Red Room Where the Writers Are

I should be writing my blog story, but its too late to press play on the universal story teller living in the back of my head.

(http://peacefulmeans.blogspot.com)

The great thing about working on a new piece is the pure creative act. There is almost no mind involved. I witness the story in my head and then I copy it down as quickly and furiously as possible. If I get behind or if I happen to be editing then I can pick up the story anywhere and watch it over and over again. If I pay very close attention then I get more and more detail. I can see what's going on in the plot, in the characters, and if I'm patient and careful I can write it down into the story. Later I will edit it down, removing the observations that aren't important or don't contribute to the literary quality of the work and I can increase the prose a bit by adding descriptions of objects, people and places.

At first I was massively annoyed with myself for not being able to transcribe the story in a precise and poetic way. But I realized that when I'm watching the story, much of my mind is off and paying attention to the story like a viewer watches a movie or a reader reads a novel. I can't blame myself for not getting it all down the first time because the experience of witnessing removes me from the faculty of translation. I literally can't relate the story outward because my outward communication centers are off.

This is why editing is so very important for me and why I must become better at it.

Question: when you write, is it something that you think through, outline, develop and then write out or does it come spontaneously for you like it does for me?

I think I'm seeing differences in the creative process. I suppose there are as many methods to write as there are writers, but I wonder if there are some parallels. So what is your process? Care to share?