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This fall, I'll be on a book tour of sorts talking about A Falling Star. One of my stops will be the North Carolina Writers Network Conference, where I'll be offering a workshop on novel structure. I'll be doing a similar workshop at the annual Auburn Writers Conference. Here's the description:

All Shapes and Sizes: A Workshop on Novel Structure
Whether you outline, or let the muse take you where she will, every novel must have a thoughtful structure to it. We’ll be discussing the fundamentals of how to structure your novel in this workshop. We’ll talk about scene building, the “tent poles” that hold your novel up, pacing, character motivation and more.

Paired with working on my current novel-in-progress, my mind has been on the topic of process a whole lot, and I've learned a few things about myself:

1) Linear trumps nonlinear writing for me. I have a better grip on the story I'm trying to tell if I tell it in order. While I generally know the big scenes in the book that will hold it all together, it's the small scenes that I have to figure out along the way, and I can only do that if one follows the other sequentially when I'm drafting. This doesn't mean that the story is itself linear. Usually, it isn't!

2) I write in bursts. I can go 2-3 weeks writing each day, plowing through the story at a nice clip. Then, suddenly, I feel very lost. The story becomes all trees, no forest, and I find that I need a 1-2 week break from the book. During that time, I read, rearrange furniture, go out of town. It amounts to me, metaphorically, tromping back out of the woods to get a look at it from a distance. This usually works really well. When it's time to come back into the forest, I find that I'm running again, leaping over fallen trees and avoiding traps. That's how it goes--on and off--until the book is done.

3) I love outlines, and do tons of them, but the final product never resembles any of the outlines. Rather, it will be a mash-up of all of them. Oftentimes, the element of the novel I think is my biggest hook, turns out to be non-existent. For Love and Ghost Letters, I intended the entire novel to be told in flashback, with the current story set in a hair salon in Miami. As for The Distant Marvels, I had this whole underground-radio-station idea going for a good bit before abandoning it. So, I've learned to fully embrace these first ideas and then kiss them goodbye when the time comes.

I think the most important thing I've learned is that my process is sloppy, but it's the one that works. It reflects the give-everything-a-try nature of my brain, which explains why behind every hanging painting in my house, there are at least three holes--I had to try all the different ways of hanging the damn thing.

Now, how to explain all of that to conference goers without scaring them away!

Oh, and hey, the Auburn Writers Conference is accepting registrations. We're a go for October 17-18 here in Auburn, Al. Hope to see some of my readers there!