product
I have always told students, and I will say here again, that there's no one way, no magic formula, and only one way to measure the effectiveness of one approach over another: if you get the story down, then it is right for you.
My own process is opaque for me, at best. I feel things cooking beneath the surface, sometimes. There's a bit of a mental itch, the sense of somethng coming to fruition, and then it erupts, in a small way or a larger one. At that point it has to be put down on the page, or it will dissipate. In a really good stretch I write between ten and fifteen double spaced pages a day. More usually I'm happy if I get three or four solid pages down. Sometimes it's only two. Sometimes those two pages are so painfully won that I wonder why I ever thought I could write another novel, or anything at all.
Just now I'm in a productive period, where the story is boiling over and I'm putting out about fifteen pages a day. In bed late at night, too weary to read, I have the urge to get the laptop and continue writing. While I'm driving sentences are snaking through my head. Images jump into view. My fingers twitch; I write with my finger in the air, and don't even realize I'm doing it. This was first brought to my attention by my husband, who refuses to sit on my right at the movies because I write on his hand the whole time.
Mostly I just let this happen and try not to analyze it too closely. Even writing about it in this limited way makes me wonder if I'm quite balanced at times like these, but hey. Love me, love my dog.