How do you write?

Obviously, you learned when you were younger. But when writing a story, how do you approach it? Are you a studious note taker, with books full of ideas and situations waiting to be used? Or are you a spur of the moment, got to get it all down before I forget sort of a writer? Do you have a celebratory cigarette and have your ankles smashed by your number one fan? Or do you file it away and never show it to anyone?

I seem to always start from what I think is a cool idea, which I then chew over in my mind for however long it takes to extrapolate a beginning, a middle and an end from the idea. I usually come up with several scenes, images or lines I know I want to use during this period as well. I never write anything down until I'm ready to start, and then I just let the whole thing come out in one sitting, so as not to lose the flow. The story gets mangled and changed as I write it down, and realise certain things no longer work, or something better occurs to me. Sometimes this changes the whole story, sometimes it's just a subtle tweak.

I then print it out and go and do something else for a few hours. Later on, I sit down and read the story back through, making pencil notes on bits that don't stand up to scrutiny and moving things around. I then make the changes, print it out again and get my wife to read it, to make sure the story actually makes sense to someone who has no idea what it's about. I have a tendency to rush my endings, so it's always useful to see if in my rush, I've left things too vague.

A few corrections and edits later, and it's done. Until I come back to it in twenty years time and put all the mistakes back in and call it a "director's cut"

So. What do you do?

Yeah, I've got a ton of half-formed ideas that are shit at the moment, but then suddenly I'll think of something that clicks with one of them and I've got to write it down. But I can't have music - I'm a bit of a sponge, and I just know that ideas from the music will filter into the story, by osmosis. This is why my unpublished zombie story featured the undead wearing blue suede shoes for no logical reason. Never again.

I could see that becoming a brilliant CHUD pastime if it could be worked into the CHUD Stories framework. Keep it mean and lean - one week from assignment to deadline - and you've got yourself a challenge to sort the Hemingways from the boys...

Best thing to do is just try it. Sit down and write something. You don't have to show it to anyone, so borrow the idea from somewhere else just to get the ball rolling and see if what you write stands up on it's own. And if you read it back and it's terrible - don't be discouraged. Read your favourite authors and pick apart how they tell a story, the tricks they use to get from A to B. But the only way to find out is to just get in there and try it.

You've finished high school - you'll never have this much free time again

As long as you realise that not every book needs to be about a troubled writer returning to face unspoken evil in the small Maine town where he spent idyllic summers as a child...