My Writing Process, According to the Trojan War

People often ask me what my writing process looks like, and I usually tell them it resembles the Trojan War more than any orderly system of productivity. There is planning, of course. There are strategies, outlines, timelines, and carefully laid foundations. But there are also days when everything catches fire for no obvious reason, alliances collapse, and I spend several hours staring at a single paragraph as if it personally offended me.

Most mornings begin with the confidence of Agamemnon rallying the troops. Coffee in hand, notes spread across the desk, I am absolutely certain that today is the day great progress will be made. The words will flow. The timeline will behave. Characters will cooperate. Then, somewhere around mid-morning, Achilles storms into camp—metaphorically speaking—and refuses to participate. A scene I thought would take thirty minutes suddenly requires three hours, four rewrites, and one long stare into the void while questioning every life choice that led me to writing about Bronze Age warfare.

There is also the inevitable Trojan Horse moment. This is when I convince myself that I am being clever—brilliant, even—by inserting one small idea into a chapter. Just one. Harmless. Innocent. Except that idea turns out to contain thirty more ideas hidden inside it, and suddenly the chapter has expanded by five thousand words and requires a full restructuring of the timeline. What began as a tidy paragraph becomes an invading army.

Of course, every writing session includes moments of heroic endurance. There are days when the words refuse to cooperate, when the research rabbit holes multiply like Hydra heads, and when I find myself deep into ancient geography wondering why there are three rivers with nearly identical names in the same region. This is usually the point when I remind myself that Homer didn’t have Google Docs either, so perseverance is part of the tradition.

And yet, despite the chaos, the stubborn characters, and the occasional literary siege, there is always that moment of victory. The paragraph clicks into place. The timeline aligns. A character finally says exactly what they were meant to say. It feels less like conquering Troy and more like surviving it, but survival counts in epic storytelling.
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So if you ever imagine writers sitting peacefully in candlelit rooms, calmly crafting masterpieces with perfect grace, allow me to assure you that the reality is far closer to a battlefield. There are victories, retreats, clever strategies, and the occasional desperate charge. But in the end, every finished chapter feels like raising a banner over the walls and declaring, at least for today, that the city still stands.
And tomorrow? We march again.

 2014, revised 2026 Janell Rhiannon. All rights reserved.