Karen L. Mead

I don’t write too much about my writing process because I know most people don’t care. However, some visitors to my website may be wondering “Hey, how come Karen is blogging so much but she isn’t putting out any books?” If you are in this category, this post should answer your question.

I’ve always been lucky as a writer because I always had the ability to write my way out of any corner consistently. If I try to plan out my books in advance, my ideas are typical, even boring, but when I’m fighting from behind to pull the story together, the ideas I come up with are more interesting. I didn’t use an outline for any of the Demonic Cafe books and I know I would NEVER have come up with some of the plot twists that occurred in those books if I had planned it in advance.

The problem is, I have learned that there are limits to this talent. When I was writing Always A Golem, Never A Bride, I came up with plenty of things that kept the story going alright, but they didn’t work coherently together. Characters were out of character, and there were issues with keeping the magic and lore consistent with what had come before.

When I started working on the mermaid book I’ve been threatening to write for years, I hit a wall; I got 20,000 words in and could not think of any way to continue the story that wasn’t stupid and/or pointless. So I put it aside for a while, and I’m only just coming back to it.

Right now I’m doing the hard work of learning what many other writers, or successful writers, already know– how to plan, and how to build and layer storylines. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write a book 100% based on an outline, but I am plotting some things out in advance. I’m also writing more deliberately, which means I’ll think “I need a character that does this,” and just create that character on the spot. In the past I’ve always waited for the characters to come to me and tell me who they were, which is great when it works but you can’t wait for every single character in an entire series to lay it all out on the table for you. Deeds need to get done.

I’m still relatively early in the mermaid book rewrite, but I feel really good about what the book is shaping up to be. Hopefully with my new “Write like a proper author” process, that book will be available soon. Then I have to figure out how to reboot Demonic Cafe so I can write more in that world. I’m a little scared, but I’m looking forward to it.