There are generally three kinds of writing I do for the Weeping Cedars Universe, excluding editing/rewrites. These are not phases of writing, with one following the next; they are repeated steps that I come back to again and again. Each is a process of discovery, and each leads into or demands the others at different times.
This involves me writing a lot of timelines, lists, and ideas out to see what makes any sense at all. What excites me about a story? Why am I even telling *this* story? What kind of story is it? What is the mood? Where is the horror?
2. Narrative Structuring and Linking
This is a lot of research and moving between Word, Aeon Timeline, Roots Magic, and searching my Dropbox files for names. This is me knitting things together to make sure that they work without conflict. If I want to tell someone's story, I have to check all their information. Have I already made a family tree for them? Do they have children? Named parents? Much of my consistency relies on my trusting what I've put into my documentation. If I want to do something that goes against the documentation, then I have to be extremely thorough in checking if I've ever mentioned that fact publicly. If I have, I have to do something else. These conflicts, boundaries, or limitations are writing prompts. They aren't hurdles to jump, they aren't (in general) items to retcon or hand-wave, they are invitations to look more deeply into the story.
This is the easiest. I tend to just let the Muse take me where it wants to go, and this version of the writing is often filled with "it's on X Street," and "That happened in 19XX," and "that guy's name is X" because I don't want to break up the flow to go look things up.
The ideal order would be 1->2->3, but it's often 3->1->3->2->1->2->3 and so on.
As I'm working on Weeping Cedars: Console, "Welcome to Weeping Cedars," and "The Hum of Glory" right now, all of these steps are happening pretty much all the time. (at least now that I'm coming out of a few months of book editing/audiobook editing burnout).
