fat, forties, and still fighting
Whew. Okay. So you have your germ of an idea, and you hopefully have some characters. Now what? Now you start sort of trying to fit them together. At this point, you probably don’t have a full plotline in your head. Or at least, you may not realize that you do.
If you want to write about a woman being hunted and held captive and falling in love (or at least in lust) with her captor for the love of all that’s holy, don’t put it into a real historical context.
Characters are usually one of the first things that come to me when I’m working on a story. They’re one of the things I started with a natural ability to do–which means when I needed to take the next step to improve my characterization, I had no idea how the hell to do that, because it had all been instinctual up to that point.
I’m a huge believer in people trying their hand at writing if they feel the urge. Writing is one of those things you can really only learn by doing: write, figure out what you did wrong, figure out how to fix it. The problem is, there are so many ways to work on a story, it can be intimidating. Hopefully this series of posts will help give you a few ideas where to start.
Yesterday I sent the fourth draft of my book off to my editor. To be entirely honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever written four drafts of anything.
When I talk about writing, I talk a lot about ‘doing it anyway’. Working on this book has been a masterclass in ‘doing it anyway’. As I’m going through and making the requested changes and additions, I keep seeing things that make me cringe and go “is that stupid? It sounds stupid” and “OH MY GOD THIS PLOT MAKES NO SENSE”. And then I just have to take a deep breath and keep going.
Plot is just the beginning.
Someone asked me, “Do you have any advice for someone who wants to start writing?” This is the answer that poured out of me.
I’ve had this site revamped for months now, just waiting for the right topic to come along, I suppose. It’s January 1st, so that seems as good a time as any to dive in and get started.
