Last month, I offered up a post which talked about my very organic writing process (with SNARK!). Turns out, the writing process is far more interesting to learn about than I first thought. So, I’ve been paying attention to my patterns and such. Most of which is pretty boring to me, which means I’d bore you talking about it.

But yesterday, while staring down at these few pieces of a very bloody draft of a chapter for Break Me In, I realized this particular “thing” is something I do with all my books. (I wish I could show you a closer picture of all the red, however, this is the climactic scene of the book and a game changer for the series, I don’t want to spoil!)

The amount of red on the page varies depending on which stage of the process I’m in. Right now, I have myself on a end of July finish timeline for the first draft of Break Me In, the 3rd Geek Kink book. The book isn’t due until September, however August is shaping up to be a very busy month for us. So I want to be able to walk away from the book for the month and let it stew before I take care of any clean up before September rolls around.

Some people can do this work on a computer no problem. I’ve tried. Several times. To the point of frustration and tears. I just can’t do it. I miss things. Skip over problem issues. Ignore glaring spelling errors even when they’re reaching out to slap me with a flogger. It’s as though seeing it printed out on a page helps me see the BIG GLARING PROBLEMs I can’t hunt down on a computer screen. I swear those little pixels arrange and rearrange themselves even as I’m staring right at them. I’ve been known to print out entire books and run red BICs dry for this process.

Perhaps it relates back to all the years I wrote without a computer as I’ve been writing long before I ever had a computer on my desk. Yes, scribbling up that amount of paper is wasteful, I know that. It’s bulky. Believe me, I know that perhaps better than anyone. I carry around the pages I’m working on wherever I go.

I keep them when I’m done.

Seriously.

See the pic right there? That’s my second box of work. The green one underneath is full. In front of those boxes are my old laptops. Three of them. Including my very fist Gateway (!!) laptop. Sure, I’ve transferred everything off the hard drives but…yeah. I’m a bit of a writing hoarder. We’re not even going to discuss my external hard drive and my cloud drives backups of my current hard drive. I’ve been on the receiving end of too many lost stories to relive those woes.

All this to say….I’m chugging away on the 3rd Geek Kink book, red pen in hand and blood all over the page.