Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
The first story I wrote that anybody acknowledged was in my last year of high school. I remember that I wrote it for the school magazine. Right after I graduated high school I went into the Navy, and while on leave between boot camp and my first duty station I was asked to come to the school and talk with the senior English class. It was there that I found out that my story had been submitted to Columbia University and had taken the article of the year award.
What is your writing process?
I am what the industry calls a 'pantser', meaning that I create stories and write by the seat-of-my-pants. It is a bit of an unconventional writing process, at least by comparison to other authors I know. The taught method is to laboriously create an outline, scene breakdowns, etc., and assemble it into a novel. But I get an idea in my head for the story, I write a few crib notes in my old style reporters notebook, and then from that point on I simply follow the movie that plays in my mind. Seriously, I can see the entire story unfold like a film and my job is to follow the characters and their actions and transcribe their actions into words.
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