People always ask a writer how they write. How do they think up all the ideas?
I write any ol’ way I can.
First and foremost, I am a storycatcher. To say I love story doesn’t really do justice to the depth of my commitment to keep it alive. I believe stories reflect life’s lessons and connect us one to the other, they humanize us, reflecting our joys, our passions, our sadness, and our spiritual path. Stories create civilizations and hold them together. They provide full-spectrum color in our otherwise black and white world.
After a lifetime of absorbing every story available to me, I felt a groundswell of story overtake my psyche. At that point, I became not only a storycatcher, but also a storyteller.
At times, writing comes easy for me. I sail along excited about the journey, wondering where my characters will next take me. Then, at other times, it’s plow, plow, plow, and still a meager crop. It can be painful, laborious, and extremely taxing.
But words, characters, setting, and plot can also come like divine revelation flowing straight from heaven, through the tips of my fingers, to the keyboard.
Many authors love writing the first draft. I am not one of those. I dread it. The only thing that gets me through it is my bull-headed, task oriented determination. I force my body into my writing corner, apply my seat to the chair and pound out the words on my computer. Of course, there are also days when I feel the slightest infatuation with it, and at other times, perhaps even a little lust, but seldom love.
If I could wrap my brain around writing a detailed outline in advance, the first draft might excite me more, but a synopsis is about the best I can do. I’ve learned to not beat myself up over that. I’ve learned that my brain works the way it works, and how I write works for me. I’ve learned to be patient with my quirky writing style, and I continue to challenge myself to learn more effective methods of writing. Hopefully, over time, those new methods will make my first draft less painful.
However, the one thing that keeps me working on the first draft is the knowledge that once I finish it, I can start the rewrite. Revision turns me on. That is where I dig down and get better acquainted with my characters. Where they begin to take on a life of their own, where they direct me where they want to go, do and say. Where they dig their heels in and refuse to follow my lead. Where I smell what they smell, hear what they hear and feel what they feel.
My writing career began after years of employment in the human services field where I learned to pay attention to the slightest nuances of my world. People who know me have remarked that I see everything and miss nothing. I guess I do. When I write dialogue, I dig down inside myself until I find that character dwelling within my psyche, and hear her/his voice speaking to me.
I write and revise until I find the exact word or group of words that express the emotion, the character, the personality, the opinion, the voice, the—whatever—of a story. When I can’t find the words that do that, I look at the work of other writers and modify what they have done to fit my character or my plot. When I run out of ideas, I’ve been known to pull a random book off of my bookshelf, choose the first few words of a sentence, type it in, and let my muse carry me where it wishes.
I like to write the synopsis of a new work in advance of the first word on the page. When I get stuck in my plot, I can go back to the synopsis and get back on track. Of course, the storyline might well veer from what I first envisioned, and that’s okay. But if I’m stuck, that original idea can help me find my way through.
I write something every day. I stop writing in the middle of a scene, or at least at a spot where I know what happens in the next scene. In other words, I don’t write until I’ve run out of gas before I get there.
On the first draft, I do my best to write straight through, without stopping to edit or rewrite. Sometimes I can do that, other times I can’t. Shutting out the internal editor is difficult. That is why some folks write their first draft in long hand. But that doesn’t work for me either. I’ve been known to scratch out a sentence ten times and rewrite it after each scratch out.
I downloaded to my computer the free version of ReadPlease, a read aloud program that lets me copy and paste my manuscript into the program and have the program read my words aloud to me as I follow onscreen. That way I know how it sounds and where a reader might stumble over my words.
My inspiration for story comes from paying attention to the numberless stories in our world. For instance, one day while chatting with my brother, he recounted a story told him by his father-in-law who had gone out in the swamp to hunt and fish. The swamp water had fallen to an unusually low level and before the day passed, he came upon a brass-bowed pirate schooner sticking up out of the water. He climbed up on it, wishing someone would come by so he could prove he’d seen it. The story so caught my imagination I knew it would be the basis of my third novel, Dead Wreckoning, which can out in 2009. Now, I am working on a new series that has evolved from a secondary character in Dead Wreckoning.
As you can see, I write any ol’ way I can.
Creating vivid, memorable characters in our novels or short stories can sometimes be daunting. I find it helpful to keep the following ideas in mind as I do. 
