Recently I was asked some of questions about writing. These are often questions which come up when talking to people or at a book signing. Instead of just replying to the email, I thought I would answer those questions here.
What made you want to start writing?
Some authors say they’ve always wanted to write, that they’ve been writing stories since they were five years old or something similar. That’s not the case with me. I dug up some old very short stories I had tried to write back in middle school and yes, I even won a competition in elementary school. However, those stories were just rewrites of something I had seen on TV or read in a book. After that, I did not attempt to write anything else until I was in my late 30s. I saw a course offering at a local community college for writing classes and thought I’d give it a try. The story I started with back then is still bouncing around in my head and maybe one day I’ll actually get it down on paper. That course, fired my imagination and started me thinking about what story I would write next.
What is your writing process?
It’s basically broken down into a few phases:
- Idea
- Plotting/Character creation
- Outline
- Rough draft
- Editing
- First draft
- Editing
- Repeat steps 6 and 7 as necessary
How long does the writing process take?
The plotting time depends on the length of the story. For my upcoming novel, Betrayal At The North Pole, the plotting time took about two weeks. A quadrilogy I’ve started working on is taking significantly longer because of the main story arc that threads through all four books.
Thanks to Kallee for the questions.