I work on becoming a better person.

I am truly in love with this post by Justine Larbalestier, because I get cranky about other writers in the exact same way she does.

I mean, this is the thing: I live in Los Angeles. Don’t get me wrong; I freaking love Los Angeles. We have a lot of sunshine and nearby(ish) beaches and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (hello, lover). Everyone wears jeans all the time, and I never have to put away my open-toed shoes for the winter, and – trust me – you will see celebrities all over and therefore impress all your friends who live elsewhere.*

However, the thing about L.A. one learns is that everyone, from your accountant to your stylist to your boss, is working on a screenplay or a spec script or a one-woman show or a play or a novel. For a lot of those people, though, what “working on” means is “talking about a lot” without any of that pesky thing called “writing”. I think I used to be super judgmental about this (I know, right, me, super judgmental about ANYTHING?) but now I understand there are a million different ways to write something.

For me, though, it’s tough imagining doing it any other way than how I do it! I have tried a million methods, trust me. So many guides say you CANNOT WRITE WITHOUT AN OUTLINE so even though I hate outlines, I’d draw up a little outline, and get really sidetracked with color-coding and font selection, and then I’d either write something crappy off of it or end up trashing the whole thing.

My writing tends to really benefit from the journey and exploration of starting out with characters I’m just getting to know and letting them take me somewhere. That might sound a little crazy, but it just works that way for me. My characters definitely tell me more and more about them, and then I have a much better idea of where the story needs to go.

But I do get that as necessary as that process is for me, to others the process of gathering all information necessary is a must. So while I might mutter “pish posh” and wonder how on earth anyone could know the ending of their book before they’ve even written the beginning, I also accept how valid it is.

But thank you, Ms. Larbalestier, for at least making me feel a little less heinous about my judgey tendencies.

*Except NYC. Those folks are never impressed. With anything.