About the writing process
After publishing my first novel, “The Orion Affair”, many people have asked me “how do you write a book?”. It’s not a simple answer, and I’m sure it differs greatly from person to person, but I’ll share with you my story.
First, it took me four years to write my first novel. The length of the effort is attributable to many things. I was transitioning into retirement after a 4-decade long career as a financial executive. I was chasing a life-long dream of learning to fly an airplane (that’s another story). I became extensively involved in providing care for my 90+ year old father who was suffering from end-stage congestive heart failure, then his funeral and settling his estate after he passed away in the Spring of 2017. Then we decided to move to Virginia after 3 decades in the same house in Michigan. And, the biggest reason of all – I had no idea what I was doing!
When I began to write in early 2015, I did what I thought most authors did. I had the germ of an idea, so I sat down in front of a keyboard, started pounding away and anxiously anticipated what would eventually emerge. Epic failure! I found that when I focused on the prose, I’d lose track of the story, and when I focused on the story, I’d lose track of the prose. I experienced numerous false starts. So, I stepped back and tried what many successful authors do: I spent months writing a very detailed outline (35,000 words!) with a plan to flesh out the details afterwards. What I found, however, is when I started to flesh it out, new ideas came to me and the story often went in directions the outline didn’t anticipate. It’s just the way the creative process poured out of my brain, and in the end, it made it a much better book. I concluded that a detailed outline, at least for me, was a waste of time.
I wrote the second novel, “Command and Control”, in about 5 months. What changed? What challenges did I overcome, and how did my craft mature? I’ll offer some observations in bullet-point format (sorry, but habits from 40+ years of business writing sometimes die hard!)
I understood the importance of keeping the prose in the “active voice”. Habits formed in over four decades of business writing in the passive voice were difficult to overcome, but after being beat over the head enough by my editors (more about them in a minute) I finally “got it”. Getting it right the first time makes for MUCH less rework!
Instead of a detailed outline, I spent about a week just typing out a stream of consciousness. This gave me a very good sense of the “arc of the story”, but also gave me the freedom to wander as the creative process played out. For example, when I started “Command and Control”, I thought it was going to be a novel about Brexit. As I developed a “sub-theme” involving Iran (no spoilers here!), it became evident that the sub-theme was more compelling than my original idea. It became the main theme and changed the title of the book.
I finally got that “punctuation thing” down. I had way too many commas in the early drafts of “The Orion Affair”, and my editors pounded me on it (again, more about them shortly!). Not only were many of the commas outright grammatical errors, but it also signaled my sentences were too long. My editors did me a great service in “retraining” me on this. Again, the fewer errors I had to correct after the fact, the more efficient the process.
I listened to my editors! My best advice is “put your ego on a shelf”. I occasionally disagreed with them, but over 95% of their suggested changes were rolled into the manuscript, including critical observations on the storyline. I had three editors assisting me – a legal secretary, a retired English teacher, and a former boss. I would send them a chapter after I was finished, they would edit and return, and I would roll in the changes. It was a great way to keep up to date. After the manuscript was done, we all read through it again and still caught things. I need to say that it is very difficult to adequately edit your own work. No matter how smart or careful you are, the brain is wired to see things the way they are supposed to be, the way you intended them. A “cold set of eyes” is essential to get it right!
I kept the chapters, paragraphs, and sentences short to maintain a crisp pace to the story. This was in part due to feedback from some of my readers, especially regarding chapter and paragraph length. I increasingly paid attention to this as I progressed through “The Orion Affair” and believe the second half of the book is better than the first. It was a great help in writing “Command and Control”. Also, I got the best piece of advice from a master, entirely by random event. As I was tuning through radio stations on SiriusXM, I hit upon a commentator talking about Hemmingway. I don’t even remember the station and I was on it for only about 2 minutes. The commentator offered a Hemingway quote, (I’ll paraphrase): “short, powerful sentences create the most compelling fiction”. It hit me like a brick. I’m still a long way from where I need to be, but that pearl of wisdom was a powerful enabler!
I had a dedicated writing space. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this. Our Virginia home has a study/office just off the family room and it’s “my space”. Not so in Michigan, where I worked on “The Orion Affair” in a spare bedroom, the dining room table, the kitchen, or whatever space happened to be free. Parts of the book were written in a public library, and two chapters were even written on the veranda of a Hilton Head resort. Having a dedicated space made a huge difference in improving the discipline of writing and the necessary focus.
I was more disciplined. It’s even harder to overstate the importance of this! I tried to write at least 2-3 hours a day four days a week. Mostly I succeeded, other than breaks for a travel and our youngest son’s wedding in Wisconsin. Too many breaks in the effort, even intra-day breaks, requires constant backtracking and expended mental energy to reconstitute the story — energy that is better deployed in the creative process itself. Consistency in effort makes for a vastly more efficient writing process, at least for me.
Maturing as a writer is a journey, and I know I still have far to go. The path, however, is clearer now, and that is very encouraging. As I read my favorite authors – Brad Thor, Jack Caar, Ben Coes, the late Vince Flynn, David Baldacci, Daniel Silva, the late Tom Clancy, the late Robert Ludlum, Greg Hurwitz, Mark Greaney, just to name a few and in no particular order, I constantly ask myself, “what is exciting about this book?”, “what keeps me engaged”. I am constantly learning.
A note on research. There are many technical details and explanations about new weapons systems, nano-technology, drugs and other “techie” details, etc. in my first two books, and even a physics lesson or two. I will follow this pattern in book three as well. It is the trademark of the “techno-thriller”. All such details were extensively researched and bounced off “people in the know” to make them as accurate as possible. Having said that, it is important to note that I am writing to entertain. I am not writing a paper to present at the American Academy of Physics or to publish in the New England Journal of Medicine, etc. That is not the mission of an author of fiction, and true experts will no-doubt find flaws in how I have described many of these things. That’s OK. I readily confess my indulgence in creative license, or confessed more directly, yes, I make stuff up! The job of a novelist is to make the descriptions accurate enough to be realistic/believable, and I believe I have largely accomplished that. But I am also always looking to elevate the craft, and would love to hear from readers on how I can do better, so feel free to contact me anytime at dennis@dennistosh.com with feedback, and I’ll even give you a shout-out in future acknowledgements pages if I incorporate your suggestions in existing or new works.
With the staggering advances in information technology, we now live in a highly “visual” world where engaging first impressions on social media and the net can have a powerful effect on the reception of an author’s work. To exploit this, I engaged the talent of an amazing artist from Maine, Brandi Doane McCann from eBook Cover Designs, to create the cover art for both of my novels. As you can see from perusing this website’s homepage, she did an amazing job, and perfectly captured the imagery necessary for an engaging customer response. Anyone contemplating self publishing o book would find her services to be an excellent investment, and she was a delight to work with.
The response to my first two novels has been extraordinarily encouraging, and that does much to fuel one’s ambitions. The best advice I can give to anyone contemplating such a journey is this – START!
Let me know what you think at dennis@dennistosh.com.