Writing in bits and pieces

It may be only me, and it may only interest me, but the process of writing is a fascinating thing.

For a lot of my writing, the toughest part is getting that first sentence, or paragraph or two, on the page or into the computer (yeh, being old-fashioned, I still do a fair amount of writing, or at least STARTING writing, with a pen and pad of paper). For articles, short stories, press releases -- those can often roll right off after the "start" is done, even if I go back and revise the start later on.

Of course, a lot of the "head thinking" part is done by the time those first words get corraled.

But that process, and a lot of my writing in general, tends to be very linear in nature. Write the start, write the middle, write the end. Let sit, then go back and revise. Pretty straight-forward, even if sometimes it's very hard and other times very easy, and for no good reason in either case.

This latest writing permutation, plays, started off much the same way. The first play, "Conversations in a Cafe," was very linear, too. I started it at the beginning, worked through the middle, and came up with a closing, even if that was later altered somewhat, and expanded.

"All About Faith," play two, was also chiefly that way. I had a vision basically of how the play was going to end from early on, but still, it didn't get written until a lot of the rest of the play was in the bag. And even at that, a line or two was added to the original ending when it floated into my mind. It may be -- I don't recall -- that the original ending, though, was on paper or in the computer before Scenes Three and Four were fully fleshed out.

So perhaps there was a transition from "Conversations" to "Faith," and further to the latest effort, "The Good Life." Which has been just about anything BUT linear in nature.

A lot of my writing is in bits and pieces, too, but by that, I mean that I write a sentence or a page today, and then it may be a week or more before I write the next part. Or I can get on a roll and write a scene in two days, as happened with "Faith," for instance.

With "Good Life," though, I have written bits and pieces all over the place in the course of the play. For instance, today, I "finished" the play. The final two scenes are more or less complete, and I know exactly how it will end. It might get adjusted, but the play essentially is "over."

However, I still have a huge hole in the middle of the play. I essentially know what will happen in those scenes, but the writing is still missing. And really, I had written most of Scene Two of Act Two before I ever went back and wrote Act One, Scene One and the start of Scene Two, which are done. But I still need the end of Scene Two, and a Scene Three if there will be one, and Scene One of Act Two.

What does this say about my writing process on this particular play? I have no earthly clue, except that at least it's getting written in SOME fashion, even if out of order. I do find it pretty exciting when I finally "glue" the scenes and pieces together into some kind of a whole. But maybe I should just smile and accept that things are not always linear, and maybe that's a good thing.