From: "Raymond E. Feist"
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996
You write down what you need to write down to keep things straight. Now, I've been doing this for nearly 20 years, so I've had practice keeping things in my head. I have two monitors on my Mac (eat your hearts out Wintel folks), so on my 21" I have my two pages of text and on my 13" I have my notes. I toggle back and forth between notes and text. The other thing is I write fast. I spend months plotting in my head, but when I sit down to write, I blast out between 10-20 pages a day. I wrote the first 200 pages of Rage over a five month period, then wrote the last 600 pages in about 65 days. When you're working that fast, it doesn't take long term memory to keep things straight. That being said, however, keep in mind that how I work has nothing to do with what would be good for you.
From: Raymond E. Feist
Date: 07 October 2005
"Style" has two meanings, i.e. a strict adherence to a standard of usage as well as each author's individual approach to writing. Format is simply how large are your margins, which type font you use, what size type, running headers, etc.
"Writing" can be broken down to two processes, the act of fingers on keyboard and butt on seat where you pound out words, and your choices in "style," if you need to break it down more than I usually do. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that style emerges as you learn your craft.
Fabricating story is the ju-ju, the mojo, the organic process that can not be broken down in any mechanistic way. It's what makes writers writers and typists typists.
Best, R.E.F.
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