, Protected By Dragon.”

I forgot how colorful this one was! Enjoy!

That’s a wrap for May! I’m hoping June will bring more time for my projects. See you next month!

-Becca