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WRITING
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For a novel, something I read or hear will trigger the germ of an idea and an emotional impression of a scene. The story will be vague, but one scene will stand out as the nucleus of the story. I mull the idea over and begin tying other ideas to the original concept. This will start to give legs to the impression and inform what direction I want for the story. I write these basics concepts down and start to bring in more ideas to make the story cohesive and flesh out the framework. The whole process can take a year or more. As I revisit the concept, I will add additional details and depth to make it a worthy story.
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What is your writing process? |
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Once I’ve settled on a concept to write as novel, I will break up my “notes” into a two-or-three-page chapter outline. I like to have a separate document with character sketches of the main characters and ancillary information about the story (i.e. pictures of the setting, little tidbits from history, and links to websites with research). When I’m ready to write, I figure out how many days I have to complete the project. I then divide my manuscript length (normally 100,000 words) by the number of days to get a daily word count. Then comes the hard part, sticking to that daily goal.
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What are currently working on? |
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I'm finishing a novel about a socialite hunted by a secret society dating back to the time of the Roman Empire. I also have a WWII novel and international spy thriller in the works. All will be fun reads!
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EDITING
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On a perfect day, I like to do a quick clean up of the material I wrote that day. That includes blatant typos, rough sentence structure, and anything I can tweak quickly. I use Grammarly to help me with the heavy lifting at this stage. After that, I let the manuscript rest. In further edits, I check for continuity and missing/forgotten plot points, and cut and move text as needed. I polish the dialogue, deepen the characters, and remove little words such as that, some, really, etc. The process continues until the work is ready.
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READING
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Wow, I have a lot! Here’s an eclectic, incomplete list: C.S. Lewis, Robert Ludlum, John Bunyan, Ted Dekker, Stephen Bly, Avi, Philip K. Dick, John Grisham, Keith Robertson, Robert Heinlein, J.R.R. Tolkien, Louis L'Amour, Frank Peretti, Robert Arthur, Jeri Massi, Larry Burkett, Paul O. Williams, Edgar Allen Poe, Franklin W. Dixon, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Christopher, Brian Jacques. It surprises me how many science fiction authors are on this list; more than I would have first expected.
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What made you want to become a writer? |
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Like many authors today, I come by my love of books through many, many hours of escapism reading as a child. My family lived two blocks from our public library, so we often made trips there for fresh reading supplies. Also, we had a local used bookstore that fed the desire to read, and ultimately to write. I made several attempts to write books in my elementary and middle school years, before returning to my love of writing after college. I understand the transporting power of a good story, and I hope through my writing to pass that feeling on to my readers.
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