On Writing-My Personal View

Meridian's Heart began as a children's story highlighting the ten rules for tooth fairies when visiting small children on Earth. I had envisioned a 20-25 page picture book illustrating each rule.  I had thought starting with a children's book would offer me a chance to start small and prove to myself that writing fiction was possible. The first step was establishing an achievable goal. A short book offered a doable timeframe and was not a daunting challenge.  I am in awe of the Children book authors who can hone in on a theme, and the illustrators who can capture the attention of a child, entertain, and maybe teach, all at the same time.

Fate (a brief time between employment opportunities) gave me time to write and convince myself that maybe a longer story was hidden inside me waiting to find its way on paper. While I had good skills as a business writer, fiction was a different animal. Business writing starts with gathering all factual information, noting enclosures, references (letters, emails, phone calls, etc.), stating the problem, organizing the issue, and offering a path forward, Content and facts, gives the writer a  foundation to present the issue. Finding the right tone offers the chance to reach a solution. Business writing has a purpose shaped by a known issue.

Fiction may start with an idea stimulated by a newspaper article, an event, a person, a place, a thing, or any number of thought provoking issues that an author desires to build a story around. It may also start from just a premise or seek to answer a question or wonder the "what ifs." Fiction often starts with  a blank piece of paper waiting for a new world to be created. 

Both, non-fiction and fiction present different challenges. My focus is on fiction.

I believe each of us has a story to tell. The challenge is finding the time, but more importantly finding out what works for you as the writer in setting aside time to put pencil to paper, or fingers to keyboard. And what I can assure each of you, is that if I can do it, so can you! 

First. The best book I have ever read on writing was "On Writing" by Stephen King. The nugget in the book was in order to become a writer...one had to write. Simple message and one every one of us knows and are told, but put off or avoid sitting at a blank screen and giving it a try.  Mr. King offers that while writing groups are good and useful for many budding authors, it is the act of actually writing that starts the process.

When starting out, anyone of you would have laughed had you seen me at the library, computer open, armed with my Webster's Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, and my paper copies of dialog sentence structures (how to write dialog) and many sheets of "Words to use instead of..."said", "that", and a host of other basic words that we all use when staring out. Often they were taped up so I could refer to how dialog is written.

Learn to be humble...embrace how much you don't know...and don't be frightened by how hard it seems to get started. After all, what makes you who you are is the fear of facing the mirror and having a person stare back that never tried. I believe not trying in any endeavor is the ultimate sin to ones self.  

I had liked to think (and still do) that while I was a good business writer, extending the skill to writing fiction was a reasonable extension. If one can write: 

"Mr. Stanton had endeavored to present the potential outcomes should we fail to reach consensus, and we are  giving his concerns serious consideration."

One could restate what really happened as:

"Robert Stanton stared across the polished conference room table and threatened.  "Mr. Schreiber, I'll rip your lungs out and crush your company if we cannot reach agreement on this matter. Do we understand each other?"

Know that learning to write fiction and dialog takes time, patience, and a good editor. And read a lot. Every book had fine examples of how to write dialog. Using the examples and substituting your own words, helps to get you started. And you are always learning. 

Where do you get ideas?

Everywhere! How can something I read become a part of the story? Using facts as the basis of fiction is a tried and true formula.

In Meridian's Heart, Terraloria  is a sacred artifact that bestows strong powers and is accentuated by the good and evil in men. It was of fairy origin but hidden on Earth. I had to come up with instances of how its power had expressed itself on Earth,  Historical events offered a cove of examples that may have been shaped by Terraloria's powers. Using historical facts added more credibility to the story and made it more interesting, I earmarked pages from magazine articles, newspaper articles, and Google and Wikipedia topic searches on  information that could be incorporated in the storyline. I was amazed at the nuggets of an article that I could apply to my story.

For example:

-A newspaper article on the Smithsonian Institutes Collection of religious artifacts became the hiding place for Terraloria.

- Many science articles on plants and insects contributed to facts of how poisons work on humans.

-A review on a book about navigation led to an understanding on the methods used to map journey's and find geographical locations, and the use of a compass. 

Ideas are everywhere and with a little imagination you can often apply them in your story line or plot.

I have also found it very useful to jot down sentences, notions of sentences or plot ideas, and words heard in songs that rhyme and have a nice tone and rhythm. The sound and flow of a sentence can accentuate a point. Often two or three rhyming words with very different meanings and connotations lead to interesting thoughts and sentences. 

Find a place to write. For me its in the local library in the room designated as the quiet section. I simply cannot write well at home. I find the refrigerator and television to be a distraction. And the kids, dogs and wife moving around the house and yard pull me away from writing, On occasion, if writing at home, I don a headset to find quiet and focus to minimize the distraction.

Time: For the most part I wrote a good portion of Meridian's Heart in 4 hour increments, every Sunday at the library. I did find a few days where I took off work or had a free Saturday or holiday to spend 8 hours on writing and they were glorious. While this was less than ideal, I was persistent in writing and the story developed over time. A novel can be written in 4 hour blocks of time.

The last thing I did was write down the day (date) and actual time I sat down and finished a writing session, It showed me how much time I had taken to write and is a nice record of the creative process. While not all times and dates were recorded, it gives you a sense of the patience you need to let the creative process take hold and blossom into coherent ideas. Sometimes the words flow, sometimes they don't. But knowing you stopped the world for a moment in time and thought about your story, its characters and where they had been, where they were going or wanted to go...gives you hope that the story will unfold and find a place on the page and in your heart. 

Start writing!