WORK, WORK ON IT

If there is something that stands out in my writing over the years, it’s editing what I’ve written. That should come after a bundle of rewrites.

Before all that, is deciding what to write about. Ideas come and go. It's the one that sticks with you day and night. Something you believe in. Best dealing with what you know.

Stick to the facts, much needed in fiction. I published a book called HARVEST. The main character has a deadline looming, with distractions driving him up the wall. His publisher sends him off to a tiny, third floor flat - with few amenities - in Paris’s Left Bank.

Finding too many distractions, he ends up in the Dordogne, a region east of Bordeaux.

I’ve lived in France numerous times. To research what I needed to give this book a sense of reality, I went back with the plot buried in my head.

I have no idea how many rewrites I made on HARVEST. The book would end up around 360 pages, after the publisher’s editors had taken a whack at it.

Author’s comment: I’ve been asked from time to time what keeps me on track. Funnily enough I start a book eager to know how it's going to end. When fiction books or screenplays, I’m in two different worlds. A storyline that draws me into it, and my life away from it.