If you’re like me, I’m sure there’s no way you’re avoiding seeing the AI slop that seems to have seeped into every nook and cranny of the internet these days. Whether it’s scrolling through social media, searching for a reference online, or God-forbid the algorithm suggesting a new read that is clearly one-hundred percent AI-generated, it’s everywhere. It’s inescapable and insidious.
But look, this piece isn’t going to be a deep dive into the pros (are there any?) and cons (so, so many) of large language models serving up “creativity.” What it is going to be is a reminder that the process of creating and writing is the art. Repeat that with me: the process is the art.
There is a certain kind of magic and discovery that happens when you’re slogging through the hard parts, tearing out your hair strand by strand, begging imaginary characters taking up space in your head to say anything, fighting with yourself over plots, deleting a beloved scene that took you hours to write, or working your way through tedious copyedits.
My process has been the same for every book I’ve written in the last fifteen years of my professional career. Sure, some things have gotten easier with time and practice, but mainly, the gift of writing over forty-five mysteries is that now I trust the process.
I know, without a shred of doubt, that there will be rough patches and stumbling blocks. I’m acutely aware that at some point the suspect that I’ve been convinced must be the killer will do something surprising. They’ll go off script and serve up a plot twist that I didn’t even see coming. That’s the magic! That’s the art.
In this age of AI, I think we’re going to see a return to the process. I’m obsessed with watching baking videos of pastry chefs walking me through a new recipe, from softening butter to pulling a glorious batch of golden snickerdoodles out of the oven. I love seeing bakers coated in flour and their hands sticky from rolling the dough. I appreciate it when they share the flops—the cookies that didn’t rise or the ones that were left in the oven a few minutes too long and burned to a crisp.
There is nothing that brings me more joy than a soothing painting video, seeing a blank canvas fill up with soft patterns and pretty pastel watercolors. I mean, there’s a reason Bob Ross still has a cult following all these years later, right? I always do a little happy dance when my editor sends me the early sketches of a cover design, pencil drawings that eventually become the coziest, most colorful books and spines.
When it comes to writing, though, it’s so much harder to show the process. For me, every book begins with a ten-to-twelve-page outline that I handwrite in pencil because inevitably things change as the plot starts to take shape.
I start with the body and the crime scene. Who is our poor, unsuspecting victim, and what did they do to put themselves in harm’s way? Then I craft my list of suspects (usually about five—too many and it’s confusing to track who’s who, too few and it’s too easy to guess whodunit). I give every suspect a viable motive for wanting the victim dead, plenty of secrets and lies, shady behavior, and unreliable alibis.
Next, I map out the suspects’ connection to my sleuth. Have they met for the first time? Or are they a beloved member of the community who has obviously been wrongly accused? Once that’s complete, I put together a blueprint for murder that serves as my writing guide as I go. This stage is fun and highly visual. My blueprint is like my own Sherlock murder board, complete with coffee stains and so many different threads to track.
But then it’s on to word count—the daily grind of starting with a blank page and eventually ending up with a rough draft. It’s me, in my office, pounding away on the keyboard day after day. Two thousand, three thousand, four thousand words a day for a month, six weeks, or sometimes even a bit longer until I have the bones of the mystery on the page.
It’s not sexy. It’s not glamorous. It’s a lot of me talking to myself and scribbling notes for things I want to fix in the next pass in a journal.
But mixed in with the routine and finding my way through a story are those incredible twists and turns. A new character appears on the scene. Someone discovers their voice for the first time. Or a piece of the puzzle that just wasn’t fitting finally slips into place. It’s some kind of strange alchemy that I can never explain and yet always happens.
After I’ve fumbled my way through a messy first draft, I walk away from the book for a while. I let it sit and marinate like fine wine, then come back to it with fresh eyes. This phase of editing comes with its own set of challenges.
Now word choice matters. I agonize over descriptions. Is buttery sunlight spilling into the kitchen? Or is it tangerine with a soft golden glow? This is where surgery happens, deep cuts, tiny incisions, sutures. Every layer, every pass brings the story to life. Nothing is left dangling. There’s completion and closure.
And then it’s off to my editor. So many people touch the book and make it better during this phase. Developmental edits, copy edits, page proofs, and advanced reader copies, bit by bit, the book gets closer to being done, or at least as done as it can or ever will be.
Here’s the thing I’ve learned about human creativity. Writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. A fully fleshed-out story and a prompt fed into a large language model will never read the same. Creation is its own unique, messy, mystical process. And that, in my humble opinion, is art in its purest form.
***
