Word Vomit by Carla Damron

I call it word vomit.

Forgive me, is that disgusting? I don’t mean to conjure up feelings of nausea. It’s not THAT bad. Or maybe it is, I’m not ready to judge. Rather, word vomit is how I can best describe my process of writing this new project.

I’ve always been a careful, slooooowwww writer. The Stone Necklace took six years because I was learning a new complex novel structure, attending school, and rewriting the frickin’ narrative a million times so that I could squeeze everything I could from every word and every gesture. My mysteries took their time, too, in coming to fruition. I’m slow because life gets in the way, as does writer’s block, a pesky annoying day job, and frustrations about the business end of writing. All of this will thwart my efforts to put pen to pad. Or fingers to keyboard. (Or maybe they’re just excuses.)

After my mom’s extended illness and death, I was word- gridlocked. I tried. God knows, I tried. It felt like the part of my brain that created characters, formed narrative, and devised plots had been cut off from the rest of me. I worried this might be a permanent condition. My writer friends, and friend-friends, all said the same thing: this is temporary. Give it time.

I wished I had believed them.

The idea for this current WIP came from a photo I took months ago of a bird on a limb. You’ll see nothing magical about the picture, but out of it came a person, and then another person, and now I’m pouring out words like some over- caffeinated, sleep deprived NANOWRIMO member at the end of November. (If you don’t know what NANOWRIMO is, go here: https://nanowrimo.org/).

I have four point-of-view characters, each with their own story arc, and when I sit down to write, they are clamoring to tell me their story. At least that’s how it feels. The artist came to me first. Followed by her best friend. The half-sister showed up out of NOWHERE, but she’s been fascinating to explore. The wife of the artist’s lover—(how’s that for a tease???) has been very fun to get to know.

Sometimes I think that if I left my computer on, these four would type their own stories while I slept.

Is this a mystery? Yes, in a way. But not a mainstream murder mystery. Finding the publishing pigeonhole for it may be difficult, but I’m nowhere near dealing with that issue yet. No, my focus now is getting the stories out of me (them).  When I sit here, my fingers fly on the keyboard. I feel little like the Kermit the Frog GIF you may have seen: https://media.giphy.com/media/XIqCQx02E1U9W/giphy.gif   (But he’s probably a better writer than I am).

I’m a hundred pages in and it’s only been two months. For some of my writing colleagues, that’s nothing, I know, but for me it’s staggering.

I feel profound relief whatever part of my brain that had been closed off by grief is open to me again. It turns out, I kind of need it to be fully happy.

What’s your writing process like? Is it the same across projects?