My writing process, your writing process, their writing process -- and Lisa Cron.

Every once in awhile I come across a writing teacher or a writing method I have never heard of before and I go all in.

For instance, last year I stumbled upon Mary Adkins and was inspired to write the first draft of my novel by hand in four notebooks.

I did it, and I’m here to say, that worked. I wrote an entire terrible shitty first draft that way, start to finish, and fast. I was totally totally wowed by that writing process.

Then I typed it up. And I realized I had told the story from the wrong person’s POV. Now what?

Well, I once heard Ann Patchett say she wrote the entire first draft of The Dutch House and realized it was all wrong, the wrong person was telling the story, so she started from scratch. Same, same, AP. Same, same.

So I put that draft in a drawer — Lauren Groff does the same thing with her first drafts, I don’t feel too terrible about that now — and this year, I started a page one rewrite, which is a completely new animal.

I dove right in to my rewrites. I mapped a workable story spine and plot for this new draft on a snazzy Notion database, and the story was pretty compelling. I was super excited and writing forward every day.

Then a friend on Threads recommended STORY GENIUS by Lisa Cron.

Let me start by saying — it’s a great book. Like most writing gurus, she believes that character drives plot. I agree. And I really loved the way she talks about building character, which focuses on figuring out what will make them happy (their want) and why they have never been able to get it (their misbelief or personal stumbling block that keeps them from getting there). She advocates for writing the scenes that show us how that person became locked in that view, and using that information to craft a book where every action is based on that person having to grapple with that conflict as they move forward.

I mean it really is genius. She’s not wrong there. It makes a lot of sense.

So then I started working through the rest of the book, using her system, and I started questioning everything about all the work I’d done on my own manuscript to date.

And that’s when I went off the rails.

I spent a week telling myself everything I’d written to date was TERRIBLE and that I had no idea what I was doing.

Me. The person who has been writing since she could use a pencil. The person who started her publishing career as a teenager, getting pieces into Cricket Magazine and Seventeen. The person who got a Master’s in Professional Writing at USC. The person who then published in lit mags and an anthology, wrote a fairly popular Mommy blog, and co-wrote a Sony picture.

Yeah obviously I know nothing about the game.

Then I remembered something I heard Kevin Wilson say at the LAT Times Book Festival last week — he described reading about a mountain climber who was left for dead, who couldn't climb back out of a crevice so had to find a way to tunnel down and out. He said that's how he feels about his characters, they are at a spot where they have to dig a tunnel out.

The same is true of writers. Sometimes we are in so deep we don't know how to climb up and move forward.

The answer is always: DIG DEEPER. TUNNEL DOWN.

So that’s what I did. I took a long hard look at what I’d written to date, what I loved, and then took another look at STORY GENIUS. And I realized, some of what she teaches really is genius for my process, and for my point of view as a writer.

And some of if it is trash (for me).

And I went back to work.

So I am here to tell you, there are a lot of folks out there with writing books, with systems, with all sorts of convictions about how to write well. Some of them will vibe with you, some of them will make you question everything you ever thought, so you’ll want to throw your notebook across the room.

Do this instead:

Take what you can use, and lose the rest. We are all individuals, with our own ways of telling stories. Every story tells itself a different way.

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