For the last three years and two months, I have been hard at
work on a novel “Illegitimate Advantage”.
I was completely inspired to write this story, mainly because the story
line came to me so clearly. It was a
story that spoke to me from the vantage point of ethnic twin sisters who fall
victim to selfish evil.
While I was completely motivated to write the book, it was never
easy to compose. I story-boarded the novel
on the walls of my condo while living on Folly Beach and channeled almost all
of my waking hours towards it.
Since the story was told from the vantage point of twin
sisters, for the entire time (while I was writing, of course), I’m quite sure I
became a women. Not only did I feel the
dialogue of these lovely characters pass through me, I also reached out to some
of my own life challenges and applied them to the project.
I spent countless hours sketching out the contents of each
chapter while sitting on a tractor cutting the grassy pastures in the heat of
the summer. Never in my life had I ever been so completely involved in a
creative process. I was literally living a dream while at the
same time trying to put it on paper for others read.
Every single word was chosen with a sense of purpose, and
every chapter had a mission to accomplish.
Each had to capture the attention of the reader and provide a major
point to the story line.
Interestingly, I learned something about my writing process. I
realized that I did my best writing in distracting environments. Coffee houses served as my favorite venues
where I could center myself and fight for every word. It seemed the louder the conversations were around
me or the more diverting a person’s perfume was, the more I was able to reach
deeper in to my imagination.
Many of my friends and acquaintances saw me during this
insane time of my life, sitting among the fray typing. On one occasion I was so inspired to complete
a chapter, after Openroad Coffee
closed for the day, I completed a chapter with my laptop perched on the
passenger seat of my truck while the rain soaked my back. Now that was an inspirational moment!
As each chapter came and went, I never became overconfident
that I would successfully finish it. I
always feared the time would come when I hit a brick wall.
A writer’s mind might be compared to a baseball player,
standing in a batting cage warming up, when suddenly his swing goes bad. As soon as a slugger takes his stance, he
knows when he’s either got it or lost it.
I’ve imagined inspiration as being described as a writer’s
best friend whom he plays Hide-and-Seek with.
When he searches for his friend and finds him, it’s a wonderful thing.
But, when he can’t find him, it’s horrible.
Luckily my inspirational friend never abandoned me but
stayed with me until the very end, at which point I wept. I was finally done with the story and was
confident that nothing more was needed to be said.
