Discovering the writing process

I've completed the first three chapters of the novel I started writing last year, That Warrior Spirit. I am way behind the schedule I set for myself last year but I am determined to get back on track. The idea for this book came to me about a year ago; I spent July and August of last year creating the characters and the outline, and started writing it, probably around September.

In my outline I set it to be eight chapters, so after a year I am almost halfway done.

This weekend I started pre-writing for Chapter 4. This is a new word that I discovered and I've adopted it to describe what I've discovered to be one of the steps in my writing process. I have found that even with a comprehensive outline I am still sometimes challenged to sit down and write a scene. It takes me a while to get into the zone, to connect with the characters and connect with the scene. The step of pre-writing is a step in which I write from stream of consciousness. I keep the language very informal. I just sit down, start asking the characters what they do and write down whatever comes up. Almost always during the pre-writing process I land in the zone, where the ideas, the emotions, and the words just start to flow. Very often all I need to do next to write the scene is to change the language of a pre-write; change it from present tense language into past tense language.

I used to call this step a writing blitz but I saw the term pre-writing in a book about writing and decided to adopt it. The step of pre-writing is similar to the exercise I used to do, writing morning pages, when I was going through The Artist's Way.