I've been back to writing for about a year now. I used to do it all the time, but life just sort of got in the way and I stopped for about six years. I've had to slow down a bit again due to the arrival of my first kid, and in doing so, I've been taking a look back at my process and execution to better try to understand it. Thankfully, due to the wonderful feedback from a few people who have taken the time to sort of proofread/critique my work (I could use a few more folks like this, by the way), I've been able to better see things from an outside perspective. And boy do I have some oddball quirks.

^{Obligatory Disclaimer before continuing: I have not been formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, but therapists I've worked with recently do believe I would be diagnosed if I were to be tested. That being said, getting formally tested is not a simple task, and I have been told numerous times that a formal diagnosis wouldn't do anything for me at this stage in my life. If indeed, I do have ASD, my symptoms, thankfully, are relatively mild. In either case, take this with a grain of salt, if you feel inclined to do so. I am merely sharing a lived experience.}

I'm not really sure when it started, but I've become very... technical and dry in places. Almost robotic at times. I sort of think this stems from the fact that I literally draw out floorplans of buildings and environments, and have near step-by-step storyboard outlines of what happens in any given chapter before I am able to write them. If there is a scene where a fight breaks out, I actually have a procedure I go through that I call BattSeq (Battle Sequencing) where every single back and forth and detail therein is mapped out before I attempt to write it into the text. You see, organizing my thoughts and having a plan of attack (figuratively and literally, I suppose) has become key to my process.

Now granted, that is merely a prerequisite before starting. Often times, once I actually get into the process of writing--particularly when it is a segment that I particularly feel a lot for--I get into a natural flow and things sort of write themselves without much guidance needed. Recently, I've attributed this to years of writing college research papers (something I got very good at doing) and applying some of my process of executing those into my story writing procedures. I've also become used to more direct, formal writing and wording as a result of doing this for years. Looking at some of my work from over a decade ago, I can see the difference... and I'm not 100% certain it is all good.

In a recent chapter I wrote, there existed a situation with my characters becoming stowaways on a high-speed train. The intended destination was known, as was its approximate distance from their starting point. I went as far as to calculate the speed at which the train had to be travelling during the scene such that over the course of the chapter's events, they would roughly arrive just outside of their destination -- not only by the end of the chapter, but somewhat realistically by the time the average reader may have finished reading it. Why? I don't know, to be blunt. Does the reader really need to know the exact speed of the train (in km/h) in this scene? Was the arrival time of sonic booms from the artillery shells passing by in the opposite direction to destroy the place they were escaping necessary to know for this segment? In later chapters, I gave the exact directions the character took through a ruined part of a town he was in. There is some novelty and use to this, of course... but I'm seeing that this just isn't enough on its own. While I tend not to prefer overly flowery language and over-description of things in stories, I seem to be lacking still in this area.

In the end, I'll be taking some time relatively soon to go back over and revise the 14 or so chapters I'll have up by the end of this segment of the story to hopefully patch some of these deficiencies. Luckily, the plotting is sound, so there won't really be any substantial changes to the course of things as they have gone or their future outcomes. That being said, if anyone here wants to take a crack at giving me their thoughts on places where I might have gotten too technical/dry with things, I absolutely could use a few more opinions/constructive critiques on this thing as I go.