September 4 question – If you could pick one place in the world to sit and write your next story, where would it be and why?
The awesome co-hosts for the September 4 posting of the IWSG are Gwen Gardner,Doreen McGettigan, Tyrean Martinson, Chemist Ken, andCathrina Constantine!
There’s this little lake I know, not exactly in the mountains, but in the high plains. The altitude is about 8000 feet. It’s got a wonderful view of several mountain ranges, depending upon which direction you look. On a normal days, there’s at the most, three or four people there- more cows than people, but they are on the other side. The cows, that is.
Ducks, geese and the occasional seagull swim on the lake’s surface. Along the shoreline, songbirds play hide-and-go-seek among the bushes. Their songs mingle with the lowing of the cattle.
There’s not an electric plugin to be had, so once the battery on the laptop is dead, it’ll be writing with pen and paper. The nearest town, population under 600, is fifteen miles away.
But to sit there in the shade of one of the few trees (or bring my own) and write! No distractions, no cell phone service, no internet, no one bothering me. That would be heaven.
So I’m not going to tell you where it is. You know the song…you call someplace paradise, you kiss it goodbye. I’m not ready to for that.
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Take my book Wolves’ Knight as an example. I’d planned out a romance subplot for Tasha, my main character, and even started writing the scene where she and the planned romantic lead got hot and heavy with each other. And promptly got stuck, because she started fighting me. She had a different idea about how things should go. I had to set my ego aside and swap up the plot to satisfy her.
A similar thing happened with The Baron’s Cufflinks. I’d written what I thought was a great chase scene, but something didn’t sit right. The action was great, the words were fine, but it just didn’t work. Then Harmony, my main character, convinced me it was because I’d told it all wrong. That wasn’t the way it happened. I put aside my ego, scrapped the scene, and rewrote it the way she wanted. I have to admit, it was better her way, but I still liked mine! It involved the sheriff and the highway patrol, a bad guy or three, and Harmony throwing her shoes at one of them. Thankfully, I was able to use pieces of it in the revised version.
Because I don’t plot out my books step by step ahead of time, I don’t always know what I need to know for a book until I need to know it. Guns appear in all of my books, but I can tell a pistol from a revolver and a shotgun from a rifle and that’s about it. There’s a lot I can find on the internet, but I’m lucky enough to work with a number of people who are very knowledgeable on the subject and are more that willing to help me out. They were the ones to tell me the rifle that appears on the cover of Wolves’ Knight is real and not a fake.
