Writing Process

I attended the next meeting for the children's book project tonight. Having made revisions I was happy with, and having made special arrangements to get there on time, I was excited to meet with the group and see how everyone was doing.
 
I am exhausted.
 
The process of writing is different for everyone. For me, fiction works when I am largely the scribe for my characters, listening as they talk, watching them move, and recording their words and actions. It is a process that lends itself to solitude, to quiet, to being "in the zone."
 
A book written by 20 people, however, requires a lot more than solitude and quiet. It requires discussion and consensus, compromise and middle ground. And for a person coming from solitude and quiet, these things are not easy.
 
But, as I recover from my exhaustion, I remind myself that, like most everything else in life, this is a process. It is an opportunity not just to generate something new, but to learn something (or a lot of somethings!) new as well. I am not just generating a chapter of which I can be proud. I am learning to work with a group to generate a book of which we will all be proud.
 
The learning process isn't always easy--often we learn the most when it's hard. So I suppose it's a good sign that I'm exhausted tonight.
 
It's all part of the process.