The reason for my
inarticulate mumbling to the air is that the real answer is this: Ummmm, welllll, this book took about three
years, plus or minus forty years. Maybe I’m overthinking. Perhaps. The
thing is, anything I write, while yes, is 1,000% fictional in plot and
character, holds an incalculable amount of real-life things I’ve seen,
experienced, felt, saw, heard, or sensed over the course of my life. To not
include the years in which those items happened and to say that I wrote
something in three years is patently false. How could I have included the scene
where a nanny rolls an egg on the main character of Method 15/33 (in order to
ward of evil) if I hadn’t seen a babysitter do that to my child—blowing my
mind, as I’d never heard of such a thing? This happened several years before I
even thought of the plot. Or what about the quarry, which plays a central role
in the book? The only way I came up with scenes involving the quarry was by
being scared out of my 1980’s terry-cloth girl shorts tromping to a quarry on
our property in New Hampshire. I just simply have to include all the years
leading up to when I started the literal writing of the book.
On the other end of the
spectrum, I didn’t write for three years straight either, so to say a book took
me three years is disingenuous. In other
words, I technically started writing the book three years before finishing, but
I absolutely did not write every day—sometimes not even once in one week. A, I
have a full time job. B, I was working on two other manuscripts (although not
doing well by them) at the same time.
And while I’m already deep
down in this hole, let me overthink a little more. When the question is asked,
“How long did it take you to write this book,” is the questioner including the
part where I murder myself editing, over and over and over—reading passages so
much I memorize them and therefore miss glaring errors? Does the question
include that zone of insanity?
Maybe I need to carry a
visual graph to answer what should be a simple and fair question. For Method
15/33:
(All images licensed off
of Fotolia.com)
And the third most common
question: What is your writing process? Based on the above answer to the simple
number two question, should I even start an answer for this one? Probably not.
I will say this. There are
many processes out there for writing and every single one of them is the
correct process. I know some writers use detailed outlines before they begin a
book. They might use flash cards pinned to a wall or write companion pieces
(that never see the light of day) detailing character back-stories. I can see
the benefit in all of this.
I do not follow any
patterns. No schedule. Nothing. I don’t know what the rules are or if there are
any when it comes to process. I just know that all that is important to me is
that I enjoy the process. And I enjoy it best when there’s no structure, no
expectations, and I can surprise myself with what lands on the page in any
given day. I start with an idea and the first sentence. And then I write
whatever I want to on the days I sit down to write. Could be a middle chapter,
could be the ending. Could be something I never use in the book. I keep going
until a picture starts to form, like blocking a painting. Then I get more
refined by adding necessary scenes. Then I get even more refined. Add necessary
details, tweak dialog. Then I read it, move things around, cut, paste. Then I
edit, over and over and over.
In conclusion, by the time
I’m done answering the three most common questions, I feel I’m like Sandra
Bullock in Gravity, untethered to my
spaceship and tumbling in space, which fits pretty well with describing the
life of writing.
Shannon Kirk is a practicing attorney and a law professor. She attended West Virginia Wesleyan and St. John’s Universities, is a graduate of Suffolk Law School, and was a trial lawyer in Chicago prior to moving to Massachusetts. She has been honored three times by the Faulkner Society in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, a physicist, and their son. Method 15/33 is her first novel.
advice for authors
advice for writers
authors
books
guest post
partners in crime tours
Questions Writers Get
Shannon Kirk
writers
writers and authors
1 Comments
What an entertaining guest post! Thanks so much for introducing us to this author and her new thriller.
ReplyDeleteI love to hear from you. So feel free to comment, but keep in mind the basics of blog etiquette — no spam, no profanity, no slander, etc.
Thanks for being an active part of the Writers and Authors community.