The Nine Stages of A WIP

So, I’ve started and stopped, finished and sidelined, second-guessed, double-guessed and given up on about six WIPs (Works in Progress) in the last few months.

Yes, I did finish *one* (and am pretty darn proud of it), but to get there I had to limp across a battlefield of fallen ideas, misfires, dropped titles and thousands of words that, I fear, will never go anywhere after I left them, high and dry, in the rearview mirror.

And I realized that, if you sit down and think about it, there are Nine Stages of A WIP:

The First Stage – I Should Be Writing Something: Before starting a new WIP, I generally start to feel restless. When I’m not writing, when I don’t feel like writing, I don’t think anything of going out to dinner with my wife, sleeping in, seeing three movies in a row, long walks on the beach, whatever. But there’s a moment  there, a few weeks or even months after finishing my latest book, when something just “clicks” and I start to feel… restless. I’ll be sitting there watching a movie and think, “Hmm, I should probably be writing.” I’ll start waking up earlier, and staying up later, ideas swirling around in my head. And I know: it’s time to get writing again.

The Second Stage – Inspiration Strikes: This is my favorite stage of any WIP – it’s idea time! I always start with the first page in a new spiral bound notebook and just go to town, filling page after page with random ideas, plot lines, teasers, blurbs, random facts, titles, you name it. I just basically brainstorm and let it all hang out. I like this stage a lot because I’m away from a screen, sitting in a different chair, or even out of the house in a coffee shop or diner somewhere, completely unplugged and riffing. It’s the blank page that’s so exciting, and leads directly to stage three, which is so terrifying:

The Third Stage – The Haters in My Head: This idea’s not good enough. It sucks. You’re stupid. You can’t write. You never could write. This is childish. Give up. These are the thoughts that run through my mind immediately after I get inspired to start a new WIP. Lots of times, I never get past this stage and my WIP dies on the vine. I go away, lick my wounds, get restless again and start over. Other times, I fight through this stage to get to the next one:

The Fourth Stage – The False Start: I can’t remember the last time I started a WIP and kept anything from the first few days of writing. Generally I’ll hit the blank page running, be really happy with it, then wake up at 4 the next morning thinking, “That’s total crap.” When I read it over the next day, I generally start over. I may do this three or four times before either a.) giving up or b.) muscling through to the next stage:

The Fifth Stage – The Right Blend: Finally, by about day three or four of trying, I hit on something I’m happy with. Really, really happy with. I call this “the right blend” because I’ve generally hit on a tone I know I can run with for the rest of the book: just serious enough, just enough action and plotting, the characters I like and plenty of time to send with them and just funny enough to groove with. Once I find the right blend, I’ll pretty much stick with a WIP until it’s done.

The Sixth Stage – Momentum: This is my second favorite stage; momentum. It’s when I’m (still) happy with the idea, I’m over the “haters” in my own head and just kind of barreling forth with the story on a regular, daily basis. I have a minimum word count when I’m in WIP land of 1,000-words, and it’s easy to stick to when I’m in the first four or five stages, but when I’ve really hit my groove, when I’m out of the woods and rounding third and heading for home, I can often knock out two or three or four or five times my minimum word count and not even feel the wrist cramps!

The Seventh Stage – The Reboot: Without fail, about halfway through every WIP, I wake up in a cold sweat thinking, “That won’t work. If she’s the only one who can talk to the zombies, then… she can’t be speaking English!” This always happens, without fail. A kind of light bulb moment where everything I’ve been writing feels like a lie and I know, I just know, I’m going to have to start from scratch. After I calm down a little and dig back in, all can usually be salvaged but, still, the “reboot” is a gnarly setback and hard to avoid.

The Eighth Stage – The Doldrums: Once I finally “reboot” the WIP and get back in a flow, it’s pretty much a hard slog straight through to the end. I don’t mean I’m not enjoying it, but I’m enjoying it so much I really, really want to finish it so that I can let it sit, dive back into it from the beginning and really flesh out the initial story I’ve got down on paper. By this point I’ve pretty much abandoned my word count minimum and stay up late/get up early to barrel through, which is why it often feels like a (self-imposed) slog.

The Ninth Stage – The Finish Line: Finally, I’m there! By the ninth and final stage I’m 99% happy with what I’ve done and really looking forward to getting back into it after a week or so “off” so that I can read it more objectively and see the faults in my own stars. I should be happier about this stage, but really I’m always a little anxious because I know that, once finished, the nine stages start all over again!

So, there you have it: the 9 Stages of A WIP. Now, these aren’t scientific, but they feel pretty right to me. Do any sound familiar? Did I miss any? Did I list too many? Not enough? Comments are open; you know what to do:

Yours in YA,

Rusty