The Process...For Me

Introduction

I'm an analytical, so when I started writing I began by researching how to pursue the task. I quickly learned that there were basically two very distinct approaches to writing or more specfically to the writing process. One is a structured or disciplined approach and the other unstructured and more free flowing. The structured writer makes outlines, diagrams the story and generally plans it out in advance before ever writing a single word. That's the last I'll speak of the structured approach. The unstructured writer, me, has an idea, a thought, a concept, or a word to begin with and little more.

My Writing Process

My inspirational time is around 4 am. I awaken with thoughts bubbling over or a passive vocabulary word being repeated over and over in my head; inculcate, pedantic, pertuberance, orthagonal. On nights when this occurs sleep is over. It's time to get up, record the word, and jot down some notes to lock in the vision and begin writing.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The idea for the book itself comes to me out of the blue. My classmate in grad school called it, "being hit with a flaming pie." There are obviously things happening in the subconscious that are manufacturing the ingredient for this "flaming pie", which I really have not analyzed until now.

The Present Future Trilogy is a perfect example of my process. The idea was born at Thanksgiving dinner while having a conversation with my son. I had often quoted from the Book of Ecclesiastes; where the author complains frequently in the book about the monotony of life. The entire passage reads, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” I combined that message with the words of comedian Redd Foxx when asked, "Is there as much love and romance going on today as when we were young?" He replied in his own inimitiable way, "Yeah, but there's a different bunch of folks doing it!"

The message is clear, "There is nothing new under the sun", the same things keep happening to different people. The present is the future with the difference being the people and the technology. So with nothing more than that premise a trilogy was born, with no idea of a plot, characters or goal other than to show what life might be like 1,000 years after Columbus "discovered" America.

With my mind primed, all I had to do was go to bed and let the ideas flow. Each night characters' names would pop into my head along with their purpose. Other times it would be a plot or scene.

For Oh, Nantucket things were a little bit different. I had wanted for years to write a story about the island, but didn't know where to begin. In 2001 I wrote the poem Oh, Nantucket in hopes of expressing the feeling of opportunity lost but didn't really understand why. It was just a feeling? But in the summer of 2020 it became clear to me. I had just finished writing my "industry" memoir, a chronicle of my professional accomplishments. What to do next? Corona virus was looming, old age is creeping up, it was now or never.

The summer's social unrest resulted in marches on Nantucket. I read in the Inquirer and Mirror, the Nantucket paper that racism was alive and well, and that is when it hit me. Confronting History, the two words that would inspire me to write this novel. It was like a veil had been lifted. The story was crystal. It had been there all the time, a story just waiting to be told. Mornings were full of ideas and days were spent writing. Thrity-three thousand words came pouring out in the first month, then 48,000, within three month the first draft was completed.

Now let's talk about process. Writing is the easy part, editing and rewrite are much more difficult. Getting rid of the inconsistencies, filling in the gaps, improving the flow, adjusting the characters and the plot and coming up with the appropriate ending takes weeks and weeks and numerous review cycles. For me, 8 to 10 review cycles seems to be typical, by then I'm ready to pass it off to the professional editors to do their magic.

In my previous novels all characters were created from whole cloth, a figment of my imagination and their influence. With Oh, Nantucket most characters were already known to me but still there were those who took control of the story. Anna Fortes was one of them.

I did not realize until, it was pointed out to me by one of my readers that Anna Fortes was my surrrogate. She was doing what I wanted to accomplish — to preserve the history of the Cape Verdeans who had made Nantucket their home.

Inspired by my readers, my early morning hours are again filled with supplemental tales of Danny Montiero, which I will include in future blogs.

Dios ba ku nhos!