Diana has discussed her writing on her Writer’s Corner webpage at:

https://dianagabaldon.com/wordpress/resources/what-i-do/

Scroll down to the section that says “How To Write – Tips For Aspiring Authors”. Lots of great advice there.

She does not write from outlines, as she explains on those pages, so I don’t know what you mean by ‘writing format.’ On that page, she discusses manuscript formats for novels or stories that publishers require.

There is a free on-line ‘academy’ for new writers at:

https://www.scribophile.com/academy

Diana was a busy scientist and university professor, wife, and had small kids at home when she began writing OUTLANDER in the late 1980s, and has said that she often got up in the middle of the night to write.

Good luck on your writing!

Loretta
Diana’s Webmistress

Happy New Year’s Eve! Has Diana published an article on her writing schedule and format? I love the richness above. I’m curious about how she uses her time. Does she seek a quiet space or dedicate hours to writing each day?

I’m a new writer and other than finding snatches of time at night in my journal, I don’t feel I have any kind of system and wonder if she has one. Thank you!

Diana has shared a lot about how she writes. See her Writer’s Corner webpages under the Resources menu at:

https://dianagabaldon.com/resources/what-i-do/

As to how she (or any other author) keeps track of pieces, chapters, or sections, Diana would tell you that it varies widely and to develop your own system which works for you and your own creative style. She says:

“Writing is an active skill; the only way to learn is to do it, to actually sit down and write every day.”

If you write EVERY DAY, you will naturally develop your own organization system that works for you. Your brain will find a way. It’s the daily practice and consistency that counts and gets you there, loving your writing enough to put in the time.

Every Day.

Wishing you the best,

Loretta
Diana’s Webmistress

I’ve tried searching for an answer to this as I am sure you’ve been asked before but I have not been successful.
I understand that you write pieces or sections and then put them together afterwards. I am “new” to writing in any serious way but find myself taking this approach. My question is – how do you keep track of or organise all these pieces to then put together in a usable form?

I’m concerned that as I write more, it will be difficult to manage all the pieces to then put my jigsaw together.

I hope this makes sense and this forum of reaching out works.

Thank you for your inspiration

Sandie

Thank you so much for being so transparent about how you work. It makes it so much easier for those of us whose minds work similarly but don’t know how to go about putting words on paper. <3

I am in my mid-50s, in school to finally finish my first bachelor’s degree (first degree of any type, really), and majoring in English & Creative Writing (that’s all one major, not two). My current class requires me to write a short story, and I find looking at a blank page and trying to write the story linearly just isn’t working for me. I like the way you describe your writing process using geometric terms, and how you say there is no gravity in your mind, so you can hang a roof then build the walls later. That makes sense to me, and I really like to try this process to see if it makes sense in practice as well as theory. I hope *that* makes sense.

Thanks for any help you can give. It is deeply appreciated.

And then I have the completed scenes, glowing and alive, that I have been told will eventually have to be scrapped when I get down to cases and *really* write (in a linear form). The thing is, I’ve always known this is not true. The characters were already fully formed in my mind when I wrote those scenes. I’ve learned more about them over time, but they are the same people.

Over the course of those years, I can think of any number of useful scenes I could have written instead of wasting my time figuring out where those scenes belong in the outline and adding the specifics to my notes on the characters. And then NOT ACTUALLY WRITING.

Anyway, thank you so much for writing with such clarity about your process. It was a breath of fresh air!

We discussed writing, and research and of course your name came up often. I was very curious about your research and writing style which brought me to this blog post. It’s a delicate balance to bring in historical, medical fact and all the daily minutea while weaving a complex story around many characters in a way that doesn’t disrupt the thread of the story, which you do so well.

Anyhoo, thank you Diana for many many delightful hours spent devouring the pages of your books, and the joy of anticipation knowing another was being written. Your books were always on the top of my Christmas wish list, and many a turkey dinner suffered for my attention to them if received.

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