I put my greatest faith in chaos, that’s the way I research while I’m writing. You would think that the smart thing to do would be to do the research and then start your writing. Well I do everything in a contrary way evidently because I find that doesn’t work for me, even writing biographies.
I’m writing in the daytime and researching at night, that’s the way I’m keeping everything fresh as I go and then when I find out things, I have to go back and change. I’m not very good, I can’t deal with three by five cards that research, others can, you know we’re all different.
I just do the best I can with whatever skills I have. For example, I’m going to give you some bad advice. For those of you who are interested in writing and listening to this, don’t take my advice, I’ll lead you astray. But I don’t plan my novels in advance.
I’ve tried that, I find that I can’t do that very well and that my best procedure is just to get a beginning with a few characters that give me some hope of conflict or story, just start and then improvise, as we improvise our daily lives. And I improvise the story day-by-day, never knowing the ending.
You would think you would have a heart attack worried about will you be able to tie it up, I’ve never lost a story because I couldn’t tie it up at the end. I’ve lost a couple because they turned to ashes in the second or third chapter, but I know that once I get into a novel, I will be able to finish it.
That keeps me very fresh when I’m working on a novel, but I don’t recommend you do it unless that works for you. I’ve run into authors who feel liberated when I tell them that I work that way and I found out that many famous authors worked that way including Henry James.
Many Newbery authors have worked that way but most are smarter than we are, they outline first.