General - How I Write

There are probably about as many ways of writing a novel as there are authors. This is how I do it. I start with a what-if question. What if it were possible to download one person’s emotions and upload them to another person? Could someone experience or develop empathy from that? (A novel on my list). With the idea, I begin research. For a book like Heart of the Bison, that included reading 27 books along with unnumbered articles. By some process that I can’t explain, the research suggests story points. When all that is swimming in my head, I figure out where I want the story to go.

I start writing in long hand. As I move along, I make up problems and figure solutions, and the other way around. After completing the manuscript, I get a red pen and mark the heck out of it. Then I type or dictate it into a word document for each chapter. As I’m entering , I make more changes. I print this version on yellow paper.

On the yellow draft, I fine tune the plot. Some scenes have to be chucked, others have to be added, and the sequence has to be revised until the story flows. This could probably be avoided if I outlined, but, for me, outlining an unwritten story doesn’t work.

After entering the major changes from the yellow draft, I print it out on blue paper. On this draft, I concentrate on building characters and settings. Of course I continue to refine the plot.

The next print out is on white paper. Here is where I concentrate on style, grammar, descriptions, spelling etc. It’s not that I didn’t work on them from the beginning, but now I concentrate on them. And, of course, I am looking at plot and characters at the same time. This is where Conchita gives me input.

Then, I send the manuscript to a professional reviewer. It comes back with suggestions to improve the book for marketability of that genre. I fix that, and I have a book! So simple – hah!