Writing Down the Nitty Gritty

You've always got to assume everyone in the English speaking world is going to read your novel. Well and good. You must also make the assumption that your readers will have an intimate knowledge of every place you mention, every intersection, every stretch of road, and the geography, flora, fauna, and all the details you have so carefully harvested in the research you do for your writing.

And the readers will all be critics and they'll be outraged in you don't have the most mundane fact correct.

That's why I made my trip to Florida which probably cost at least a dollar a word. Now my characters are leaving Florida in a motor home, heading up I-95 to Boston. Have I driven this road? Mostly. In a motor home? Never.

So I'm researching campgrounds like crazy, and all the little travel details of motor home life. We actually went to an RV show a few years ago when we wanted to rent an RV to go to Burning Man (book was Festival Madness, still looking for agent). I had no idea of ever writing another RV book. Shows what I know.

Now, the RV parks are all on the web, with photos and rates and amenties. The RV in question breaks down and I have to research where you can get these suckers fixed. And the distances, so everything makes sense. Jacksonville to Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach to Fayetteville, NC. Fayetteville to Philly. Philly to Boston and a huge backup on I-95 around New Haven. O.K., been there, done that.

Because, you see, I need to put the screws to my characters, make them late, make them sweat, make the crazy, so a few things can happen. Man, I've said it before, this plotting is hard work, and all the underpinnings, the towns, the campgrounds, life on the road, it's, well, it's work, so when I thought, I have to get the group from Boca Raton to Boston, that seemed easy enough, but plot points are huge and I better not screw up the versimilitude or the story.

Easier said than done. So we're slowly getting to Boston, one word at a time, and I'm surprised at how hard it is.

Because in a genre novel, every little detail is subservient to the plot and the whole story and of course, the characters, and I've just about forgotten about Lotto, by now in Colombia inspecting his fabulous drug sub kits from Russia. Ah, what a tangled web we weave!

Grapeshot

Writing Down the Bones, the Sinews, the Connective Tissue and the Tendons

Lately I've heard and read much discussion about how productive a writer needs to be to stay au courant, so to speak. The consensus seems to be that you better muster up a book a year, although some can write three or even four. Of course an easy little cozy mystery that tips the scales at 75,000 words or the light as a feather romance that is barely 60,000 words may be easier to churn out than that 135,000 word thriller with its sixteen subplots. Some writers say, no way, and will take their sweet time, be it two years or five to produce the new oeurve.

Me, I'm taking about 3 years per book but that was with work and lots of other "stuff", but why would I bust my butt to write, write, write when no one is able to read, read, read? It is already mega-depressing to have three, count 'em three books unpublished, but think how I'd feel with six or ten? Set my hair on fire? You got it.

The Boston Globe had a long article on the topic today. Hooray fro Dennis Lehane who writes slower and better than most. If you scan the hard cover best seller list, do the plots make you want to race out and buy the books? Not me. On the other hand, the trade paperback list usually has lots of "must reads." Depends, I guess, on what you're looking for.

Here is the link to the Globe.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/06/09/top_writers_feel_heat_from_publishers_presses/