The Process
I don’t know if I always knew I wanted to be a writer or if I figured it out along the way. I can’t sit here and proclaim that since I was five, I wanted to be a writer. When I was five, I wanted to be an astronaut, a cowboy, a soldier, a pilot, a police officer, a fire fighter and a sailor. My oldest son Henry is fourteen, apart from a few months when he was four and wanted to be a paleontologist, he’s always wanted to be a film maker. I admire that type of focus.
I don’t remember writing anything creatively until 8th grade. It was one of those middle school writing projects which got turned into a English class anthology. My story probably wasn’t very good but it was printed in the anthology so that was a sort of victory. My handwriting has always been bad, and my spelling is worse. In those days before I had computer writing was just too laborious and the results were often unintelligible.
I didn’t write anything intelligent or creative in my four years of high school. In my freshmen year at URI, I took an expository writing class. I took it because I needed an elective and figured out that I could churn out enough BS to pick up a passing grade. No one was more shocked than me to find out that I was good at it. Not only that, but I also liked it. I started writing bad poetry and short stories, in my horrible, poorly spelled, scrawl.
In my twenties I got a job and a laptop. The laptop was so I could earn overtime by working remotely before my shift at the cubicle farm. I think the company had a payroll loan program so we could buy laptops. That was the gateway, suddenly I could write clearly, quickly, and miracle of miracles there was this thing called “spell check”. Now I could churn out bad, angsty, poetry at furious rate. Short stories too. I started what I thought would be the next great novel a few times. Spoiler alert, they never came to fruition.
Then seven years ago I picked up a half-finished manuscript and tested my long-suffering wife’s patience by asking for time on our annual family vacation to finish it. By the end of the week, I had a rough, very, very rough manuscript. My close friend Cheryl, she of The Run, agreed to read it and tell me if I had something worth pursuing or if I was smoking crack. A few weeks later she asked if she could edit it. She has something against poor spelling and typos. She has since read and edited six more novels, generally making me seem like a much smarter person than I am.
When my second book came out during COVID the publisher set me up on a panel of other writers to promote the book. The panels were virtual via Zoom or something similar. On those panels and in every interview, someone always brings up “The Process”. Most of the time the term is used just to describe how we do it. Sit down at the laptop, cup of coffee or glass of water or a whiskey and type. Sometimes, however, it is said to be as though it is some magical art.
The Process for me, the non-magical bit is about having a room to write in. Having music to play, I would say good music but sometimes my taste is shockingly bad. Getting in the right frame of mind and then sitting down to put the words on the page. It’s about putting in the time and effort.
But let me tell you about the part of the process that is a form of Alchemy. It’s the people in my life. I’ve written seven books and am about to embark on my eighth. I’ve been able to do this because my long-suffering wife and mostly patient children let me. I’ve had the benefit of help, not just from Cheryl but from a slew of friends and family. There have been fellow writers who have offered advice and guidance. I have benefitted from having a fantastic agent, Cynthia Manson, who fights tirelessly for her writers. I have benefitted from two spectacular editors, John Scognamiglio at Kensington and Rachel Slatter at Severn House. Their insightful editorial comments have helped me raise my game. I am a better writer because of them.
I can’t speak for other writers, but I know that when I write, whatever success there is it’s not wholly mine. I owe a piece of it to a small group of great people. That’s the part of it that is magic.
Writing a report no one cares about.