In 2001, barely two years working shifts at a steel mill, I decided I needed to do something to occupy the mind numbing hours waiting on coils of steel to come out of a unit so I read. I went through hundreds of paperbacks, westerns, romances, thrillers. I went through every Clive Cussler novel until I realized Dirk Pitt was always going to save the fate of the planet at the last second from some megalomaniac swimming in money. Still, I felt I knew Dirk on a personal level and I enjoyed reading those lines where old Clive inserted himself into the story.
I gobbled up every Dean Koontz book until Odd Thomas left a sour taste I could not overcome. I ended up going heavy on Tami Hoag and fell in love with each of her heroines. I found Greg Isle and now I worship the man's writing voice. Patterson's Women's Murder Club series was enjoyable until the drama got pretty deep with Lindsay. I grew tired of Alex Cross's trials and tribulations. I dug up old Ludlums and began looking over my shoulder everywhere I went. Louis L'Amour and his uncomplicated heroes were a major detraction from the fiction I'd known up to that point.
Vince Flynn's main character, the one and only Mitch Rapp fascinated me so much I wanted a do over on my entire life and find a way to work for the US Clandestine Service. Khalid Hosseini depressed me to no end, and Franz Kafka left me shaking my head for weeks at a time.
Then I came across another author I won't mention. Suffice to say he's quite successful and falls along the lines of Stephen Hunter, Dean Koontz, and even Jonathan Kellerman, but not nearly as talented, I'm afraid.
I began spotting several distracting elements on the page until it got to the point where I lost interest in the plot, anticipating another line of dialogue spoken "reluctantly". That word peppered the pages everywhere two characters spoke to each other.
When I complained about it, the book's owner grew visibly upset and left me this parting shot: "If you could do better, you wouldn't be working here now would you?"
The shot hit home.
But not in a defeating way. It was more of a eureka moment. It was a call to action.
I'd written most of my life though I never felt confident enough to write a complete story. I didn't even graduate college for God's sake!
And thus began the attack on an alarming number of composition notebooks. I was still reading novels, but no longer as a reader who wanted entertainment but as a reader who studied every chapter, every page, every word. I began creating people and bending them to my will until I realized I was in the middle of the perfect setting to fish for characters.
Although it's assumed a writer creates a character, I've discovered sometimes the character is already written in front of you in the form of a real human being. Some of the people that began populating the pages of my notebooks could not be created by anyone. The challenge then was to give these people a purpose. To deem them good or evil, friend or foe, and soon I felt like a master weaver calmly examining colorful strands and seeing complicated patterns.
I began writing what I knew and committed the audacity of modeling one character after myself and I ran free with impressions and opinions beneath the guise of fiction. I bit back at the foremen and so called supervisors who lacked common sense and managed to ruin what was once a very productive mill. I made it my mission to capture the general discontent of every disgruntled worker and took care of exposing the other side too. Most managers were good people at heart, but their livelihood hung in the balance every single day, their actions dictated by a group of suits who pushed for a bigger profit, disregarding their human resources in every way possible.
I gave us a voice and that voice was not tethered to politics or silent under the muzzle of job security.
But I knew it was not nearly good enough to come to life inside a cover. No. I sensed I had much to learn.
It's a novel only one person has read. It's now a project that needs placed on the work table and polished to its finest luster.
What I learned was that I didn't have to outline, plot, and create characters out of thin air. The characters already lived around me. All I had to do is pay attention.
Of course, years later, when I became serious about writing a novel, my own experiences served as a launching pad for the kind of story I never thought I'd write, not even in my best dreams, and I was never to be the same again.
to be continued...
Shakespeare once wrote "Expectation is the root of all heartache", and broken hearts fail to produce.
