What is something that other writers rave about that doesn't work for you?

Tomorrow, Roseanna White will be here with a call for submissions to WhiteFire Press. Make sure you return tomorrow to learn all the details!

If you've been writing for very long, you've likely had the experience where every writer you know is completely in love with story boarding/a craft book/a writing software/a podcast. But when you go to try it out, you just don't get it. While this new technique or brainstorming method seems to work great for all your friends, it does nothing for you. 

Our panel question for today is:

What is something that other writers rave about that doesn't work for you?

Shannon Dittemore

I’m a very instinctual writer, so when someone asks me a question like, “Can you pinpoint the crisis in Act One?” I actually stutter. Breaking out a story in that way is valuable, but I certainly can’t do it on the fly. I have to think things through, lay it out. And I’m hesitant to do that much of the time because it turns the enjoyable art of storytelling into a math problem. And I do not like math.

Stephanie Morrill

Scrivener. I know lots of writers absolutely love it. I thought I could be one of them, and I tried very hard. Ultimately, I admitted defeat, and exported my document back into Word. When I looked at the story within the Word document, I felt like I was coming home after a stressful vacation.

Jill Williamson

Ooh, gosh. I agree with Steph about using Scrivener to write books. I’ve tried and it just doesn’t work for me. I do use it to create ebooks, though, when I’m indie-publishing a book. Let’s see . . . You guys might laugh at me, but I’m going to be totally honest here. I don’t get serious outlining. You’re probably thinking, “Wait. Jill talks about outlining ALL THE TIME!” It’s true. For years I have strived to perfect my outlining process to save myself time. And I will always outline to a certain degree. But I have never succeeded in outlining everything perfectly up front. (And I try really hard with each book.) But the truth is, I’m more of a seat-of-the-pants writer than I want to be. And I simply cannot foresee everything that will happen in a story I haven’t written yet, which makes writing the perfect outline in advance impossible, sadly. This is something I’m going to have to grieve and move on from. I’m such an organized person, it just feels like I should be able to nail this process. Alas, my creative brain is wired differently.

What about you?