I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I've learned to trust my own instincts and I've also learned to take risks.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.
You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If I'd listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.
My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing.
I write first for myself as a therapeutic process, to get stuff out and to deal with it.
I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.
I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.
Ultimately, you have to write what's coming at any given point in time. Fighting your instincts for practical reasons is a losing battle.
You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.
In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.
Directing my own writing, I see that I talk way too much, and everything can happen much sooner, with much less said about it.
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