Writers On Their Writing Process

Award winning YA author, Maggie Stiefvater, has a fascinating post on her blog where she has invited ten fellow authors to post examples of their writing from early draft to finished piece and comment on the reasons behind their decisions. The idea for this came from when she did something similar with a piece of her own work here. Australian author, Margo Lanagan, features in Stiefvater's post with a piece from her recently released novel, The Brides of Rollrock Island UK (and USA later this year), published as Sea Hearts in Australia, with links given to the others.

I was fascinated how, while each author has a different approach and issues to deal with, they have so much in common. Really though, what hooked me is seeing the actual process at work as they prune, expand and develop their characters and story and the techniques they use to do it. We are being shown the elements of the craft of writing - and it works.