Writing begins on my first book this week, and I’m excited about getting it going. This is sort of Stage 3 of the process of getting this thing done.
Stage 1 was just reading. That’s it. Admittedly, I hadn’t read much of any fiction in several years, concentrating my energy largely on news writing since, well, that’s what I was writing. I felt like I needed to keep reading different writers in that style, continuing to pick up style notes, new ideas and influences that could help me improve. That’s what you do, right? But, about six months ago, I decided this was a shift in focus I wanted to make, from non-fiction to fiction. And I’ve got a good friend, Stan Mitchell — a terrific and successful author already — who encouraged me to make it, probably because he thinks I’m better at this writing thing than I am. Whether I’ll be any damn good at fiction is yet to be seen. [Read more…] about And So the Writing Begins …