How I Wrote My First Book the Story Behind the Story
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How I Wrote My First Book The Story Behind the Story Twenty authors tell amazing stories about the efforts that went into writing their first book. Anne K. Edwards and Lida E. Quillen, Editors How I Wrote My First Book How I Wrote My First Book Copyright © 2011. Lida E. Quillen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owners. Twilight Times Books P O Box 3340 Kingsport, TN 37664 http://twilighttimesbooks.com/ First Edition, February 2011 Articles copyright by the contributing authors. Used by permission. Cover art by Ardy M. Scott Electronically published in the United States of America. 2 The Story Behind the Story Table of Contents Christine Amsden - “My Million Words of Crap” ~ 5 Darrell Bain - “The Story Behind The Pet Plague” ~ 18 Bob Boan - “How I Came to Write Bobby becomes Bob” ~ 26 Mayra Calvani - “Tips on Writing Your First Novel” ~ 43 D Jason Cooper - “Understanding Numerology” ~ 52 Lee Denning - “Two Beginnings” ~ 59 Susan Goldsmith - “How I Wrote Abithica” ~ 71 Ginger Hanson - “Ten Lessons I Learned from Writing Quest for Vengeance” ~ 84 Toby Fesler Heathcotte - “The Manuscript from a Mystifying Source” ~ 100 Darby Karchut - “Wings” ~ 114 Linda Langwith - “The Serendipity Factor” ~ 128 Aaron Lazar - “The Writing of Double Forté” ~ 138 Celia A. Leaman - “Writing Mary’s Child” ~ 147 Beverly Stowe McClure - “How I Wrote Shadows on the Desert” ~ 155 Gerald Mills - “How I Wrote No Place for Gods” ~ 165 Erica Miner - “How I Wrote Travels With My Lovers” ~ 187 Stephanie Osborn - “How a Rocket Scientist Becomes a Writer” ~ 194 Bob Rich - “How I Came to Write Novels” ~ 200 Dorothy Skarles - “Tales of Intrigue, Adventure and Learning” ~ 211 Dan Starr - “A Solution and a Seed: Novel Writing as Growing a Crystal” ~ 220 3 How I Wrote My First Book 4 The Story Behind the Story My Million Words of Crap by Christine Amsden During a writers’ boot camp I attended in 2003, Orson Scott Card said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said that before a writer can turn out worthy material, each one will generate at least one million words of pure crap. At the time, I wasn’t sure whether or not I had finished writing mine. Shortly after the boot camp, I wrote a truly awful short story that somehow started me on the path to writing Touch of Fate, though if you asked me now, I could not possibly trace the chain of thoughts that took me from an other- world fantasy tale featuring a crippled woman lying helpless in a ditch to a modern-day paranormal featuring a troubled clairvoyant. That story, like so many others, was part of my million words of crap, but I didn’t know that as I wrote. I only realized this later, when I gave the story to my husband (then fiancé) to read, and he told me, quite brutally, that it was the worst story of mine he had ever read. Those were words to lift the spirit! I believe that after blinking back a few tears and stammering a bit, I asked for specifics, but didn’t listen to his answers. There are times when we are receptive to feedback and times when we aren’t. This was one of the latter. For the record, if you’re going to show your work to your significant other and expect an honest response, you’d better make sure you have a good relationship. If you don’t trust yourself to hear honesty from your spouse, then at least be honest about your expectations. Say you want ego stroking and in the meantime, find someone whose opinion you trust and whose friendship you could potentially live without. Luckily for me, I have a pretty solid marriage, because my husband is almost incapable of saying anything but the truth as he sees it. He’ll never live down a moment in college when he told a chubby friend of ours, “Oh, I 5 How I Wrote My First Book assumed you’d want diet soda.” I knew all of that when I handed him the story, though of course I’d hoped the honest truth would be pleasant. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing, it’s that true growth in writing doesn’t come from pleasant feedback. That’s the big difference between the million words of crap and the better-known adage, “Practice makes perfect.” Practice alone does not make perfect, and writing a million words of crap won’t get you anywhere until you realize that the words are crap. Without that spark of realization, the next million words will be just as bad. So there I sat, not quite listening to what my husband was saying about my painfully awful story, while the last vestiges of illusion shattered. I was not done writing my million words of crap. About two thousand of them sat in my clammy hands, daring me to smell them. Let me just put something into perspective for you. Your average mainstream mystery or suspense novel is about eighty to one-hundred- thousand words. First science fiction or fantasy novels tend to be about ninety to one-hundred-ten-thousand words. So one million words is, roughly speaking, about ten novels. I started writing regularly when I was eleven, so by 2003, I had been writing for fifteen years, more often than not, and had probably written a million words in bits and snatches, but I had never really finished a novel. Part of the reason was that I kept rewriting the same story over and over and over again. I had this idea, which now [finally] exists as a rough draft, but for the longest time it only served to hold me back. Orson Scott Card didn’t specifically say so, but looking back, I think that the million words have to be largely unique. It’s not just the words, it’s the story. At some point you have to write an entire story, from beginning to end, and then do it again. This is why some so-called writing experts (really, it’s all just opinion backed up by success) suggest beginning with short stories, so you can get the feel for creating a whole story again and again. I read an article with that very suggestion shortly after my ego-blow. Write short stories, it said, lots of them. So I did. 6 The Story Behind the Story Now I have a confession to make. I’m not a short story writer. I’m a novelist. A handful of the short stories I wrote in the following months were published, but by and large I wasn’t proud of my short story efforts. The trouble is that by the time I do real character development and real world building, I’ve got a bigger investment than 2,000-7,500 words. I don’t read short stories for much the same reason - by the time I start getting into the story, it’s over, and I want more. I’ve been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember, but after I set the early readers aside, it was always novels. Writing short stories is an art form all it’s own, so while I agree somewhat with the idea that beginning writers should practice finishing things by writing short stories, I think that some of us are meant to be novelists, and that sooner or later we need to practice finishing novels. Of the short stories I did write, two stood out. One, alas, for reasons that go beyond the scope of this article. The other, Signs would eventually become the prequel to my first published novel, Touch of Fate. The rest of 2003 ended in a blur of life changes. In October, I had my perfect fairy-tale wedding, complete with a vaguely Elizabethan-style gown. Up until that point, I was doing some computer consulting work, but my husband encouraged me to follow my dream and devote my time to writing full time. He brought in enough money for the two of us and so, despite misgivings, I gave it a shot. One of the questions I’m supposed to address is: What made you decide to write a novel? I realize that I’m skirting the issue, but you have to understand that for me, I never made a conscious decision to write a novel. Writing has always been as natural as breathing to me, and I could no more not write than I could not eat. My college career was choppy and indecisive, ending in two degrees simply because I had so much trouble making up my mind that by the time I graduated, I had the credits for both of them. Most of the time I tell people this happened because I was unfocused - unsure what I wanted to do - but I always knew I wanted to write, I just didn’t know what I wanted to do to earn a living in the meantime. 7 How I Wrote My First Book While I had misgivings about not entering a more traditional career path, they were largely external misgivings. I had preconceived notions about what I should be doing, largely involving bringing home a regular paycheck. Inside, I knew that writing was the only thing I had consistently wanted to do since I was about eight years old.