Many of you know that fiction is not my forte. I love it. I read it all the time. But decades spent working in journalism has caused my imagination to atrophy.
The difference in the two forms of writing is palpable; instead of doing sprints, I’m trying to run an entire marathon, which, as you can guess, is no easy task. Still, I’m determined to write this novel and write it well. At the moment, I’m smack dab in the middle of the research phase; I’m reading related books, jotting down ideas, creating characters and writing various scenes.
Some novelists start with the dreaming phase, then move into research before writing a word. I’m going about it from the other direction as a way to best transition the skills I’ve honed from the territory of nonfiction into the make-believe realm.
Researching before dreaming also provides me with a better sense of time and place, much the same way a painter paints the background of a picture before focusing on the details in the foreground. Once the world is formed, the characters can fill it.
Over the years, I’ve tried various forms of organization, including outlines, emails, snowflakes, blueprints and clouds. While I have no doubt these methods work for others, none gave me the clear picture I needed to move forward with my fiction. For this book, I’m going with a technique that’s both familiar and easy-to-understand: the murder board. Fans of “The Closer,” “Castle” and “Elementary” will know exactly what I mean, but for those of you who are unfamiliar, it looks something like this:
I’m writing notes on legal-lined yellow stickies, keeping track of research in trade paperback-sized notepads and tacking everything up on individual corkboards that have been affixed to the back of my office door.
Unless the air conditioner is on, I generally keep the office door open while working on the news. Closing that door is just one more sign to my muse that I’m ready to get down to the business of pretending.
Other signs? Well, there’s an actual sign that hangs on the front of the door that says: Novelist at work. Its message is more of a reminder to me than to others.
When I work on my novel, I shut down my email program and hide my browser. I don a necklace that features a quote from Ray Bradbury. And I sit at my desk with an ice chai latte, a drink that I discovered while living in Seattle in the early oughts. After two years of drinking the beverage while writing fiction, a Pavlovian response developed in my brain that permanently associates the two.
These efforts may seem like silly writing superstitions, or perhaps even crutches. I don’t care. My muse likes to be wooed.
