Blog Hop: My Writing Process
I was recently tagged by a great author named Henry Martin. Sometimes when I’m typing his name, I start to type Henry Miller. Henry is very fond of Henry and so I associate the two in my mind. I’ve always heard of Miller, and I’m aware that he was instrumental in securing free speech rights for authors when his books were censored for being obscene, but beyond that, I don’t know much about him, and I’ve never read him. But that’s changing now, thanks to Henry Martin. He’s inspired me to purchase my first Henry Miller book, “Black Spring.”
I’ve barely started the book and I can already see that this is a man with a super-sharp mind and I probably should have read his work 20 years ago. I also stumbled across one of his quotes yesterday that indicates he and I may think alike in key areas. “Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.”
I don’t know how much Miller has influenced Martin’s writing, but I can tell you that Henry Martin has created one of those characters that you won’t soon forget – if ever. His “Mad Days of Me” trilogy is about a young man named Rudy who leaves his family home to find himself and some kind of life apart from the one he despises at home and the town he grew up in. But a tragic assault early on in his adventure leaves in stuck in Barcelona, injured and broke, with no one to turn to but the family he is determined to avoid.
The book (and the trilogy) gets better and better as you read it. By the time I finished the first book, I was so glad to know that I had two more books full of Rudy yet to be read. When I reached the end, I still need just a little bit more, so I wrote an epilogue. Then I was satisfied. If you haven’t read Henry’s trilogy yet, you should check it out:
Okay, now for the questions about my writing process.
Q. What am I working on?
A. Sorry this can’t be a short answer, because I’m always working on multiple things.
1. I’m in the final stretch of a new novel called Kendra’s Spirit. This is a novel about a young couple named Keith and Kendra who are madly in love with each other and plan to get married soon. She goes to Iraq to report on the U.S. troop withdrawal and is a victim of a suicide bombing. I don’t know how to say more without ruining story elements.
2. Readers of my short story When Everything Changed have asked for it to be made longer, or to be turned into a series, or for a full-length novel version of the story, so that’s another thing I’m working on. In the short story, the protagonist tells you what has changed in the five years since the Guardians came to earth. In the novel version, called Return of the Gods, we live through those changes through the eyes of the protagonist.
3. Priority number three is a follow-up book to In The End, which picks up with the survivors from book one leaving the mountain lodge that was the focal point of book one and it follows them down the mountain as they seek a new home (or place to survive) while world war three is waged on the streets of the U.S.
4. Another work in progress that is nearly complete (just several chapters to go) but which I’ve also decided needs a complete re-write to give it the classic dystopian feel that I don’t feel it has yet is called Equal Signs. It’s about 40 years in the future after America has survived the devastation of a civil war. The new government is determined to make everything in our country perfect this time around and take steps to prevent all of the things that made a civil war (as well as all major crimes against people) from ever happening again.
5. I’m slowly working on a screenplay about a true story with the working title, “Restrained.”
6. I’m writing an auto-biography titled, “Ascended Bastard.”
Q. How does my work differ from others in the genre?
A. I don’t write in any one specific genre, and probably never in the confines of whatever genre I’m writing in the vicinity of.
I’ve been told that “In The End” is unlike any post-apocalyptic fiction. Devon’s Last Chance would have to be considered paranormal, but it’s not like anything I’ve read before in that genre. Return of the Gods is science fiction of a sort since another race comes to earth and embeds itself here for a time, taking over the planet and changing our way of doing things, but very few such stories exist where the “aliens” are the good guys. Kendra’s Spirit is a paranormal romance, but the only thing I can think of that comes close to it is the movie Ghost. Mind you, I said “close.” 
I’m not sure exactly how my work differs from stuff in the genres that it comes close to being in. I guess it’s original, unexpected, and does not conform to any expectation the reader might have. For example, I call In The End a pre-apocalypse story. That’s probably different. There’s also no protagonist. Or rather, the protagonist is a group of people. So I guess I not only defy expectations, but standard conventions as well. I let the characters tell the story and come to life just like real people. And we, real people, don’t follow pre-conceived character arcs or live out our lives in three acts. Real life is more random and unexpected and captivating than a formula, and I write what one reviewer called “realistic fiction.”
Q. Why do I write what I write?
A. Certain ideas get stuck in my head. There are some things that I want to communicate to the world. That’s what Return of the Gods/When Everything Changed is all about. We don’t have to allow tens of thousands (if not more) people die of starvation every day. We don’t have to allow murderous psycho paths walking our streets and ruining the quality of life for others, killing or maiming people when they feel the urge. So that novel and story is to communicate something I feel passionately about.
Other times I’m just thinking and imagining and I ask the traditional creative question, “What if…?” In my short story, “Lost Father” I just asked myself, “What if you saw someone talking to themselves, but they were really talking to someone you just couldn’t see?” In the case of Devon’s Last Chance, I wondered what it was that makes real people who everyone considers to be normal, suddenly decide one day that they’re going to shoot everyone at work or school, or wherever. And I thought, “What if someone else was making them do it? And what if the entity who drove them to do it, had to succeed in getting them to do it because their life depended on it?”
So, sometimes it’s just weird ideas, other times it’s to get people to think about things they might not have thought about. But not in a preachy way. My primary goal is to tell an entertaining story. But my favorite stories are the ones that make me forget about life for a while because they’re so engrossing, but they also allow me to walk away from them with something I can keep, and think about, and maybe change for the better in the best of cases. So I try to write that type of story.
Q. How does my writing process work?
A. I start with an opening scene that I believe will lead me down the line to the plot idea that I had. Beyond that, I know nothing. I discover so many things about the story much the same way the reader does. I find out what’s going to happen when I get there. When I reach the end of what I know, I have to see more of the story in my mind. This could involve lying down, closing my eyes and activating the movie in my head, which I’ll then write down what I saw. Or it may come to me when I’m driving along the freeway on autopilot, paying more attention to the burgeoning story than I am to where I’m at. In those cases, I eventually get off the freeway, turn around and get back on, and go back to my exit that I missed, then write down what I saw when I get home.
I don’t edit a thing in the first draft. The hardest part is just getting the whole story written. I don’t care what shape it’s in, or if it has a million typos and missed words. First, I just have to get the blob of clay onto the table, roughly shaped like the bust of JFK. Once it’s done, then I’ll go back to the beginning and read through to the end, spotting all of the things that need to be revised, fixed, or changed. This is where I fix the hair length and the size of the nose, and shape the ears, etc.
I’ll continue the same process; going back to the beginning and reading through again and sometimes I may realize that a scene doesn’t need to be in the story, or I’m missing a scene. I might yank off an ear and start over so it matches the other ear.
In the final pass, I’ll finesse the hell out of every sentence, making sure that it says exactly what it should and that there’s little to no chance that any reader will be confused or misunderstand what is being said. I want the reader to have the smoothest ride possible, with no brain-jarring speedbumps along the way that jolt them out of the fictional world that they should be happily immersed in. This where I’m sculpting the eyelashes and the pupils and making sure that the viewer of the sculpture is just a little freaked out to see what really looks like JFK’s head staring back at them.
Q. Who’s next?
A. I’m passing the torch to a couple of great authors who are also great people.
Lex Allen is the author of a trilogy called Imagine. It’s no coincidence that it’s also the name of a song by John Lennon. The books in the trilogy are called No Heaven, No Hell, and No Religion, which isn’t published yet. (So, hurry up, Lex! I neeeeeeeed it!) I absolutely love fiction that not only entertains, but could inspire people to change their way of thinking about things they never gave much thought to before. And if they do that, they can change themselves, and thus the world. Or at least the small part they have influence over – which is how the world gets changed – one person at a time. That’s the kind of trilogy Imagine is. If the thought of metaphysical science fiction sounds interesting to you, check out Lex Allen’s trilogy.
J. Cornell Michel is a relatively new author (although she’s also a fourth-generation on her family tree) who just burst out of nowhere one day when she decided to write a novel. And what a great novel it is. Michel takes the zombie genre and makes it her own. Her debut effort, Jordan’s Brains is about a mental patient named Jordan who has trained for years to be ready for the zombie apocalypse. Jordan is a loveable character who goes on an unexpected journey that keeps the reader guessing and laughing along the way. The second novel by MIchel, “Where’s My Dinner” is an even more original take on the zombie theme as it skewers the 1950s mindset about the roles of men and women. Imagine I Love Lucy meets Night of the Living Dead. I can’t wait to read her third book. If you like the zombie genre, but yearn for something fresh and different, you might just love J. Cornell MIchell. For a sampling without getting deeply into a full novel, have a look at her book of zombie short stories, Zombie Zeitgeist. You’ll see what I mean by her original take on things.
