Writing Scenes Out of Order

Not to be dramatic, but this saved my writing life

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This is a post about a mindset and process shift that saved my writing life. Seriously. And in it, I’m going to tell you why and how this happened. And how you can make it work for you, and with luck, with any luck at all, it might save your writing life, too. So, what is this magical thing that saved me? It’s so simple it’s silly—I’m writing scenes out of order.

Maybe you are already a confirmed writing-out-of-order person. Perhaps this sounds like no big deal to you. On the other hand, you may shudder at the thought of writing your novel scenes in a non-linear fashion. I feel your pain. So you can ignore all this advice, but I do offer you one thing to ponder. And that is this: your writing process is not set in concrete. You can (and should) change it up when it’s not working. Those last words are the key: when it’s not working. If it is working, and you are piling up the pages, cool. Keep at it. But if it’s not, if you get stalled, try something new. Maybe this process I’m espousing here.

Because one of the things this process does for me, and I hope will do for you, is totally take away the feeling that I’m writing to an audience, that somebody is soon going to be judging my words, which is the curse of the professional writer. Instead, I’m writing for my characters, allowing them to get their voice on the page. I’m writing for the story, to get the scenes on the page. Because I’m writing willy-nilly, there’s no sense that this will soon be a completed project. No worries that it has to go together perfectly. It’s all about the process.

A pillow I made, long ago in another time, at Julia Cameron’s Creativity Camp in Taos, New Mexico, which just so happened to be a life-changing experience for me. But that’s a different story. The point here is: process.

And I still can’t believe that I’m allowing myself to write in this way, because I have roundly avoided it for years. You might even go so far as to say that I denounced it. I wrote my novels in strict chronological order, oh yes I did. Start to finish, no deviation, from the moment I typed Chapter One to when I wrote The End. When I learned of somebody who wrote their scenes out of order, I did the mental equivalent of patting them on the head and saying, “Isn’t that sweet and precious you dear thing, but how about I teach you how to write a novel the correct way?”

Oh I was rabid about it. And smug, too. Stern and certain in my knowledge that writing a novel in linear fashion was the only way to go about it.

But that all changed recently. Blame it on the anesthetic and a few doses of Oxycontin (only a few, I got off that crap but quick) after my knee surgery in November. The surgery was a reset for me, most definitely. In the first weeks of my convalescence, every morning I rose, got my coffee, sat in my comfy overstuffed chair and wrote in my journal. The ideas poured forth. I came up with an idea and almost 40 scenes (more on that below) for a new novel, wrote parts of newsletters, and journaled like crazy. Despite some pain and the awkwardness of a new Titanium knee, it was lovely and I adored those times.

But somewhere in all that loveliness, my novel-writing mojo got lost. I had half a draft of a novel to which up until that time I had been enthusiastically devoted. But suddenly, nothing. Nada, niente, zilch. I could not connect with it, no matter how hard I tried. I was stuck halfway and bored with what I thought should happen next.

I should break here for a brief aside in which I explain what my process had been up to that point. It had served me well, so I found no reason to change it. I’ve written five novels with it, and taught this novel-writing process online and in person.