I can do stream-of-consciousness for maybe five pages, after that it’s hopelessly inefficient — way too much total rework afterwards. Our novels are longish (180,000 words), and with two authors you have to be very structured, otherwise you run off into the weeds pretty quickly. So we structure, and draw diagrams (yeah, anal-retentive, but hell, I’m an engineer), and outline, and re-structure, and consider specifically the point of each chapter and each scene therein and how they feed into the story. It’s painful.
From the moment you conceived the idea for the story, to the published book, how long did it take?
About three years for Monkey Trap. In terms of time commitment over those three years? Between Leanne and myself we spent 242 hours structuring, 1305 hours writing, and 2466 hours editing/reworking. Yes... exactly... we now know what not to do. The second novel went more smoothly, and the third is going pretty smoothly too. It’s a learning curve...
Describe your working environment.
Small office, all resources at finger-tip reach. Few distractions except the cat demanding an occasional rub.
Are you a disciplined writer?
Totally disciplined as to good intent and sitting down to write. Once seated, though, I tend to fritter time away trying to actually start writing — I do a bunch of meaningless little chores to avoid plunging in. It’s like the water’s too cold and I have to dunk my tootsies multiple times. Anybody with a mental vaccine for that I’d love a shot of it...
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? What seems to work for unleashing your creativity?
Never had the displeasure, or at least not long enough that I found it problematic. Lucky, I guess.
Technically speaking, what do you have to struggle with the most when writing? How do you tackle it?
Deepening characters by their actions or words (or sometimes lack thereof) rather than using exposition. That requires a fair amount of subtlety and usually multiple re-works.
How was your experience in looking for a publisher? What words of advice would you offer those novice authors who are in search of one?
I dropped the manuscript for Monkey Trap (unagented) on the major sci-fi publishing houses. The general response was thanks, we put it in our slush pile, you may hear from us in a couple of years. So I pulled it back. My advice is to do what I did next — look over all the small houses, see if their niche matches your story, and send it to those (complying with what their submission process is, of course). If there’s no interest, consider the self-publishing route.
Article comments
1 - c hoare
Where is the article on Lisa Jackson? The links are connected and only come to this article.
Christopher Hoare
This is not a personal attack