{"id":1937,"date":"2014-03-10T08:11:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T15:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/?p=1937"},"modified":"2014-03-10T08:16:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T15:16:01","slug":"writing-process-process-blog-hop-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/writing-process-process-blog-hop-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing process? What process? A blog hop tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My Writing Process<\/p>\n

Judith Starkston<\/a>,\u00a0 author of Hand of Fire<\/i> (Fireship Press, September 2014) invited me to participate in this blog hop tour and answer four questions about my writing process.\u00a0 I have to warn you, it’s a bit of a mess.<\/p>\n

1) What are you working on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother used to warn me about having too many irons in the fire, as she called it.\u00a0 Like many writers, I\u2019ve got several projects going on, in various stages.\u00a0 For example, I\u2019m working on the third book of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures \u2013 my historical novel series. I’m also looking for an agent to represent “Water Ghosts,” a contemporary YA psychological thriller with paranormal and historical elements, set at sea.\u00a0 If I don’t find a good agent I’ll publish it in the indie world.\u00a0 “Looking for Redfeather,” a contemporary coming-of-age road trip novel I published under the Fiction House imprint, is now being written as a stage play.\u00a0 I had my first reading on Sunday.\u00a0 Very fun and energizing to work with talented artists on the stage adaptation.\u00a0 I have some other novel and short stories brewing on the back burner.<\/p>\n

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures is one of the few, if not the only, nautical historical series that features a female protagonist who is living as a man in the 18th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 I’m exploring some new territory in book 3, which has been a long time in the making, but then speed has never been a part of my writing process.\u00a0 It took more than six years for Star-Crossed<\/em> (Knopf; 2006) to be written and published.\u00a0 Star-Crossed<\/em> is the novel that inspired the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures, and was chosen by the New York Public Library to be among the “Books for the Teen Age – 2007.”\u00a0 Fireship Press has re-published Star-Crossed<\/em> as adult historical fiction, titled Barbados Bound<\/em>, the first book in the series, followed by Surgeon’s Mate<\/em>.<\/p>\n

3) Why do you write what you do?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I write for my own pleasure, and to explore possibilities.\u00a0 I write to try to understand.<\/p>\n

As far as my Patricia MacPherson historical novels are concerned, I was driven to write the first two because I think women have been largely misrepresented, historically. I have a passion for history and a love for my primary setting – sailing ships and port towns.\u00a0 And because three weeks working as a seaman aboard HM Bark Endeavour<\/em>, a replica of Captain James Cook\u2019s 18th<\/sup> century ship, taught me that women can indeed do men’s work aboard ship.\u00a0 History has overlooked the significant numbers of women who sailed aboard ships during the great age of sail, often as wives of warrant officers and girlfriends of the seamen, sharing their hammock and their rations.<\/p>\n

4) How does your writing process work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, it\u2019s mayhem.\u00a0 It’s chaos.\u00a0 Sometimes daring.\u00a0 Mostly, slow.\u00a0 Definitely not linear. \u00a0Each manuscript I learn something, learn many things, and the process changes.\u00a0 One thing that remains constant: I write the heart of the story first. \u00a0Something grabs my imagination \u2013 a setting, a character, a bit of dialogue, an event \u2013 and then, if it becomes an obsession, I turn it into a story.\u00a0 Somehow.\u00a0 Lots of rewrites, an enormous amount of rewriting.\u00a0 But in the first crucial draft I try to capture the beating heart, then in the second few drafts I build the structure.\u00a0 The bones.\u00a0 After that, I spend many months\u00a0 fleshing it out and dressing it up.<\/p>\n

Next Monday, March 17,\u00a0 pop on over to historical novelist Janet Oakley’s blog\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 and Alaric Bond’s blog<\/a>. \u00a0 Janet is the author of the acclaimed novel Tree Soldier, <\/em>set during the Great Depression in a civilian conservation camp. \u00a0 Alaric Bond writes nautical fiction set in the age of sail,including The Fighting Sail series, and other stand-alone stories.<\/p>\n

Both are writers whose work I admire.<\/p>\n

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        My Writing Process Judith Starkston,\u00a0 author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-we-write-a-series-of-essays-by-guest-authors","category-writing-and-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1972,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}