My Writing Process by Susan Ostrov

By Susan Ostrov

My Writing Process

I understand why people who enjoy writing, and perhaps dream of publication, would benefit from writing groups, or writing seminars taught by professionals. Group members read each other’s work, give feedback and suggestions, and hopefully bestow praise that encourages and inspires, while writing seminars are meant to instruct would-be authors in the craft. This is perfectly reasonable, but I am not one of those authors; I will never join a writing group, and writing instruction doesn’t interest me.This is because my writing process works very differently when it comes to sharing my work in its infancy, or submitting it to an instructor.

Writing groups and seminars seem to be everywhere since self-publication has entered the market. Both may offer prompts that members must respond to, e.g., “”Write a letter to a descendant about what you want done with an item you find in a box that belonged to a grandparent who just died.” This sort of thing would not help me be a better writer at all. I’ve never needed to “find” a topic to write about, and writing in the same place or time does nothing for me. I’m a non-fiction writer and I simply write when I have an idea about a topic that interests me. 

I have never had “writer’s block,” or stared at a blank screen until I wanted to scream. Once I know what I generally want to say, the words flow from me like lava, almost of their own accord. In fact, when the writing is going well, and it almost always does, I find myself in a state of flow, losing track of time, so deep into my imaginary world that quitting it is painful. What I need to write at my best is not others’ feedback or instruction, but the opposite: to be left alone in a quiet place with my thoughts and their expression.

The trick that facilitates this ease is entirely unconscious, not purposeful: it so happens that while I’m writing, I always feel like a genius, absolutely certain I’m birthing a wonder! I’ve been known to laugh out loud at my own wit, imagining how my audience will respond. But this absurd self-illusion is just the first, necessary stage for me.

After I’ve written, I don’t look at the result until some time has passed, let’s say a day or two. What happens next is that when I reread what I’ve written, I have the exact opposite overreaction to my writing: it’s awful, no one will like it, it’s overwritten, it makes no sense. I become a stern critic who doesn’t admire what I did the day before at all.

This self-disparagement doesn’t discourage me at all, though – it’s just a bridge to the next stage, when I morph into a voracious re-drafter, re-organizing structure and cleaning up the style. I go back and edit each sentence, paragraph, chapter, over and over, never quite satisfied. This process goes on until the manuscript must go out to the editor, when I revert to a modified version of the first stage, believing (not necessarily justifiably) that the work I did was really very good. For some reason, this process works beautifully for me.

If I haven’t yet placed the draft for publication and therefore don’t have an editor, I often do ask some trusted friend to comment, and I take that criticism seriously. But the feedback I would get from a writing group, where comments can contradict each other, would interrupt the process my psyche has come up with, and that’s the last thing I want to do. Suggestions for adding or subtracting while I’m writing or redrafting would annoy me: “You need to do more of this or that,” or “This part doesn’t work,” would pop my happy bubble. (Of course praise is always great, but then I’d feel pressured to praise others too, less than honestly at times.)

Though my publications have been both academic (four books on the subject of women and romance) and creative non-fiction (a memoir and personal essays), my process has been the same. The memoir I published in 2024, LOVELAND: A MEMOIR OF ROMANCE AND FICTION, arose out of my scholarship on the subject of women and romantic love. Romance had great allure from me from adolescence onward, but I didn’t dream of writing about my own romantic life until I retired.

Then the idea came to me: What if I wrote about myself? I’d be a feminist who studies romance turning the lens on her own romantic adventures. But there’s an enormous difference between the two kinds of writing, academic and commercial, and switching styles was quite an adjustment.

This is an example of my academic writing about women and romance: “Because being in charge of love and marriage is an empowerment that to Mrs. F. is wholly normative in a woman’s life, it serves as a legitimating force in her history.” From “Gender in the LIfe Story of an ‘Ordinary’ Woman.”

And here is a sample of the same idea in my memoir, LOVELAND: “From then on, the way he saw me – or rather how I thought he might, and intensely hoped he would – was no less than who I was.” From LOVELAND: A MEMOIR OF LOVE AND FICTION

I enjoyed the challenge of publishing academic books, articles, and essays, but writing and publishing LOVELAND, an extremely intimate and personal work, has been the culmination of my life in writing, and it’s due to my own quirky writing process.

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LOVELAND

This is not your usual memoir – much less a typical love story. Loveland is about the unfolding of unmet expectations, of shattered childhood dreams, of tenderness found unexpectedly; it is the uncovering of different layers of one’ s self, relationship after relationship. The rationale for understanding the engineering of love, in its infinite nuances, comes through the framework of literature. Books shape our perceptions: their characters set parameters, their stories create paradigms, and we live by them forever. If you’ re interested in a different vision of happily-ever-after, this is the book for you.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing