My writing process if I have one --

My writing process if I have one:

One day I decide, I can't hold this in my head much longer, I had better write it down.  Sometimes I write down ideas, one idea per page, on loose sheets of paper.
When I clear my desk every 4 months or so, I "file" the paper into stacks or clip them together by project. 

I write 4-5 chapters in 5-6 months.

I am more disciplined if I am registered in a writing course or am in a writing group.  But I have stopped all that now.

I did not work from notes for Wolf.

I just sort of held it all in my head.

The danger with notes is they make you feel you have put it on paper, and then you may never look at the notes again.

But while writing Wolf I was in 2 advanced novel writing courses of 6 weeks each, and 2 writing groups that I helped form, but only Write On survived for about 6 months.

Then my travel in connection with work started up again, so I stopped work on Wolf.

To get over the middle hump is the worst.  To do that I took 2 "boot camp" courses, where all you do is write for 2 hours in class, not talking, and only 15 mins with the instructor (Kathryn Jenson) one on one. 

That took me to the end of the novel.

I was quite offended when a publisher asked me recently if I wrote the front part on my own.

I wrote every damn word on my own, page 1 to page 484.

So, it's hard to say, every novel is a different animal, as my writing coach Barbara Esstman used to say.

Each novel is like a different pregnancy for a different baby, who then grows into a different human being.

Some pregnancies make you buoyant and happy. You can run up and down 3 flights of stairs, you can do some economics research and even give strategic advice on the side.

In others, if you write about unhappy things, you get a bit inward and low, of course.

Some projects give you postpartum depression.

I remember the day I finished my 700 page Ph.D. dissertation of why Burma and other totalitarian countries don't develop, I felt so empty I started writing my memoir.

Well, one of my memoirs.

With some pregnancies you are in danger of bleeding and miscarrying, and losing the baby, and need a lot of bed rest.

With others the baby may be in the breech position and need expert turning.

Some books cry lustily as soon as they are born, some are listless, and alas, some may even be stillborn, though perfect little babies in every way.

If you are lucky someone close to you will help you deliver your book- baby.

But if there is no one nearby, anyone near by can help or not help you, still it's your baby, and it's your responsibility to deliver it safely.

And after that, it just goes out in the world to live its own life, sink or swim.

Maybe if people thought about it, they'd never have babies, and if they thought about it, they might never write books either.

Copyright Kyi May Kaung
1-13-2014
Last stages of birthing Wolf.