My Writing Process - Blog Tour

Today is Blog Tour Day where authors answer questions about their writing process. Linda Acaster, novelist, writing tutor, and professional editor, posted last week, and I thank her for my invite. Check out her writing process here: 

As for my post: welcome. Can’t get many of you in here; the box room of a small bungalow isn’t big enough to house all my books, desk and equipment, never mind a group of interested visitors. One day I’ll get that house with a view over the sea, a large study and the antique desk I deserve. Until then, perhaps best if we continue to meet in the virtual world, or I might be accused of emulating the Black Hole of Calcutta!

1) What am I working on?

Last month, I took part in the NaNoWri Mo challenge (if you’re not familiar with it, have a look at the November posts for info). My project was the completion of the 1^st draft of book 3 of the fantasy trilogy I’ve been writing for a while. Now I’m about to start the lengthy and involved process of editing that raw draft to make it into a piece of writing that people will want to read. It currently stands at around 195,000words. Whether it will grow or shrink depends on what I decide to exclude and how much further description I include. Whilst I’m doing a first draft, I tend to concentrate on story and leave the details of setting and atmosphere until I start the editing stage. I think that’s one of the reasons I enjoy editing almost as much as the initial creation. I am also working on other writing projects: a novel in embryonic form, still growing in the subconscious; short stories, and I’m exploring poetry as a way of expressing some of my emotional responses to injustice, beauty, environment and other issues that arouse my passions.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Genre? Did someone say ‘genre’? I’m all for rules, when essential, but the idea that a book can be somehow labelled in any sort of precise way is anathema to me. Yes. Works of art can be pigeon-holed as ‘portrait’, ‘landscape’, ‘abstract’, ‘figurative’, etc. But I don’t think anyone would then subdivide these identifying labels into ‘male portrait with feather in hat’, or ‘landscape painting including characters from a mythical scene taken from Greek legend’. Okay, I know I’m exaggerating a tiny weeny bit, but it seems to me that the simple labels, ‘Romance’, ‘Mystery’, ‘Thriller’, ‘Crime’, ‘Historical’, ‘Sci-fi’ and ‘Fantasy’ ought to be enough for most purposes. The rest is just an effort to encourage readers to restrict themselves to very narrow forms of storytelling. And that is hardly healthy for readers, is it?

So, my work differs inasmuch as I stray outside the normal boundaries set by those who wish to attempt to restrict me to a specific genre. Breaking Faith is a romance featuring an element of the thriller and the mystery novel. My current fantasy trilogy, A Seared Sky, is an epic fantasy tale involving a quest within an invented world and all that implies, but including elements of the thriller, romance, crime and philosophy. Does that answer the question?  

3) Why do I write what I do?

My inspirations are multitude. My interests are wide. I’m a storyteller at heart, so I want to spread my imagination’s offspring to as wide an audience as possible. I write because I’m compelled by some weird internal guiding entity to express myself in the written word. My mind is full of ideas, characters, thoughts and questions and, since they excite, delight and intrigue me, I hope I can share those emotions with readers as I marshal them onto the page in the form of stories.

4) How does your writing process work?

I’m one of those writers for whom plot is a cage, so I write by the seat of my pants. For short works, I sit down at the keyboard and write. Usually, a story emerges. Sometimes, that story is usable, after a bit of editorial work to smooth the raw edges. If it isn’t, I discard or completely re-write it. With longer works, I am visited by an idea that demands attention. This can be something as simple as a question that floats out of the ether at a particular time. For example, Breaking Faitharose from a simple question that entered my mind as I stared into the depths of a slightly sinister natural hole in the ground: ‘What if there was a woman’s body down there?’ I’ve no idea where this came from, or why. But it was the trigger for the story. I generally start with interesting characters I’ve devised in advance. Then I work out a very, very loose framework on which I can hang challenges for my characters to face. I generally know the end, but I never know the journey I will take to reach that destination. I think it’s this lack of pre-ordained form and structure that prevents me entering the lucrative world of crime writing. That requires an approach that involves the solving of puzzles and the laying of false and true evidence along a trail. And that is too much planning for the way I work.

The current trilogy came out my questioning why it is that religion, as a general rule, is so fixated on sex and nudity and why, since most worshippers seem to be generally good people, those in charge are so often very far from good. But, avoiding the urge to preach my own version of what should be believed, I’ve turned the themes into a story that moves through landscapes and entangles many disparate characters into its multiple threads to take the reader on a ride that I hope will make them gasp, sigh, laugh and cry. Emotion, after all, is what reading is all about, so it is also what writing must be all about, too.

Monday 9th December: a very different author explains her writing process: Lynne Constantine is co-author of Circle Dance, a novel about two Greek-American sisters thrust into life-changing circumstances. There should have been two more authors to continue this tour from here, but, well, authors can be dreadfully unreliable you know!

Lynne Constantine’slove of the written word began early. An avid Nancy Drew reader in elementary school – the highlight of her week was going to the store with her father and buying the next book in the series. When the day arrived that she was able to solve the mystery half way through – she reluctantly set them aside and moved on to other books. For as long as she can remember, she has been prodded to “get her nose out of the book” when vacationing with friends. Her love of mystery and suspense is as strong today as it was back then and she is a voracious reader of thrillers and suspense.

She wrote her first book, Circle Dance, with her sister Valerie. Circle Dance was a legacy of love fueled by the desire to pass on to their children the traditions and experiences unique to them as second generation Greek Americans. Lynne was raised in a close-knit family surrounded by extended family and “adopted” family through the Greek community. Both she and her sister wanted to leave a legacy for their children and future generations of a bygone era.

Lynne attended Hellenic College where she earned her undergraduate degree in Human Development. She went on to earn her masters degree in Business Administration at Johns Hopkins University. She has an extensive marketing background and over eighteen years of business experience. She left the corporate world in 2000 to pursue her writing full time. She has written for magazines and journals but her true passion is fiction.

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Lynne relocated to the New York area with her husband and children. In addition to her writing, she is active in her church and local community. She serves on the board of her town’s Women’s League – a philanthropic organization dedicated to helping women and children. She is passionate about education, reading, health, and wellness. She enjoys traveling, spending time on the beach and talking walks with her family and their adorable golden retriever.

Lynne is currently finishing up her next novel – a thriller.

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Play With a Tiger, By Doris Lessing, Reviewed.

One thing that can be said with little fear of contradiction is that Doris Lessing's work is anything but simple and straightforward. She loves to wrap her characters and plots in multiple layers, through which the reader must pick his way, often with only minimal guidance as to direction and even, sometimes, intent.

Play With A Tiger was first performed at the Comedy Theatre, London, on 22^nd March 1964 and is set in the city. Whilst it's very much a play of its time, it nevertheless carries some of its themes fairly well into the modern day. Attitudes to unmarried mothers have changed for many, political normality has become anything but, and extramarital affairs are now so commonplace as to be almost expected, but the war of the sexes continues, for some, at any rate.

As Anna and Dave reconstruct their pasts and possible futures, their dialogue exposes their sometimes opposing, sometimes similar stances. The descriptive passages that take them back in time explore their development as people and depict the lives of their parents and families in ways that explain, to some extent, the way they are now. But there is an underlying tone of self-absorption and mutual distrust that was, as I recall, a very common situation for men and women at the time. I'm not convinced it is any better now than it was then, but the development of family planning aids has definitely made things different for the single woman in search of love without the wish to raise a family. This aspect of the relationship between men and women is so different now that modern audiences may have difficulty understanding the dilemma facing maturing women back in those early days of burgeoning sexual freedom.

Dave is careless and unaware of the reality of the effect of his philandering on the women he seduces and uses as an excuse to bolster his ego. He's not a character I can find much sympathy for, with his utterly selfish concerns. Anna is singularly confused and seems unable to make up her own mind about much that troubles her in life. She yearns to be as free as she believes Dave to be, and it's easy to understand this desire when set against the strictures society places on her.

There are asides, set-based devices, and other interactions that illustrate the differences between the male and female views of life at the time, and I suspect these would have worked very well in performance.  They don't translate well via the text alone, however. Would I go to see the play in performance?  I wish I'd seen it at the time, when so much more was immediately relevant, but I don't think I'd watch it today, unless it was substantially re-written to accommodate what has changed. For all that, I enjoyed the read.

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Research? What's That, Then?

The three biggest web search engines (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For many people, researchis a task fraught with difficulty. For others, it can become their raison d'être. I'm talking about writers here, of course. Are you someone who enjoys research, do you fear it, is it a mystery, or is it your prime reason for setting yourself a writing project?

The first thing I'd like to point out about research as a writer is that it should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. If you fall into the trap of doing research simply for the love of the knowledge, the fun of the chase, the thrill of discovery, that's fine for a researcher but it's not good for a writer. If this is your experience, that research is more fun than writing, then perhaps you should consider taking up an occupation where research is the aim and end rather than the tool it should be for a writer.

If you're frightened by the very idea of research, or if it's simply a mystery to you, I hope to allay some of those fears and demystify the process for you here. I'm not writing a book about research for writers; there are plenty of those on the market. This is intended as a taster, a short guide, a finger pointing in the right direction, no more.

Fear is generally the result of ignorance, of not knowing what might be involved. So, let's determine what research means for a writer. Do you watch people, listen to them, observe their interactions?  Yes? You're doing research. Watching people and all that entails, is a way of learning how people work, how they appear, how they sound, what they say. And all this is vital information to enable you to draw believable fictional characters. So, you're already doing it.

Do you read fiction? (If you don't, then you're making your job as a writer infinitely more difficult than you need. Reading the work of other novelists, short story writers, et al, is a vital part of the learning process in becoming, and improving as, a writer). As you read, you're picking up pieces of information on how language is used effectively, how plot works, how characters drive story and all those other factors that determine the quality of the fiction you'll eventually write. This is research on the writing process.

Do you visit potential locations to get a feel for place? Failing that, do you use Google maps and Google Earth to discover as much as you can about places you wish to set your story? Of course, this is fairly basic research, but it can lead you to other areas of knowledge gathering. Google the name of your town, country, island or whatever and read up on the place, look at the pictures others have provided, absorb the mood and atmosphere generated by those who have been there and reported on their experience.

I hesitate to mention books in the context of research, since the vast majority of people seem to think that the internet is the place to search. Books are old technology but they're well-tested and can often provide more in-depth information than a search on the web can give you. Your local library is a mine of information and a good librarian will be only too willing to help you with the topic, setting you off in the right direction and even guiding your choice of suitable books for study.

You watch TV and films? It's amazing what you can glean from such sources, even when you're not actually pursuing a specific topic at the time. I have a love of documentaries on many different subjects and, although I haven't written on many of the subjects covered by such films, I've often found bits and pieces of information that have been useful as background material or as nuggets of gold to place in the minds of characters to make them appear clever, informed or intuitive.

You talk to people? I hope you do. It's amazing what you can learn from those with specialist knowledge. I once wrote to a Coroner for information about aspects of law and procedure relating to corpses found in suspicious circumstances. He invited me for an interview and I learned far more than I even knew I needed to know. Useful for that story and for subsequent tales.

So, you see, research doesn't have to be that dry, dusty task you might've thought it. It doesn't have to be intimidating. It doesn't have to be formal. As a writer, most of your non-writing life can be considered as research, especially if you're writing fiction. Every experience, every encounter, every trip is more grist to your mill. Use it, gather it, harvest it, store it; but, most of all, enjoy collecting and using it.

A final point about using the internet, search engines, for research. First, always use more than a single source if you want to be sure of accuracy. The internet is notorious for inaccuracies by people who purport to be experts. Second, find a search engine that you're comfortable with; it'll save you a lot of time. And, third, learn how to use the search tools. Experiment.

You'd be amazed at the difference you will find if you use the advanced features of search engines to narrow your searches. For example, searching for models on Google produces 1,300,000,000 results. That's an impossible number of sites to trawl through. Model of the solar system reduces that number to 23,900,000, still huge. Placing the same words in quotes, "model of the solar system" reduces the results further to 2,280,000. Better, but by no means efficient. Include the word scaleand use a minus sign to exclude the words -scales, -weigh, -energy to remove more extraneous information and you reduce the results to 258,000. Now, I'm not suggesting you can trawl through all these, but a search of the first dozen is likely to give you what you need. You'll only learn how to make use of these tools by using them. Try it. Experiment. You're not going to break anything. And you may learn a great deal along the journey.

Good luck with your research and have fun. It's great to learn something new and even better when you can employ that new knowledge in your writing to bring it to life.

The Worthlessness and Power of Celebrity.

Image via Wikipedia

The recent enquiry regarding phone hacking by journalists led me to lend some thought to celebrity, which is more than most celebrities do for themselves, of course.

It's an odd state, when you consider it in a rational light. People, often with no discernible talent and with little to offer the world in general, attract publicity, which, in turn affords them an income in various ways. So, we have individuals, incapable of stringing together a reasonable sentence, putting their names to novels and autobiographies patently written by ghost writers. We have others, without a shred of scientific knowledge, claiming to have designed perfumes, which have clearly been concocted by those in the professional know. Yet others act as presenters of TV programmes, where their inanity and stupidity irritates anyone with even the most basic sensibility.

And the most peculiar aspect of this feeding on fame from no good cause, is that there are sufficient members of the public gullible enough to support these nonentities. I have to confess to being baffled by this. The world is teeming with people who have real talent, folk who produce work of real merit, individuals who give the world something worthwhile. Surely, if people have a need to worship, follow or become fans, they can direct their adoration toward those who deserve it? Or, is it that those who have no talent recognise the celebrities without talent, and hope and dream that they might one day emulate their material success?

Does it all matter?

Well, yes; I think it does. It's an unarguable fact that money promotes power in its possessors. So, giving money to fools, ne'er-do-wells, self-publicists and those liars who claim to be authors of various works of talent, provides them with power far beyond either their capacity or their desserts. This power resides in areas such as purchasing power, slewing the markets in ways that would otherwise not exist. It's reflected in influence, which these individuals deserve no more than the common man. Most importantly, it shows in their access to the media, where they're able to spout their ill-considered or spurious opinions and claims to yet more of the gullible.

When there exist large numbers of talented individuals who remain ignored and under-appreciated, it seems to me a shame that these celebrities gain undeserved fame, riches and followers without positive effort. I would far rather see the media promoting people who have some worth in society, and the public showing appreciation to those who deserve it for their contribution to the world.

I feel this is something that needs to be said and I don't care that some will see my reasoned statement as a contention based on envy. It isn't. But, I will, inevitably, be accused of sour grapes. So be it.

A question for you to ponder: How important do you have to be before you're assassinated, rather than simply murdered?