Writing Drafts in My Head
I used to think I was pretty much an organic writer, but then I discovered the beauty of structure (about which I may write more some time). When I'm working on novels, I really like outlines (which in my case resembles a really rough, really tight first draft--as in, say, two paragraphs per scene).
I used to think I was a character-driven writer (which I sort of am) but in short stories I rarely know a lot of physical details about my character (I don't know what Nora looks like in 'Magic in a Certain Slant of Light;' I just realized today that the main character in '46 Directions...' doesn't have a name). I often don't know much at all about them except what's in the story--though there's usually a fair lot of informtion about them in the story.
In some ways in short stories at least, I'd say I am theme and emotion-driven in the sense that there's some 'feel' that the story has for me that I want to maintain all the way to the end. Sometimes the feel isn't quite right though and I have to discover how to adjust it in order to find the ending.
I almost never know the ending until I get there. Though at some point, usually well before the half-way mark, I have to know what the story is about. And I know what it's about long, long before I know how it will end.
But the thing I can say fairly definitely that I am is a backbrain/backburner writer. I was reading someone's old journal entry today about really crappy first drafts and second and third drafts and I realized that I don't really think in terms of drafts anymore. It often takes me a good long time to finish a story, but most of that time is spent thinking about the story in the way that astronomers look at faint stars--not directly, but out of the corner of the eye I write seventy-five percent of my stories in my head. I've had editors or critiquers who suggest changes and I walk around for three weeks thinking--damn I have to get working on this. And I am. It just doesn't look like it--even to me. I write things that I don't even understand until someone says--hey, I really like how you linked this and this and this. I write things I don't even remember thinking up.
There's a balance between thinking things out in my head and trusting that it's there somewhere and will become clear as I type. The better I get at that balance and at trusting that it will work, the better I get as a write (especially at endings, which I mostly suck at).