This is the story of how I wrote a book.
I have dabbled in creative writing since high school and college, and always enjoyed it. Moving toward the present, I've done the occasional blog post, newsletter, and storyline creation/management for a minor MMO. None of my past writing is particularly noteworthy except to say that while my plots and story arcs were often interesting and immersive, my characters and dialogue were very far from it.
In July of 2019, I downloaded Duolingo and began to learn Spanish. This was my duty since we were going to visit the Galapagos islands and I'd had a couple of semesters of (completely forgotten) Spanish 20 years ago in college. Heather had handled the French beautifully during our two trips to France.
Then in September, I started daydreaming pretty seriously. By October, my head was full of vibrant characters delivering moving speeches at pivotal moments in their stories. It was like a pressure cooker in my head, and I finally began spewing out thousands of words per day in what would become an 80,000 word first draft called Vanilla Mortal People. I had finished in eight weeks--two of which I was attending or running a board game convention, so they hardly count. Here's a few anecdotes about my process...it's pretty heady stuff. *eyeroll*
In October, my son was in swim practice for a few hours a week. One night while he was swimming, instead of playing another round of Angry Birds, I pulled out my phone and thumb-typed an e-mail to myself that was a dramatic jailbreak scene that had been recently playing out in my head during quiet moments like driving the boys around, church (oops), and when going for a jog. The next day, I started a google doc that would become my novel. The next few swim practices, I thumb-typed into this doc that kept growing by leaps and bounds during the days while the boys were at school. Eventually, it occurred to me that laptop computers exist, and in fact, I own some.
So while the boys would swim, or be at school, or be clamoring for dinner (whatever), or when I should have been sleeping (at one point, I was on about 4 hours a night), I would be typing like I was running out of time. Yep, me and Alexander Hamilton, wearing out the keyboard and quill.
So while the boys would swim, or be at school, or be clamoring for dinner (whatever), or when I should have been sleeping (at one point, I was on about 4 hours a night), I would be typing like I was running out of time. Yep, me and Alexander Hamilton, wearing out the keyboard and quill.
In November, after a few weeks of me instantly closing the google doc window on my computer any time she walked into the office, I figured I should come clean to my wife about the insanity I'd embraced. She pointed out that November was national write a novel month. News to me!
Later, when I told one of my best friends that I was over half way done writing a novel, and recounted the story of it up to then, he pointed out the possible link between beginning to unlock the foreign language centers of my brain and my sudden discovery of clever dialogue between interesting characters. Hm. Maybe so.
It's irrational, I know, but it wasn't until I printed it out for my wife to read that it really felt like I'd done something special.
At the very least, I'd made a bludgeoning tool.
Anyway, I’ve spent the past months revising, thanks to beta readers input, and increasing my word count to 115,000. The title has become (for now at least) The Elegante: Book 1, A Quarter to Midnight. May as well dream big.
I've just begun to investigate getting it published (i.e. the real work is about to begin). If you'd like to give it a read, shoot me an e-mail.
