The Writing Process Blog Tour

I’ve been tagged by Caren J. Werlinger for this blog tour [#Mywritingprocess]. I have read many of Caren’s books over the last couple of months, and I have to say, I am awed by her writing skill and her storytelling ability.  If you want to see what she is up to, you can find her blog on this subject HERE.

1. What am I working on?

I have to be a little circumspect about this, as I am still very much in the ‘germ of an idea’ phase for the next project, and I haven’t discussed it with my publisher (Clover Valley Press) yet. However, I am hoping to develop a series of books set in the assessment world. There is a lot about academic and certification testing that is more myth than truth, and I’d like to try and demystify that subject by writing a series of novels with a testing company and/or staff as the backdrop. For those of you who have read Maggie’s Mechanics, I’m considering how I can bring Maggie and Bett into one of the books, if only for a cameo appearance.

I had a great conversation with my sister a few weeks back. She is very picky about what she thinks is good writing. She says one of the things that is so annoying about lesfic novels is that whenever a main character in book says “I’m a [fill in the blank] professional,” she expects to learn something about what people in that profession do. “Even if it’s washing windows or cleaning other peoples’ houses. There has to be some reason that the writer mentioned that the character does X for a living, so tell me what it’s like. How does it shape that person as an individual.”  Her perspective gave me some food for thought, and I hope to be able to do something with that in my next book(s).  BTW, there are many lesfic authors that do a fabulous job of depicting three-dimensional characters and how their chosen professions helped to form them:  Andi Marquette, Rachel Dax, Susan X. Meagher, Suzanne Egerton, Caren Werlinger, and Cathy Rowlands are just a few that come to mind from my reading over the last 6 months.

2. How does my work differ from others in the same genre?

I’m new at this novel-writing and being-published business, and Maggie’s Mechanics reflects a different era with different challenges from what is currently going on in the world of gay and queer folks. Also, I’m definitely in the slightly older lesbian (SOL) age group. So while I expect to continue writing books that reflect some kind of mystery / love interest, they aren’t likely to get confused with contemporary romance novels or thrillers. And I’m hoping they will be met with pleasure by people who enjoy a dose of “I didn’t know that!” in their reading.

3. Why do I write what I do?

One of the great things about surviving my 20’s and 30’s and 40’s (you get the picture, right?) is that, with each passing decade, I get to sort out some of the events of my life; some of the things that drove me to behave certain ways or react to other people the way I did. Now, for those of you who might not have experienced these ages as ‘passing decades’ yet, I just want to say that getting older doesn’t mean you get to go back and have a do-over for those things. However, certain patterns do emerge, and even things that aren’t patterns can show up as a kind of fork in the road. I sometimes find myself pausing and thinking, “Now, why do I keep wanting to go down this path? What do I think is so scary about that other road?”  Sometimes I just explore the ‘road not taken’ from an event in my past. And that kind of alternate reality is what makes writing fiction so much fun!

4. How does my writing process work?

Wow! This is really a ginormous question. Except for my rewrite experience from my first book, I haven’t written one start-to-finish in more than … well, it’s been a very long time.

I know I make a lot of false starts. I can’t write raw on the computer (which is why it’s taken me 3 days to put this blog together). I tend to make a lot of notes – usually post-it size – for general plot ideas. I bought a huge roll of butcher paper a few months ago to try and use the ‘wall map’ approach to plotting a book, but I haven’t actually taken it out of the cellophane yet, so I’ll let you know how that works. Just keeping the 3×3 post-its in one place is challenge enough at the moment.

Eventually, I get down to one-on-one with a yellow notepad and I start writing the story. Like many authors, it’s very difficult for me to turn my ‘edit switch’ off in my head when I write, as I spend most of my 40-hour workweek editing hopelessly obvious or hopelessly abstruse test questions into something approaching usability. [More on that in my next book!]  So getting raw words out is my biggest challenge. Eventually, I go through the longhand yellow pages with a different colored pen & do a rough edit before I finally sit down at the computer and pound the keys into submission. There’s the usual cursing and mumbling to myself about technology and why hasn’t the cortical up-link been invented yet, etc.

Dozens of people helped ‘beta read’ my first book, but that was a different era. I’ll have to let you know how it goes with this next effort. I do know that planning a 3-book series will take the pressure off trying to put everything I know into the first book in the series. With that in mind, I can probably keep the word count down to less than 150K. No promises, but it seems doable from here!

Thank you one and all for this opportunity to share with you. The two folks I want to tag for the next round on this blog haven’t replied to my query/request, so I’ll have to do an addendum to this post once I do hear from them. Meanwhile, if you are in the U.S., I hope you are enjoying a long weekend, and if you live elsewhere on the planet, I hope your Monday hasn’t been any worse than usual!