The Habits of a Writer

I have a question or two for all of you writers--bloggers or otherwise. Do you have a general habit in recording your thoughts and ideas? Do you write more often out of sudden inspiration, or is your writing the product of spending much time working thoughts out in your mind?

I find that my writing is a bit of a mixture. The development of my ideas often starts quickly, but then the ideas require time to polish off. When an idea comes to me (anything from a short story to a blog post), I think about it for awhile, and it begins to expand quickly. Sometimes this happens only in my thoughts; sometimes I'll write the ideas down as they come. But what I've found is that this initial thinking spurt often produces many ideas that, though related, lack continuity; I know that they are connected, but I'm not sure how to show it.

This brings me to a second characteristic of my writing: with the exception of what I write during my devotional time, I always use a computer. This helps a lot, because I virtually never write anything from start to finish. Rather, I write out the different thoughts that I have, expand them, and then try to remember how I had wanted to connect them. Thus I begin with five or six separate lines, which then grow into paragraphs, get reordered (what would I do without cut-and-paste?) and finally begin to resemble an ordered sequence of thoughts.

Back to the issue of sudden inspiration versus long development. Frequently, after madly typing out all that I can and beginning a revision, I come to an impasse. The surge of inspiration has been released, and I find myself slowed by the nitty-gritty of fully developing a thought or ensuring that the writing has a natural flow. Whether I sit so long that I run out of time to continue, or whether I simply need more time to think, I usually leave a project in-progress for a time. In fact, few of my posts have been written in one sitting. (The monthly quotes are an obvious exception--it would be sorry indeed if I couldn't type out one of those at one time.) That is why I have so many posts in my "Draft" folder. There are a number of topics that I have needed to think about further, but I haven't yet gotten around to finishing them.

So there you have it: a behind-the-scenes look at how I write, a topic which I'm sure you've all been dying learn about. [Sarcasm, in case you weren't certain.] A final characteristic of my writing--in this case, my blogging--is that I like to involve those who take the time to read my thoughts by asking to hear theirs. [Pride check: in actuality, this may be nothing more than a way of garnering comments.] Thus, I ask you to return to the questions I asked at the beginning of this post. What are your writing habits?

Finally, for the curious: no, I didn't write this in one sitting.