Headspace: How I Write

I requested a few friends to ask me questions I can answer in my blog while I recuperate for a month. My Malaysian-Japanese expat friend, Azman, asked what headspace I have when I write. So here goes.

When I was six or seven years old, I decided to try writing my first ‘book’. All I had was a title, ‘Fairies and Friends Forever,’ and a cover I drew in crayon. No plot, no characters. The cover showed me and my friends as fairies fighting a vampire (my eldest cousin told me he was a vampire when I was 5 and I took him seriously at the time, vowing to fight evil…) But yeah. That one didn’t go anywhere.

Since high school, I have been more aware of my writing style. It would start with a scene in my head, while I was bored in class… And then I’d ask myself, WHY? Why this, why that, until I developed the backstory and context for that scene. Only after I had a bunch of these scenes with plot threads hanging loose would I make an outline to weave them together. 

Since college, I learned to outline better. And now, while the scenes are a cool way to start writing (very action-packed), it’s the outlines that help me reach the finish line to complete a work.

So there. I hope that answers the question of how I think when I write a story.