The Writing Process Blog Hop

By Mark W. Danielson 

 

  I was flattered when Shamus Award winner Paul Marks tagged me to join the Writing Process Blog Hop. I encourage you to check out Paul’s books and writing methods at www.PaulDMarks.com.  At the end of this post I will tag mystery romance author Terry Odell who will post about her writing process on her blog on June 9th.  Every author's responses are unique, so please take a moment to read and enjoy them.

What am I working on?

Spectral Gallows, the second in the Maxx Watts detective series, was released in October, 2013.  Since then, several personal drawn-out medical issues gave me a taste of what our wounded warriors experience on a daily basis.  Although my back surgery wasn’t so bad, hand surgery made me appreciate having all my limbs.  But physical challenges of are only part of what our returning soldiers experience.  The cost of their emotional and psychological pain is staggering, and the damage unknown.  I explored this element with a Vietnam veteran in Spectral Gallows where he is ignored when speaking of a decades-old murder in Fort Worth’s haunted Scott Theater because he is a society drop-out.  Based on a true incident, it was fun exploring the paranormal in this twisted cold-case novel.    

Although I was well into a sequel, I have put it on hold so I can focus on my colorful grandfather, Maynard Owen Williams.  While working as a foreign correspondent to the Christian Science Herald and the National Geographic’s first foreign correspondent National Geographic, Williams was a true Indiana Jones having dined with T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, witnessed the first shots of World War I in the Ottoman Empire, served as a military attaché in China, and was among the first Anglos to enter King Tut’s tomb.  He claimed that those who entered the tomb were all cursed with death, and true to his word, he passed away – decades later.   He passed when I was eleven, but I’ve gotten to know him through his writing and photographs, which are still available on line.  Whether I can do him justice in a biography remains to be seen.  Regardless, it will be nice getting to know the man behind the lens and typewriter.    

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Every one of my fictional stories uses real situations and settings because it helps people relate.  In Day Stalker, a map of Redwood Regional Park helped readers follow where things were happening.  Oddly, numerous coincidences have occurred over the years.  A tree I wrote about in Day Stalker actually fell as I had described years later.  In Danger Within, I needed to ditch an airliner near southern California’s Channel Islands because salvage divers had to find out why the plane went down.  Years later, a real airliner crashed within two miles of where I wrote about.  Considering how large the ocean is, the odds of that happening seem quite small.  In the early 90s, I wrote about an Air Force general who was murdered, but left to appear a suicide. Two weeks later, the actual Chief of Naval Operations took his own life.  (For a variety of reasons, I never sought publication on this book.)  While these and other coincidences have led some to believe I am psychic, I assure you that isn’t the case.  However, each occurrence is uniquely interesting.

To better answer the question, though, everyone’s life experiences are different so our writing styles reflect that.  Over the past twenty-five years I have written over twenty novels, but only chosen to submit five.  Two of my unpublished stories concern actual wildfires and earthquakes, and while fascinating to research and write, the publishing world generally frowns on Mother Nature as the antagonist.  I’ve also found it more interesting writing new novels rather than invest time in numerous re-writes.  As with so many things in life, it is better to move forward than look back.    

Why do I write what I do? 

Whether made up or real, everything I write has been churning inside for a long time.  When I do sit down to write, the words flow naturally.  As for topics, I never search for them.  Whether they come from media bombardment or my dreams, my stories allow me to vent and resolve problems that could never happen in real life.  I will add that my stories are often very personal and the result of frustration.  As an active airline pilot, I am offended at how the media reports aircraft mishaps.  When passengers are involved, their coverage is non-stop coverage, even if the information is unverified or erroneous, but when a cargo jet goes down and pilots are lost, it barely rates a mention.  Danger Within was the result of a poorly handled investigation, as was The Innocent Never Knew, which boldly tells the story of the cover-up of President Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown’s crash in the Balkans.  Day Stalker was the hardest to write because it involves a missing child, and yet this story of hope came to life through a very real search and rescue.  In Writer’s Block, I killed off a publisher, which is something many authors would love to do.  As mentioned earlier, Spectral Gallows discusses war-torn veterans and the paranormal in Maxx Watts’ attempt to solve a cold-case death.  On occasion I will put a story on hold if another piques my interest, but I never forget where I was.  Normally, one sentence or idea is all I need to write a story.  

    

How does my writing process work?

Two words – subliminal thoughts.  I say this because when I sit down to write a first draft there is a direct connection between my subliminal thoughts and my keyboard.  I prefer writing in a quiet room to avoid distractions.  A ringing phone scares the hell out of me because it brings me back to reality.  Most of the time I get back into the zone, but there are times when I must walk away. 

   

I am much more prolific on the road than at home.  I once wrote 148 pages in four days in Almaty, Kazakhstan, because there were few distractions.  Of course, airline layovers are normally a day or less, but in this case, writing was a great way to pass the time.  

While some authors outline their stories, I let my characters tell their side with no restrictions.  The first draft is always fun because is I have no idea who lives, dies or gets lucky.  This approach keeps my stories fresh, and since I never know who committed the crime until the end, I doubt anyone else will.

I switched to series writing because it is fun expanding characters and sub-plots.  I have no idea how long the vicious Skinheads in Writer’s Block and Spectral Gallows will torment Maxx Watts, but it is always good having unresolved elements in a story.  The best thing about protagonist detectives is their plots and locations are endless.     

Thank you, Paul Marks for including me.  Now I’ll turn it over to romance mystery author Terry Odell.  

From childhood, Terry Odell wanted to "fix" stories so the characters would behave properly.  Once she began writing, she found this wasn't always possible, as evidenced when the mystery she intended to write turned into a romance, despite the fact that she'd never read one.  Odell prefers to think of her books as "Mysteries With Relationships."  She writes the Blackthorne, Inc. series, the Pine Hills Police series, and the Mapleton Mystery series.  Her latest work is Deadly Puzzles.  You can find her high in the Colorado Rockies—or at terryodell.com.

 

What Are You Best At in Writing Novels?

by June Shaw

All of us have strengths in many areas of our lives and weaknesses in others. I'm so glad life works that way and gives us variety.

One of the areas where writers vary is their talent for creating stories.Some bring the most strength to creating characters. Others gloss over their characters and press on with their plots. Some others show their power to their voices that are unique. The best, of course, do an exceptional job with blending everything, making us really care for the people in their stories and pulling us along at an exciting pace with their plotting. They also have a writing voice we remember.

My main strength, I believe, is creating characters. The books I've always been drawn to make me care about the people in them. I love developing those who will live in my stories. Readers and reviewers often comment about my characters. For instance the main charcter in my mystery series, which Five Star published in hardcover and Untreed Reads will put on as e-books in July, August, and September, is Cealie Gunther. She's a spunky widow who wants to avoid her hunky ex-lover Gil Thurman so she can rediscover herself. But he opens Cajun restaurants wherever she travels -- and she is so bad at avoiding tempting dishes and men.

Lots of people say they love Cealie (and want Gil.) Some want Cealie in their families or as their best friends. She's fun and there's no telling what she'll say or do. That's what made her so much fun for me to be with her to see where she'll take me.

How about you? If you're a writer, what are your strengths? What area would you like to develop more?

www.juneshaw.com

Loving Your Inner Editor

By Beth Terrell

November is approaching, and with it comes National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). More than 100,000 people from all over the world will write a 50,000-word first draft of a novel between 12:01 A.M. November 1 and midnight of November 30. The writers range from teenagers to octogenarians. Some are professional authors who will later edit their NaNo novels into something worth publishing. (Sara Gruen's award-winning novel Water for Elephants began as a NaNo novel.) Some will populate their stories with time-traveling ninjas, flying monkeys, and random song lyrics. It's a month-long writing exercise and a month-long celebration of creativity. It's a little bit crazy. And it's a heck of a lot of fun.

Soon the "I Hate NaNoWriMo" blog posts will begin to spring up like mushrooms across the internet. These are generally written by aspiring or little-known authors who believe the flood of dreadful NaNo manuscripts will somehow keep their masterpieces from being published. Successful writers rarely feel this way; Sue Grafton and Neil Gaiman are two of the many well-known authors who provide the pep talks that go out to participants each week of the event.

The NaNoWiMo forums mention muses a lot. How to attract your muse, how to keep your muse happy and busy, the care and feeding of a muse. NaNo is all about the muse, which is as it should be. The exercise is about messy first drafts, raw and unpolished but fresh and genuine. That first draft is to a writer what a block of clay is to a sculptor. You can't make art without it. Yay, Muse!

There was one thread, though, that gave me pause. It was about all the ways in which people might keep their metaphorical inner editors away during November. All I can say is, there's a lot of resentment toward inner editors out there. Most of the suggestions involved stuffing Inner Editor (generally bound with ropes or chains) into a closet or trunk, locking the door or lid, and hiding the key until December 1.

I fully understand the need to keep Inner Editor from interfering during the first draft process, but all this talk of binding and stuffing makes me (and MY inner editor) a little uncomfortable. After all, Inner Editor has valuable skills we're going to need when it's time to make something beautiful from that big lump of first-draft clay. Maybe, instead of gagging her and handcuffing her to a radiator, we could take a different approach.

When Creative Self and I are working on an early draft, Inner Editor leans over our shoulder and mutters, "You call that writing? Hemingway would turn over in his grave," I remind her that her turn will come--Creative Self is busy making a beautiful, flawed first draft for Inner Editor to carve and polish into a thing of beauty. She gets starry-eyed at the prospect, and I give her chocolate and send her away to bask on a beach somewhere until Creative Self proudly calls her back and plops a finished draft into her hands.

Inner Editor can be critical and sarcastic, but when treated gently and reminded that constructive criticism can still be kind, she's a team player. Assured that her turn will come, she's content to let Creative Self play, with only an occasional nudge ("Hey, you just wrote paedcpm. Didn't you mean peacock?"). As she works her magic, she's happy to let Creative Self watch and weave in a little magic of her own. The editing process becomes a dance between the analytical ("This back story is interesting, but does it really move the story?") and the creative ("Wait, I have a better idea!").

In our celebration of the Muse, let's not forget a kind word for the oft-maligned Inner Editor. Come December, we're going to need her.

Dream Weaver

By Mark W. Danielson

Dreams are Utopian in nature. Here, everyone plays on a level field. The blind see, the physically challenged run, dogs catch their mailman, and pigs fly. This is the surreal dimension that lies between our conscious and unconscious realms. It’s where the brain is free from our behavioral boundaries. A place of creativity. I cannot explain why people dream, or why so few of our dreams are remembered. All I know is they happen.

Psychologists love to analyze our dreams, giving their interpretation of reason to our every unreasonable thought. Others believe our dreams can predict future events. Still others believe that dreams provide a link between the living and the dead. Again, I am no authority, but from my experience, whenever I have the presence of mind to jot down a word or two about my dream, I will nearly always remember it in vivid detail. My simple note becomes a direct link to that thought, whatever it may be, and from it, I can write about it.

Gary Wright’s song “Dream Weaver” offers yet another perspective on dreams. The song begins, “I just closed my eyes again. Climbed aboard the dream weaver train. Driver take away my worries of today. And leave tomorrow behind . . .” This song’s take on dreams is escapism, and for some this may be the case, but I prefer looking at dreams as an opportunity to get in touch with my subconscious. Whenever I write, I allow these subconscious thoughts to flow through my keyboard, bringing my characters and events to life. It’s an amazing process, if you think about it. But thinking can stifle that connection, so I simply let loose and see what happens. The result is piles of connected words and thoughts that ultimately become a story.

The joy in writing is allowing my brain the freedom to roam. I never worry about first drafts because I don’t want to deprive my characters of anything. In my current murder mystery, I was three quarters of the way through my first draft before I discovered who the assailant was. Suspense translates better that way. After all, if I’m not surprised, the reader won’t be either.

Last week, I wrote about sleep deprivation and Beth Terrell wrote about dreams. To me, “In your dreams” is more of an opportunity than a phrase. I find I dream more when I’m away than when I’m at home. I am probably a light sleeper because my mind never shuts down, but when it does and offers me some interesting clips, I watch, listen, and allow myself to be inspired.
The above photo is of a Vision Seeker’s Dream Catcher from Peaceful Path’s Native American Crafts. In Native American legend, bad dreams become entangled within the web-like patterns of the loop and perish at the first light of dawn, whereas good dreams and thoughts pass through to the sleeper below. Perhaps I would sleep better if I packed one of these in my suitcase . . .