WRITING A NOVEL? HMMM

I’m asked often during casual conversations, how to write a book? Where do ideas come from? How do you keep the story going for three, four hundred pages?

I don’t know. Other than possible ideas drift through my head and disappear. One persists in hanging around. It’s hard to shake. And there you are.

One began while working for a weekly Montreal magazine. The guy in the next cubicle stood up waving a book. His first. If he could do it etc.?

Each of my books – or screenplays – begin with me asking myself: “What if…?"

What if… teenagers facing a dull summer discover a plot to steal priceless paintings from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. (Montreal Adventure)

What if… a writer sent to isolate himself in Paris was suspected of murder?

Author’s comment: I had lived in France several times. One year spent in Paris and the Dordogne. Perfect settings for what turned out to be a wild ride for the book’s main character. (HARVEST)

COWBOY (working title)

I have always loved westerns. Be it in books or film. From the past. I was lucky enough as a kid to have a horse, a pony. We called her BUBBLES. Why, I have no idea. I rode her mostly bareback. She had a tendency to buck me off over her head. My mom would put me back on.

I would later spend time working on a ranch for a couple of weeks one summer. And loved it. You sit back against the saddle and stay there by gripping with the knees.

I’m working on a western having already turned it into a screenplay. Then it hit me I should also write it as a book. I’m on perhaps the final draft now. Then again it may need another draft or two, or three.

Below are bits and pieces of it as a novel, just to give me the feeling of how it is working out.

*****

Mike Farnsworth moved among the horses and cowhands. If the win at calf roping pleased him, he didn’t show it.

“You could’ve skimmed a second off easy,” Farnsworth Sr. said, limping along beside him. “Make up for it in bronc riding.”

*****

The bronc bucked twisting in mid-air, landing on all fours to spin in endless circles. It snapped Mike clear of the saddle.

He hit the ground hard under the horse’s thrashing hooves.

A collective groan rose from the crowd.

“I told you to go easy on him,” Gideon said to Zacbariah.

Author’s comment: What I haven’t mentioned is Mike Farnsworth finds himself back in time. To the 1880s. And that’s where the fun begins.