First draft journey

In this week's giveaway, I asked about your creative paradigm. Since we're on the subject I thought I'd tell you a little about mine.

SPARK
The first thing that happens is that something comes to me, knocks on the door of my imagination and has a hissy fit in a high pitched voice:

"We wants to be writed. Now. Last week."

I'm not the type that has to go looking for ideas. In fact, I have a word document (Novel Concepts) that is pretty much all titles and/or 2 or 3 line summaries of ideas.

BRAINSTORMING
I'm not a plotter, but I'm not as hardcore a pantser as I could be.I think of my paradigm of an asymptote- I'll probably continue to get closer and closer to how plotters function, but I'll never really be a plotter.

In my brainstorming stage, I roll over the characters and plot in my mind. One of the things I hear about my writing is that my characters feel real. I think it's because they live in my head so long before I write anything. They're like my friends because I know them. (Sadly the brainstorming thing doesn't seem to have much of an effect on plot. I'm working on it.)

READY. SET. GO.
I've completed 3 manuscripts. They've all been for nanowrimo. Seems I can't write a novel unless I go out in a blaze of guns and glory. The process of actually getting my story down on paper (or on hard drive, really) is all about flying through it as fast as life (and my fingers) will allow.

So that's my first draft journey. The things that come out well in my first draft are voice (I get lots of compliments on it) and character. According to both critiquers and my own opinion, the thing I need to work on most is plot. I think I only do settings well when I make them up. My hooks aren't all that hooky. And I'm working on making my theme's less like Slughorn's memories (screamy and overpowering).

Btw, I've started on the earthquake novel. Cranked out 3,000 words yesterday and it's barely 2 hours in!