Over a fourteen year period beginning in 2012 I have managed to write six novels. Each takes a year of thinking and then seven or eight months to write. The process is at once exhilarating and relentlessly difficult. But when the last word is finished and the story is put to bed, there’s no better feeling.
Each of them has been a different experience. Each starts out being one thing but by the time I’m finished it’s something else entirely. Characters who start out being noble and sympathetic end up disappointing me. Others who start out as villains often redeem themselves somehow. I can never predict how a character will ultimately turn out. Sometimes it feels like the story writes itself and I’m just the stenographer. Other times the story has to be painstakingly coaxed out of my head. Many times nothing comes out for days, even weeks, and in one case months. But then, as if by some kind of miracle it all comes to me and I write up a storm for ten days in a row, as if someone has turned on a literary spigot somewhere.
When I consider the plots of these six novels I recognize a few themes that keep appearing. I write a lot about redemption, the mystery of forgiveness. Two of the six have featured time travel. There is also a fair amount of magical realism in these stories, events and actions that cannot be explained. In the world of my stories there is the natural world that we can all observe, hear and touch, but also the unseen world which exists beyond our capacity to understand or explain.
I have rarely consciously written anything I consider auto-biographical. My life experiences, like any other writer, influence the kinds of stories I write, but most of the story lines are unique to my characters, not to me. There have been a number of scenes that are similar to ones I have experienced personally, which I suppose is unavoidable. Some of my characters are mashups of people I have known in my life. But I can honestly say that none of them has been based on me as a person. The reason for this is that my life has been relatively boring—by this I mean it has been thankfully drama free. A good story needs drama.
In order, the six novels I have written:
A Life of Dreams
Saving Jack
Howard’s Rest
The Second Chance Trust
The Inheritance
Cottonwood
I finished Cottonwood on December 1st and haven’t written a line of fiction worth reading since. I think I have at least one more story in me. It just hasn’t presented itself yet. When it does I’ll think about it every waking moment for a long time then eventually start writing it down—probably while I’m in Maine—where most of these stories started.
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