A. There is no one answer to that question, but generally I
have an active imagination and ideas come to me fairly easily. I got the idea
for Time Capsule several years ago when I planted a tree in my yard and
wondered what would happen if I found something buried there. I decided to
write a story about that and it eventually became a book.
Because it’s a fiction novel, I had to create all of the
people, places, events, dialogue and so on, which was a lot of fun. I’m a
former journalist so I used real people, places and events for inspiration but
turned it all into a fictional narrative, built around two main characters who
are newspaper reporters like I was.
Once I got started with the discovery of the time capsule, I
crafted the rest of the story from actual experiences and some that I invented
out of my own head.
Q. Tell me about your
writing process?
A. It really differs from book to book. In Time Capsule,
once I had created Rob and Jennie Covington, I began to visualize them doing
and saying things that news reporters would do and say, and then I wrote it all
down. To be honest, when I wrote the beginning, I had no idea how it would end
or how I would get there, but as I continued to visualize scenes and as I wrote
more and more of the story, the ending came to me in time.
You can write whatever comes to mind, just to get it
memorialized "on paper," because you'll go back later to edit what
you wrote--probably more than once. The first draft can be far from perfect as
long as it gets you off and running and begins to tell your story.
The best part for me was writing all of the dialogue, which
I admit sounds a lot like things I might say myself. I think the first words I
actually wrote in Time Capsule were, “No stupid, your other left,” a
good-natured barb that Jennie threw at Rob when he was planting the tree.
In effect, it was those five words that defined the
relationship between these characters for all of Time Capsule and the Covington
books that followed. In one of the books, I described their compatibility as
"a healthy relationship based on trust, mutual admiration for each other’s
talents, common interests, sexual attraction and the ability to take a joke.”
Q. So in Time Capsule
you just made up the story as you went along?
A. Yes, exactly. I started out with the basics: “Man plants
tree, man finds box, man opens box, there’s a mystery inside.” When I wrote
that, it was really all I had. Then, by way of introduction, I went back and
told the story of how the main characters met.
Next, I decided that I needed a dead body. I didn’t know who
it was or how it fit into the story, but I wrote it as a separate chapter that
also set the location for the book. I moved it to Chapter 1. That gave me more
ideas, but I still had no idea how the book would end or how I would get there.
In fact, I didn’t even know what was in the box. So I wrote a couple of
chapters, set it aside for a while and kept thinking about it.
After a while, I got an idea to describe some items in the
box and have each of them take the reader off in a secondary direction, so I
created three new characters, attached each of them to an item in the time
capsule and wrote a back story to go with each character.
Then I realized that aside from solving a mystery, Rob and
Jennie would have real jobs, so I wrote about what they do at work. As
reporters, they cover events, write stories and interact with other people on
the job. I brought in fictionalized versions of actual events that happened to
me or people I worked with and added them to the soup.
Eventually, I had five threads running at the same time. I
had Rob and Jennie pursuing the mystery of the time capsule, Rob and Jennie
going to work at regular jobs and three separate characters with their own
stories linked through items in the box. I tied them all together and finally
an ending came to me. I had a beginning, a middle and an end, so Time Capsule
became a manuscript…but it wasn’t yet a book.
Q. So what happened
after you finished your manuscript?
A. I contacted a publisher and paid a small fee to have an
“editorial review” written on my manuscript. I asked the publisher to tell me
honestly whether the manuscript (1) worked as a book, (2) could be fixed and
made into a book or (3) should be tossed into the trash and forgotten.
The publisher, Beth, liked my work and was interested in
publishing it with some minor changes and some editing suggestions. Then she
asked me, “What else do you have?”
What I had was three pages of another book about a private
detective who starts out dead. It was three pages going nowhere, but I sent her
the pages anyway. Beth liked the idea and told me I should finish that book,
too. So I re-read what I had written, added a few details and some quotes and
moved on to Chapter 2, where I wrote, “It all started….” And then I let my
imagination run wild. Ideas started coming to me and I wrote the whole second
book in a matter of weeks.
With my publisher’s encouragement, I have since written two
other Rob and Jennie Covington books and recently started on Covington book
number 4.
Q. What does someone
need to do to write good fiction books?
A. In general, I believe there are three main qualities you
need to write good fiction:
(1) Obviously, you
need the ability to write, which means having a decent vocabulary and knowing
the rules of grammar, syntax, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling. If
you can’t form words into proper sentences and sentences into paragraphs—and
make them interesting to total strangers—then writing a book is probably not
your best career option.
(2) You also need
perpetual curiosity, or what I call the “what if” gene. I think a fiction
author needs to go beyond just seeing things for what they are and wonder “what
if this” and “what if that.” For example, if you plant a tree and all you see
is a tree, a shovel and a hole, you’re probably not going to write a book about
the experience—unless it’s a book about gardening. But if you plant that tree
and wonder, “What if I found something I didn’t expect,” and you imagine what
it could be, then you’re off to a good start on your story.
Some of the most famous inventors, writers, musicians and
artists of all kinds have that “what if” gene. They wouldn’t be what they are
without it.
(3) Finally, you
need a vivid imagination. If you have the curiosity to ask the question “what
if,” you need a vibrant and active imagination to conjure up an answer. It’s
your imagination that tells you what’s in the time capsule, who found it, what
he did, who he told, what was the mystery and what happened next. It’s your
imagination that takes a simple “what if” idea and turns it into a book.
Q. Who are some of
those famous “what if” people you mentioned?
A. Let’s start with a man who wondered what would happen if
two people stretched a wire between two rooms and connected it to a vibrating
mechanism, then spoke into the device on one end and listened to it on the
other. As a result, we have the first telephone.
A writer once imagined what would happen if a vengeful ship
captain set out to find and kill the giant white whale that had taken off his
leg, and we got the classic novel Moby Dick.
Two guys sat down with guitars one day and wondered, “What
if we wrote a song that said ‘she loves you yeah yeah yeah,’” and that gave the
Beatles their first big hit.
And an artist once looked at the woman he was painting and
wondered what would happen if, instead of a smile, he gave her a smirk, and
that gave us one of the world’s most famous works of art—the Mona Lisa.
This is what happens when creative people asked themselves
“what if?” and use their imaginations to answer the question.
Q. What’s the hardest
part of writing a novel?
A. In fiction, because you are making up things that don’t
really exist, the hardest part is keeping the timeline straight, being consistent
with your characters and making sure that what you write is believable enough
that it could happen the way you said it did. (Exception noted for science
fiction.)
For example, I have gone back to review chapters I wrote
previously and realized that a person couldn’t know something I said he knew
because it hadn’t happened yet. That happens a lot when you rearrange sections
during an edit. For that reason, I’ve started keeping calendars of events and
writing a chronology of what happened and when.
I once found that one of my characters had two different
first names—one early in the book and one a few chapters later. In my defense,
I wrote those chapters months apart. To avoid that, I’ll sometimes insert a
place holder where the character goes, write his or her description separately
and blend it into the book later.
In one book, I discovered that I had two people going to
work on a specific date in June 2004 when, in fact, that date was a Sunday and
neither of them would have gone to their jobs on that day. I had to search the
manuscript and change the date throughout.
In the same book, I gave a character the wrong last name.
Hey, it happens.
Q. What’s the easiest
part of writing a novel?
A. I’m not sure I’d say it’s always easy, but the most
enjoyable part for me is writing dialogue. It comes fairly easily to me most of
the time. I just think what I would say at a given time and then have my
character say it, or I try to put myself in the character’s mind and imagine
what he or she would say. It’s almost like talking to yourself through a
keyboard.
I also find it pretty easy to create characters. Because
they’re not real, you can give them any traits or habits you choose and make
them look any way you want them to look. I have written handsome men, ugly men,
beautiful women, homely women, old people, young people, adorable children and
children who need a bath. I’ve written happy people, sad people, drunks,
ministers, cops, killers and everything in between.
After I finish a book, I often go back and read the parts
where I introduced a character and try to figure out where the inspiration came
from. Sometimes I also see parts of myself in the people I write, and that
amuses me.
Q. A lot of authors
outline their books before they start to write. Why don’t you?
A. Maybe I’m not that organized, or maybe my brain doesn’t
work that way, but really, I don’t think it’s necessary. I tend to develop
ideas after I first put pen to paper rather than plot out an entire book in
advance. I don’t think one way is necessarily better than another. It all
depends on the author.
In my case, sometimes I wake up with ideas and run to my
office to type them out. Sometimes they come to me when I’m walking my dog or
sitting outside on my deck. As long as I can write “and then…” and come up with
a narrative to move my story along, I don’t need to have it outlined all the
way to the end.
I will admit to this: Sometimes I get to the point where I
have written the beginning and the end and I need to fill out the middle that
connects those two dots. At that point, I’ll make a list of the things that
need to happen or the questions that need to be answered before the end of the
book makes sense.
When I do that, I will retroactively list all of the
chapters I have written with a summary of what’s in them, and add a chapter for
every plot point that I need to insert. This is usually when I complete my
calendar and double-check my chronology to make sure the story has the proper
timing and flow.
If that’s what you consider an outline, then yes, I’ll do
that sometimes. I’d call it more of an “outline after the fact.”
Q. When did you know
you wanted to be a writer?
A. I started at a very early age. When I was a kid of 10 or
12, I wrote a neighborhood newspaper. It was laid out in pencil on notebook
paper and probably reported on the day’s wiffle ball game or somebody’s
birthday party. (I forget.) I’d say the number of editions was probably in the
neighborhood of…one.
In high school I started writing poetry and song lyrics for
a garage band I was in, and during college I wrote for the school newspaper. I
became a journalist after college and worked for four newspapers over 13 years.
Even after I left the newspaper business I continued to
write news releases, newsletters, pamphlets, brochures, advertising, position
papers, magazine articles and other materials for a public utility and, later,
for a variety of clients as a freelance communications consultant.
So I guess I've always been a writer and I never wanted to
be anything else, which is good, because it’s about the only thing I really
know how to do.
