The Writing Life

by Patricia Bradley

A month ago, my alarm went off at 6:03. Once I silenced it, I lay in bed and planned my day:

· Quiet time.
· Blog posts.
· Time to start the next book in the Natchez Trace Park Ranger series.

You see, life had interfered with my writing schedule for about six weeks. I now have less than three months to write a 90,000-word book...

What does a writer do when that happens? Pray. A lot. Then get to work.

An hour later, I opened Scrivener, clicked on Patricia’s Fiction template and named the new project--Crosshairs. At least I had a title, not one I came up with, but my publisher is great at titles, among many things. Then I stared for the next hour at the blinking cursor… How did I do this the last time?

It happens every time, and I know I’m not the only one who goes through this. And it’s not that I think I can’t do it again. Or is that a fairy tale that I’m telling myself? No. God has given me the seed of a story, and I’m confident He will give me the rest of it. I.can.write.this.next.book. I just have to remember how to do it.

When I first started writing, I made elaborate character charts, plot boards, outlined…the whole nine yards. How’s that for a cliché? But that’s another post.

I don’t outline now. Or make plot boards. And the character charts I make are more about conflicting values, motivation, and goals than what kind of car a character drives. I still log the basics—age, height, and eye and hair color, etc—because I’m apt to forget. 

Instead of plot boards and outlines, I get out my artist sketch pad, the one with the spiral wires at the top because I'm lefthanded and I don't like dealing with the spirals on the side. However, it's too early for plotting. I can't know the story until I know why my characters act the way they do. I have to figure out what makes them tick.

To do that, I have to know the lie the hero and heroine and villain believe about themselves. How do those lies affect them? What actions do they take because of the wound the lie causes? I brainstorm all of this on my sketch pad. Why a sketch pad? I don't like lines. A blank page frees my mind to go in any direction.

Once I have that, I discover these characters' core values and the motivation for their goals. That way I can sabotage those goals. Hehehe. Then I figure out why the hero and heroine should be together but aren't. Learning who my characters are is almost as much fun as putting them through the torture rack!

Once I kindofsorta know my characters—and I say kindofsorta because I really don’t totally know them until I start writing—I let all my research and noodling percolate. As scenes come to me, I jot them down. I play the what-if game. What if this happened? By knowing my characters, I now know how they will react.

I now have a little over 17,000 words written. Most of them are good words that I'll keep. And tomorrow when I open Scrivener I will begin with someone trying to kill my heroine...

I really need to write my steps down while I’m working on this new book. If you have any tips you want to share, leave a comment and I'll enter you in a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card!

Oh! Before I go, I want to share the cover of Standoff, my first Natchez Trace 
Ranger book!