From the outside, you see someone posting a lot of great stuff (Don Lockwood, ProfessorC and Jay Cantrell comes to mind for me, but that's just my favorites, I'm pretty sure that you can fill in a different set of names).
Seeing the way they do it week after week, story after story, chapter after chapter. I sometimes imagine their writing process must be like this:
Great author sits at high-end PC in a yoga like trance, facing an empty document..
Great Author: OMMMMMM..
(15-20 pages of awesome stuff appears on screen, like magic.)
Great Author: That was easy.
(presses Post)
I am NOT a great author. So, I want to clue you in on how the rest of us not-so-great authors tend to do things. At least for me recently.
Me:(doing anything BUT sitting at my computer, like for example, trying to SLEEP (big time for me), or driving to a doctor's appointment): Hmm.. That's a good idea. And if we do that, then we can move the story there.. and I think we can build off on that a bit earlier than planned. I just gotta remember it when I sit down.
(me, later that day sitting at the computer trying to marshal all my previous thoughts into one coherent whole, and watching the muse turn it into the Gordian Knot of confused ideas)
Me: Um.. I R STUPIDFACE? Where.. wait.. mo.. that can't go there, it needs to.. no that's not even IN THIS CHAPTER, WHERE'D THAT COME FROM.. ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE SAME STORY I WAS WRITING BEFORE?
(dam finally breaks, and I get a couple pages done, frantically writing, fearing that if I stop, I won't be able to get going again.)
Me: Ok.. I think that's.. oh my god, so many spelling mistakes. Wait. Did I name the city Tortar or Forfar.. who's actually talking in this paragraph. Why did I ever agree to do this? Be consistent, Foz. Is it jump gates, jumpgates, or Jumpgates. Is a little consistency too much to ask for? Apparently so.
(spends hours rearranging the story to fit, try to fix the worst of the grammar errors and the formatting)
Me: Ok, that's a good enough state from now (emails the pre-readers editors)
(five minutes later)
Me: Wait, I can add a little bit here, make this clearer.. oh yeah, and then this section works better if I put a bit of description of it.
(edits half the document, meanwhile my poor Pre-readers do their best to edit and proof read the unchanged document I sent them and get them back to me)
Me: Wow, they caught a lot of stuff. Thank goodness for pre-readers/proof readers. Wait. I changed that.. and that.. and that..
(frantically tries to incorporate pre-reader changes and my changes all together, in a mad panic)
Me: Well, I think that's ok. Let's hit post.
(five seconds after hitting post)
Me: ARGH! I missed that, and that.. but it's small, I hope noone will notice.. I can always repost a fixed version.
(someone pings my mail pointing out a mistake that I had made that no one caught)
Me: Why do I do this? I should have gone into an easier field, something like a used condom salesman.
(someone writes me telling me they like the story. Heavenly choirs ring out, angels singing, the whole nine yards)
Me: Oh yeah. That's why I do this. So where do we go from here? Where do we go, sweet literary child of mine?
And off we go again. Or to throw one more musical saying in there from Emerson Lake and Palmer.
Welcome back, my friends
To the show that never ends
We're so glad you could attend
Come inside! Come inside.
(post edit: And I prove my point, by having to come in and bold a couple sections I missed. Oy Vey)