A Confession

Authors are often told that they should write every day. This seems obvious. Daily creating helps us hone our craft, develop new stories, and finish our works in progress. It’s part of the reason why NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, began. NaNoWriMo participants are encouraged to complete a 50,000 word novel in November (1,667 words a day). Drafting a novel that quickly is quite an accomplishment and developing that daily writing habit might extend into the other months of the year. Realistically, if writers aren’t writing every day, can we can really call ourselves writers?

Here’s my confession: I haven’t written a word for over a week.

Instead, I had to take on the difficult task of lounging on a tropical beach.

But here’s something interesting about writers, when we’re not putting pen to paper (or typing words on a computer screen), we’re still creating. Every situation we’re in, every life experience, leads to ideas for stories. So while on that beach in Punta Cana, my daughters and I met interesting characters, um people.

There were the three young men who walked the beaches selling jewelry and wood carvings and taught us Spanish.

The sober bartender, Victor Rosario, who warmed up to us, gracing us with a smile and a song.

The bubbly business woman who flew in from Brooklyn for a few days to celebrate her 25th birthday. And the parasailor named Lesly Orely who agreed to loan me his musical name for a character in one of my books.

We were also immersed in the setting of Punta Cana — palm trees and peacocks, plantains and Mamajauna (the local liquor), cigar smoke and sea breezes. Of course, our setting was staged, we stayed at The Level at Melia, but it gave us a taste of a foreign world and me creative possibilities — murder mystery at an all-inclusive resort?

However, I didn’t just lounge on that beach, I also did some pretty aggressive reading. The great thing about being a novelist is that my textbooks are novels and I brought several with me on our trip. During the week, I read The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, a wonderfully funny and poignant romantic comedy with terrific character development.

Then I started Stephen King’s latest, The Outsider, and had an epiphany.

Before leaving for the Dominican Republic, I took Tim Storm‘s online course on writing sexual tension (not sex scenes, scenes leading up to the sex). One thing he pointed out was the push and pull of intense sexual tension. Characters are pushed together — he winks at her, she rests a hand on his arm. Then they’re pulled apart — she realizes that he was winking at the woman behind her; he sees that she’s pointing out a stain on his sleeve. And then the pushing/pulling cycle starts again.

Well, Stephen King does the same thing in The Outsider, not for sexual tension, but for whodunit tension. One minute you swear Terry Maitland killed the boy, turn the page and you’re sure he didn’t. This goes on for the first 188 pages and it’s impossible to put the book down. Luckily, I was stuck on a beach with only the waves as a distraction. I realized that I could use this pushing and pulling technique for all sorts of tension throughout my books.

I confess that I neglected to write while on vacation, but I did develop ideas for new stories and discovered techniques to improve my trilogy. I also learned how to stand up paddle board and that “la vida es buena” means “life is good.”

Where you can find me this weekend and throughout the summer:

Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Lit Fest, June 9th, 2018 from 10:00 a.m to 2:00 p.m. I’ll be at the Chicago Writers Association (CWA) tent selling and signing copies of my books and of The Write City Review.

UW-Madison’s Write-by-the-Lake, June 11 – 15, 2018. Heaven on Earth for writers! I’m offering a workshop on setting and will emcee Open Mic for those brave souls who want to share their work. If you’re a writer, be sure to check out this amazing writing retreat.