Welcome Terri Main

Going Full-time Once Again: Lessons from my Past for my Future

The year 2012 looms in front of me as a year of change. Next year, after close to 30 years of teaching, I'm retiring. It's a whole jumble of emotions. In some ways, it will be a great relief because the California Community College system is undergoing a great deal of change at the state administrative level. Not all of it is good in my opinion. My health isn't what it used to be either and I can use a slower pace. On the other hand, I love to teach and it has been my life for the past three decades. I figure years on an August to May calendar rather than January to December.

So, what does this have to do with writing, books and being an author. Well, it takes me back to a place I was before I started teaching full-time, which would be about 22 years ago. Back then I was writing full-time. As I enter retirement I'm going to be returning to those roots, but I'm going to be better prepared.

Back then I had been “forced” into it by a recession (sound familiar) that cost me my job in advertising. Back then I had little time to prepare, and honestly I had a lot of irrational and romantic ideas about the work of a full-time freelance writer.

You know the image. The writer blasts through a novel in a few weeks, which is instantly picked up by a major publisher and the next thing you know you have a six-figure advance and a date on the Tonight Show. Okay, maybe I was a touch more realistic than that, but I did figure most of my writing would be for magazines and book publishers. The reality was much different.

First, because I started freelancing without anything more than the two-weeks severance pay in my purse, the two main considerations when choosing a writing project were: (1) How long will it take? And (2) How much will it pay? My first concern was always paying the bills.

Anyone going into full-time freelancing should have six months to a year's expenses covered. That gives you enough time to do a few of the projects you want to do and get a few income streams going before you have pay all your bills from your pen. Fortunately, retirement gives me enough money to cover the basics. Not much more, but I don't have to make that sale to buy groceries. I also have some savings for the extra expenses that come up including those for marketing. There is only so much you can do with social media marketing.

The second big “surprise” for me was that most of my work was NOT for publishers. Being moderately well known in the area for my marketing skills and advertising copywriting, my first, and most lucrative, projects were advertising pieces such as radio commercials, brochures, newspaper ads and a bunch of other business writing. I could get paid $25 to write a one-paragraph blurb about a Bed and Breakfast Inn for inclusion in a travel directory. I got paid up to $400 for some radio ads. Compared to being “paid in copies” for short fiction writing, it was a no-brainer economically, but hardly the most satisfying writing to do. Among my many projects I wrote catalog copy, video documentary scripts, commercials for both radio and TV, resumes, cover letters, press releases, brochures. I even designed bookmarks and business cards.

Fortunately, I can enter my second round of full-time freelancing being more selective. I don't actually mind some of the advertising and marketing work I did. Certainly, writing press releases and designing brochures can be fun. It would be even more fun with today's desktop publishing programs that can take the heavy lifting out of design projects. However, I know that diversification is the key to writing success. Sure, if you are Stephen King or Nora Roberts, you can keep doing the same type of writing and make a good income. However, most of us have to build multiple income streams. That means writing for a local market doing business writing or writing for a local newspaper or magazine, writing short pieces for national publications and longer pieces as well. Most freelancers do not have the luxury of being too specialized.

Finally, I discovered that, for me, writing and teaching went together. I am at the bottom of my soul always a teacher. Much of my nonfiction writing had a seed of education for the reader buried within it. But writing also led me back into teaching. Being fairly successful as a writer in my small town, I was able to propose some writing classes to the local college, which eventually led to part-time employment there as a teacher and public information assistant. That laid the foundation for me to apply for the job I have now.

It seems that writing led me to teaching which leads me back to writing. Oh, and also to teaching. I'm starting up my own online school for people who just want to learn things without having to matriculate at a college or pay an exorbitant fee to a major for-profit entity. And, you got it, My first class – Novel Writing and next year Magazine Article Writing. Now, that's the best of all possible worlds: Writing lessons teaching people how to write. It doesn't get any better than that!

Terri Main is an instructor at Reedley College, in Reedley, California where she lives with her five cats. She has been published in more than 50 national magazines and is the author of Dark Side of the Moon, Parmenter's Wager and A Question of Defense published by Muse It Up Publishers. She is also the author of Creative Calisthenics: The Ultimate Workout for the Writer's Imagination. Her new online learning space is Education Wants to be Free (http://www.educationwantstobefree.com/classroom) New classes are starting in February in Novel Writing, Computer Mediated Communication for Writers and Magazine Writing.

Welcome, Terri Main

How I Write a Novel

I would like to begin with a disclaimer. I do not claim that this is THE way to write a novel. Nor do I claim it is the BEST way. I’m not even sure it would work for anyone other than myself. However, it may amuse you to see my process. If some of it is helpful to aspiring writers, that’s a bonus.

I probably should narrow this down to “How I Write a Mystery Novel.” I haven’t written any other kind. Mysteries have their own challenges. A good mystery is a puzzle wrapped up in a story. If they puzzle is too easy to solve, the reader is bored. If it is too hard, they feel they haven’t been given a fair chance. At the end, when the culprit is revealed, the reader should be saying, “Of course, it all makes sense. Why didn’t I see that?”

Likewise a mystery must be a good story. It must have characters the reader can love or hate or be amused by. It must be an enjoyable unveiling of the main characters as they go about solving the mystery. A less than perfect puzzle can be excused by the reader if the story is fun. 

Ideas

One of the perennial questions asked of authors is, “Where do you get your ideas?”  Most authors don’t have very good answers because they have a different type of vision than others. A car cuts most people off on the freeway and they say, “What a jerk!” The author says, “I wonder where he is going so fast. Is he running from someone? Why is he running from them? Who might be chasing him?” Those questions become the genesis of an idea. 

For Dark Side of the Moon, (MuseItUp Publishing, February 2011) the idea came from a dream I had in high school. I dreamed of being a teacher on a lunar colony. We had a visit from an incredibly handsome golden eyed alien. He was arrested for a crime he didn’t commit because of prejudice. I defended him.

I wanted to do something with that dream. I decided I didn’t want to go the alien route. I wanted to stick to hard science fiction, but I also wanted it to be a country cozy. For a country cozy, you need a small town. Well, how do you build a small town on the moon? You build it underground with a dome simulating sky, etc.  So, I created a small town and placed my school teacher who becomes a college professor who used to be a profiler with the FBI in the middle of it.

Characters

For a cozy mystery you need a sleuth. The sleuth is either an amateur or someone for whom police work is not their full-time profession. Since you are aware that this character may well be subject of other novels and short stories, you spend a good deal of time with them. 

First, I get a clear visual image of the person. Carolyn is about five-foot-four, 55, slightly graying hair. She dresses conservatively. She is not fat, but she is continually struggling with her weight. 

Next, I make a long list of likes. Favorite colors, foods, books, music, hobbies, etc.

Then comes a list of beliefs: religious, political, philosophical

This is followed by personality traits: reserved, bold, volatile, controlled, etc.

Then, I write her backstory. What was her life like before the beginning of the story. 

I do this for each of the major characters. I do it for the sleuths, the victim(s), the suspects and the killer.  With the killer I pay particular attention to the reason for the crime. At the end of the novel, I want the reader to understand totally and even empathize with the criminal. The scariest villains are those in whose eyes you see yourself. 

Plot

I start at the end. I have to know who-dun-it. Sometimes I will even write the last chapter first. It gives me something to aim at. But at the very least I need to know who killed the person(s), how and why.

Once I have that settled, I can go back and ask other questions:

·        Who else might want this person dead?

·        What are their motives?

·        Who is the most obvious suspect? (They are not the killer, of course.)

·        What clues will need to be planted in the story? (This would include interviews with suspects and witnesses, physical evidence, financial matters, documents and in the case of Carolyn Master’s mysteries psychological profiling. 

·        What are the detours in the investigation?

·        What secondary crimes may be solved that do not impact the main crime?

I also begin to plan the secondary plot. This is the plot that involves the character herself. In Dark Side of the Moon Carolyn is dealing with reconnecting with people and rebuilding her life after the death of her mother. There is also a love story unfolding. She also needs to deal with some demons from her past. 

Now, I step away from paper and pen (since most of this I do in notebooks). I lay down on my bed. Close my eyes and watch the story unfold in my mind. It’s like I see it on a movie screen in my head. Some scenes are clearer than others. But I get an overview of the whole story. 

Then I get up and make a very brief outline. I just jot down the main “landmarks” in the journey my characters take. 

Writing

I tend to write fast and furiously. I don’t edit as I write. I give my characters their freedom to take me where they want to go. I let them decide many of the paths we take between the landmarks. I try to not let them do things contrary to their character. I try to let them speak and act through me. I know it sounds strange, but it’s sort of like method acting where you portray the character from within.

I don’t always write sequentially either. Sometimes I just feel like I need to write a certain scene, so I write it whether it is in order or not. This is a writing frenzy. I am just trying to write as fast as possible to get something, no matter how bad, down that I can edit later. 

Editing

I let the writing rest at least a month before trying to edit. The first thing I do is read through what I have written and try to put the pieces in order. If there are some missing pieces, I take the time to write them. Then I do major revisions. This may mean cutting out entire chapters and paragraphs. It also means me checking everything  for consistency. If one of the clues is a left shoe hidden in a closet and I don’t have a scene where they find that shoe, I need to write that scene.

This is followed by tightening the prose. I read the story out loud and correct the grammar and awkward passages. Then comes proof reading to get the manuscript as clean as possible.  Finally, I format the manuscript according to the publishers guidelines and send it in.

Then, well I get started working on something else.

That’s how I write a mystery novel.