The Writing Process

Just a few questions/answers to keep everyone posted on what's been going on, as I have been under a creative rock for a while. But that's a good thing. It usually means I'm on to something worthy.

1)What am I working on?

I've had two story ideas dueling for my attention over the past few months, so I thought I'd try to work on them both, depending on my mood and which story was shouting at me the loudest on a particular day. But it seems one of those ideas is gaining more traction now, so I'm going with that. It's a coming-of-age story, set in 1978 Allentown, PA, and it is about twelve-year-old Santana Mae Howard and her adoptive father, Nate, whose been raising her on his own after her mother abandons them both for a new husband. Their story is quite unique, not only because single fathers in the '70s were few and far between, but also because there's another interesting factor to their relationship that I cannot disclose just yet. No spoilers. The story's locale will eventually shift to Alabama, the unlikely place in which Santana finds herself during the summer of '78, having been brought there by her mother and new stepfather on an extended 'vacation' to visit relatives. The culture clash is pretty boggling for Santana Mae, a "Yankee" kid trying to navigate her adolescence in the Deep South, all while living with a terribly unfit mother and an arrogant, abusive stepfather. So, she runs away. And the rest of the story is about her epic journey to get back home to PA, back to the father with whom she truly belongs.

2)How does my work differ from others in the same genre?

I'm sure I'm not the only one--in fact, I know I'm not. But, as a Lesbian fiction author, I sort of refuse to pigeonhole myself. Yes, my central characters tend to be Lesbians--it's what I know and what I relate to the best. But I feel my stories are very much crossover stories. I write for Lesbian readers, but then again, I don't. We're not the only people in the world, so I try not to alienate straight readers with story lines that appeal strictly to Lesbians.

3)Why do I write what I do? 

I like to have themes within my books (addiction, PTSD, race relations, familial dysfunction, etc), and I like to challenge myself, so I tend to pick heavy, gritty topics that require copious amounts of research to get them right. I think a novel should mean something. I think it should speak to the reader as well as entertain them, and if I can pull all that off successfully, then I've done my job as an author.

4)How does my writing process work?

Oy! Well, let's see. I can sit with a story for hours; however, I'd venture to say that most of those hours are probably spent reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the most recent passage I've written, tweaking it over and over, just to make it 'perfect'. I self-edit as I go. I'm not one of those authors who just "gets it down" and then worries about editing later. Uh-uh. My first draft is basically my final draft...give or take an added/deleted scene here or there, maybe some dialogue reworked, and so forth. I must also have music in my ears--this has become a crutch of sorts, but so it goes. I'll spend as much time looking for the perfect music as I will doing academic research, sometimes even devoting an entire day to the Amazon MP3 department, browsing movie soundtracks and other genres. For me, my books are movies in my head; I'll even 'cast' my characters with actual actors as a characterization technique because I want the stories to be mental movies for the reader as well. As I see it, my job is to bounce those mental images off the page, so to speak, and then up into the heads of the readers. The right music behind a given scene can be very, very effective in doing that, I think. Hence, I usually have book 'soundtracks' that I'll list for readers to check out. That's always fun.