I visulalize what I'm reading or writing very clearly-- often, it's like a little movie in my head, camera angles and lighting and all. Then again, I generally suck at description and write tons of dialogue. Huh.

I can usually see and smell and taste and feel what I'm writing about pretty well. I just can't hear it, and that screws up my dialogue. Dialogue I write always sounds really unnatural. I've been trying to work on it, but I don't think it's getting much better.

Yes, Holli! Watching hte movie in my head and writing down what happens! It's always been like that, I can just focus on the inside of my head and there's this whole other world going on. When I'm stuck I set up the people on the stage, give them some vague stage directions, then watch how they get from point A to point B.

How do people ever manage to write short stories and novellas?

I've seen some pretty flexible definitions of "short stories"... if yours ends at 14k, it could still be considered "short".

Considering that what's considered "average" for a novel is getting towards 100k these days, especially in fantasy and sci-fi.

Watching hte movie in my head and writing down what happens!

The best self-description I've managed to come up with is that I feel like a director/producer of improv theater (though I have no idea what that's like). I have to get all the props and costumes, the animals, the special effects... and then try to convince the actor/characters that my plotline is a good idea. They tend to argue on the fine details, especially if it involves pain.

Yes, Holli! Watching hte movie in my head and writing down what happens!

Yes, this. I have this too. And because I love to write first person POV, I also have "watch the scene from behind so-and-so's eyes".

They tend to argue on the fine details, especially if it involves pain.

This also. I have the occassional one who argues in favour. I blame my Jossverse fanfic for that.

The best self-description I've managed to come up with is that I feel like a director/producer of improv theater

That sounds like the way I work. I've got a point A, and I give the characters a rough shove in the direction of point B. I'll then type out a rough outline with dialogue fragments, almost as if I were taking notes while watching a scene unfold. I don't worry so much about the niceties of language or punctuation. Later, I'll go back and render the scene into prose.

I'll then type out a rough outline with dialogue fragments, almost as if I were taking notes while watching a scene unfold.

And for you that's an actual document? I ask because I've been thinking about my writing process recently, and why I don't edit nearly as much as some people do. I think the thing is that this first draft I do enteirly in my head, going over it several times to get details right, and then the first one that exists as a document is practically an editing stage. I might go over again for grammar and word choice, but I don't normally do hundreds of edits on paper.

Yup. My first draft is more like an outline than anything resembling coherent prose. It may contain bits here and there that make it into the final draft more or less intact. (These bits are usually the pivotal points in a scene.)

In a way, I tend to write the way some people paint. I'll do a rough sketch that will get refined and retooled, with washes of color added later, and details put in and tweaked as the whole gets nearer to completion.

Given the amount of knitting, sewing, drawing, etc. that I do, it's no surprise to me that I process my thinking through my hands. If I'm typing (or writing), energizes my creative though processes. Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes a lot of sense. It's just very different to the way I work- which is part of why I'm intrested.

Thank goodness there is not One True Way How To Write, only a myriad of ways that work better or worse for individuals. I personally was much comforted by finding out that Chip Delany says he spends 2-3 times as much time self-editing as he does writing. He can easily spend an hour working on a single page.

Often times, I'll print out a hard copy of a double-spaced first draft, get me a big ol' red pen and go to town on it in a big comfy chair. Then I'll type the whole thing in fresh. There's also the "remove five words from every big paragraph" game. You'd be surprised how many excess words there are when you start looking for them.