Your author slogan is “a different world in every book.” Why don’t you pick one topic and just write books about that? That seems to work for everyone else.
I have too many stories in me to confine myself to just one world. Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the period between the wars -- roughly 1919 - 1946. Several of my novels are set during that time. Look at everything that occurred: radio (its beginning and rise to prominence), film (from silent to sound), music (swing and big band), art (cubism and the avant-garde), theater (the Group Theatre), literature (F. Scott Fitzgerald), dance (Isadora Duncan) -- and so much more. It can be argued that those years were some of the most influential in the whole of the twentieth century. So much fertile ground for one story after another.
With two exceptions, all my novels take place during that time; but, so far, all the stories have been different: the American home front during World War Two, Paris in the 1920s, and a film-noir detective series set in 1930s Los Angeles. In addition to those, I’ve written about a future San Francisco destroyed by an earthquake, and a world on another planet where the making of babies is the prime industry.
What is your writing process like?
You always hear of writers who sit down at their typewriter at 8:00 a.m. and write straight through until noon making sure they turn out at least ten pages a day. I'm nothing like that: ninety-percent of writing happens before you ever sit down at the typewriter. The research, the thinking about characters, about how they interact with each other and with the plot -- these all come first. I spend a lot of time cogitating about the research, the people, the ideas and let them organize themselves in my mind. At some point everything aligns itself just right and I sit down and start typing. This probably comes from my many years working at newspapers. When you’re on deadline, you don't have the luxury of writing and rewriting. On many occasions, I had to sit down and type out what became the article, with no time for rewrites. I guess I taught myself to organize the details in my head while I was driving back to the paper.
Once I do start writing, I’m concentrating on just getting things down. I don't worry too much about specifics of plot -- I put down something like "they meet at a restaurant and have a fight about something." I can clarify it later. Once that’s done, I put away the pages for a few days and think about something totally different. This allows me to clear my mind. Then, I go back and read what I wrote. This is when the book begins to take shape. I try to write every day -- sometimes new pages, sometimes rewriting or editing. But, if I don't feel like writing I don't. You can’t force yourself to write. It has to flow naturally.
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