Julie Chibbaro

I'm not sure how other people do it, like those writers who churn out trilogies as if they wrote them on the bus to work, but for me, novel writing, or any other kind of writing for that matter, doesn't come easy. I'm a bleeder, a writer who takes forever to understand her own text enough to know what comes next. For me, writing is a process of gathering -- not just gathering ideas, but a quiet gathering of the senses. To be able to visualize something that is real, true, honest, I have to wait. Wait until all the details come, and all in the right order. Oh, sure, I can slap something down on paper easily enough, but it just ain't so good. Not until I've done my gathering do I feel that channel, that vein of gold that I know is working.

Sometimes it takes time to know what my instinct is telling me.

I wonder if other writers or artists or musicians have this sense of gathering. I think it's like being ready for something -- you need to make a big move in your life, quit a job, leave a spouse, start down a new road -- you wait for that gathering, of energy, of spirit and power. Then, when the time is right, you do it. That's how I write.

So, my question is, how do those other guys and gals do it, the ones who churn out trilogies on the bus?