I have a very long pre-writing process where I'm jotting down ideas in a notebook and ripping out relevant newspaper articles - a long fact-finding mission.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.
I find writing a book a slow, intricate process, a kind of obstacle course punctuated with great rewards. But research is always thrilling, and I tend to incorporate newfound material up to the very last minute.
I start each of my scripts by going on a journey of painstaking research and discovery, much as I do a piece of long-lead journalism.
The best way for me to procrastinate as a writer is research.
I take a certain pride in having maintained a reputation for fast copy throughout my newspaper career. Fast-breaking stories left my typewriter in a hurry. Not great literature, perhaps, but fast, and usually accurate.
Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.
My process is messy and non-linear, full of false starts, fidgets, and errands that I suddenly need to run now; it is a battle to get something - anything - down on paper. I doodle in sketchbooks: bits of ideas, fragments of sentences, character names, single lines of dialogue with no context.
By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.
Most of my work is, I get an idea, and, with the help of Wikipedia, I can write. I don't have to leave my apartment.
I throw ideas out into the open when I really should just be writing them down in a journal.