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Blogs by Robert L Saunders
How my thoughts become a novel 3/2/2007 1:34:31 PM
People tend to ask me where I get the inspiration for my stories and how do I go about writing my stories.
First, writing doesn’t come easy for me, I work hard at it. That means serious self-discipline and a regimented writing schedule. Sometimes people will send an email and ask how they should start to write a novel. My answer is with pen and pad and in my case that is true. First I create an outline that covers the inspiration for the story. This outline will normally involve a lot of research on the story’s theme and the characters in order create a believable story, and also give the reader a little education along the way. Once I have solid outline, with a general character list and their attributes, then it’s time to write the novel. All my rough drafts are done with whatever pen I have available. I’ve tried to start a novel using a word processor, but I found that I could not type as fast as ideas came into my head. By the time I have plowed my through a novel I usually end up with 7 or 8 ringed binders full of hand-written dialogue, scene outlines, plots, characters, and any other notes or ideas that come along. If you can work your way from beginning to end on a word processor, by all means use it. If for example I suspect that I’ll end up with a 30 chapter novel I’ll try to get at least a rough draft of the first 10 chapters before I start keying the hand-written pages. If someone were to pay me by the number of pages I created, they would find that their cost would very small during the first month. After that things start to pick up. By the time a year has gone by, I am usually working all hours of the day and night. The last two months are the worst because that is when I take my story to bed with me and my head is swimming with creative thoughts and alarms that remind me to correct something or to check scenes or character attributes. Once this phase of my writing is done, then it’s time to heed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s advice when he said, you don’t write a book, you rewrite and rewrite. And that is what I do for the next 2 or 3 months, maybe longer depending on the scope of the story. When the book is finally complete to my satisfaction, this includes an extensive amount of editing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, then it’s time to take my wife out for a wonderful dinner that includes 2 bottles of Kendall-Jackson California wine, her favorite is Sauvignon Blanc and mine is Cabernet Sauvignon. After that if I’m still in good shape I’ll try chasing her around the kitchen and see if I get lucky.
