The Writing Process and Ellen Klages

This interview came about because I was eating breakfast at Wiscon, and I saw Ellen Klages writing in a notebook. From there we had a conversation about how she uses her notebook, and then she was gracious enough to agree to a process interview. This one is very different from any interview we've had so far, because Ellen composes largely on paper.

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Tamago: Do you have a regular drafting process, or does your drafting process vary from book to book? (If it varies, please keep one project in mind as you answer these questions.)

Ellen: It varies, but the basics are the same. I doodle in a sketch book, just bits and pieces of ideas, fragments of characters. Then I do some research and begin to tie the bits together. When I have a rough idea of what the story shape is, I begin to write. I start, usually, by getting the whole thing down, from beginning to end, in a sort of free-form poem. Just images and descriptions. From there I begin to craft prose.

All of this is in long hand, pen on paper.

As is my first draft, which is messy and scrawled and generally not as linear as I’d like.

Then I transfer it to the keyboard, editing and refining and reducing, cutting and pasting and revising. For a long story, I print out, edit by hand, type again, and repeat until the story is all there, and then I winnow electronically, and run through the file many times, word-by-word, until I’m satisfied.

When I think it’s finished, I read it aloud.

Then I fix the parts that clunked, run spell check, and send it out.

Tamago: I know that you begin your writing process by writing longhand. Discuss that choice, and why it works for you. There are many theories relating to brain hemispheres and creativity, and I understand that sometimes you make ambidextrous writing choices. What is the difference you see in writing with your left hand versus writing with your right?

Ellen: I’ll combine these two questions.

A keyboard is very linear, and the beginning of my writing process is not. The idea stage (and the first-draft brain-dump) is messy -- pages full of scribbles and Xs out and lines connecting potential ideas -- and for that I like paper and pens.

It may be a right-brain, left-brain thing. When I write with a pen, I’m only using my right hand, and when I type, I’m using both hands.

I am seriously right-handed. But when I really, really get stuck, I will write with my left hand, which is painstaking, but accesses a different and interesting part of my brain. My left hand cannot spell, which I find amusing.

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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.