My process tends to be a lot like yours; I always have an outline, even if it's only a few bullet points in my head, but other than that, I don't do a lot of organized prep work. I generally just go into a scene or a section thinking "Okay, in this scene I need to accomplish these things," and the list is usually something like "Make it clear that Janet has a much stronger relationship with her grandmother than with her parents. Say who's going to be sleeping in the bed by the door. Have Tristan say something funny." But for the most part, I'm just writing what comes to my while I'm typing. Most of my stories are roughly 80% stuff that hit once I started typing, to 20% outlines stuff I knew I was putting in ahead of time.
I like your writing-as-cooking metaphor, esp. the bit about tasting as you go along, because that's exactly how it feels to me. Needs more pepper. Too much celery. And I tend to cook kind of the way I write, if you bear this metaphor out (using the recipe as a jumping-off point rather than as a strict order of exactly what to do) so that amused me, too.
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Date: 2008-04-28 08:01 pm (UTC)I like your writing-as-cooking metaphor, esp. the bit about tasting as you go along, because that's exactly how it feels to me. Needs more pepper. Too much celery. And I tend to cook kind of the way I write, if you bear this metaphor out (using the recipe as a jumping-off point rather than as a strict order of exactly what to do) so that amused me, too.