David Reinhardt

The very first? Well, the furthest back I can remember properly would be about fifth grade. We had an assignment to write about anything we wanted, and I chose to write about a father and son that were separated. I wrote about how the father had impregnated the boy's mother at a hotel and abandoned her there. Pretty dark material for an eleven year old to write, but that was the sort of stuff that I saw or heard about in my daily life. Write what you know after all.

First off I like to list out the events I want to occur for the chapter I am writing that day, I prefer to write a chapter a day rather than let it be split up, keep the same idea going. Once I have a few good ideas for the chapter I start up music and go about writing out those ideas. Each one a paragraph I get the basic idea out, and then when I am satisfied that I covered the basic ideas I tear the chapter apart for what other ones joined in. With this new mix of ideas I set out to repeat the process, adding more and more until the chapter feels like a mini-episode in the life of a character. That's for fiction, for non fiction I found that chapters are harder to define, ideas come in as I'm writing and they don't quite fit in with the rest.