Moving Right Along

Recently, I took my 12-years-old Honda Accord to the dealer to have a dead headlight and a failed brake light replaced.  The technician said it would take about an hour, so I just turned over the key, and retired to the customer waiting area, which had comfy sofas and chairs and a big screen TV.  I took with me some writing materials because I wanted to work on a few details for my fourth Thomas O'Shea novel, Of Mists and Murders, details I hadn't ironed out yet, in my iron head.

An older woman soon joined me, asked if I would care if she turned on the TV.  I was fine with that.  The lady, who looked like an octogenarian Hobbit, settled into a sofa and began watching "The People's Court," a show I had never seen before.  It was distracting, but I worked hard to ignore the peculiar people on the tube.  What was even more distracting was that the local advertisers for the show looked like twenty-something blondes with Barbie figures enhanced by implants.  And they were advertising for personal injury local lawyers.  Every single ad had the same kind of woman, whose feet never get wet in the shower, promoting one lawyer or another who really, truly, cared about me.

The aging Hobbit had zoned out, staring at the screen, mouth slightly open, nearly catatonic, taking it all in.  I fought off my tendency to be judgemental, ignoring the court cases, sneaking a peak at the commercials.  If I ever need a personal injury lawyer....

GOOD NEWS ALERT! I now have my very own website! From now on, you can catch my blogs and lots of other information about my work, and me a little, at www.johncarenenwrites.com.

For that, I am entirely grateful to my Book Concierge, Rowe Carenen, and David Garrison, genius website guru.  Come see!

A Writer's Wednesday

In my previous offering, I wrote about what it's like, a little, as a full time writer. I also alluded to the fact that I was about to write the final chapter of my most recent novel, which would have been Chapter 35. Guess what? Well, I did finish the novel last night, but it was Chapter 37. Things happened that I didn't expect, including a blizzard and a puppy and a couple of scenes in a pub. If you're a writer, you know how that happens. If you're not, let me try to explain. People say, "How in the world can something can happen in a story you, the author, are writing, and how can you be surprised? Aren't you in charge? This doesn't make any sense!"

They're right and wrong. Yes, I am the writer and I am in charge, and responsible for, what I write. But no, I'm not surprised when something happens I didn't plan on happening. How does that happen? Well, if I'm writing regularly, and I'm talking about several pages or even a full chapter, then the story sort of writes itself, in a sense because the story is happening inside my head, and things can intrude - scenes, dialogue, action - that I didn't plan. I do not outline. I do not write the last chapter first. I don't even know how the novel is going to wind up when I start. In this case, I did know that there would be redemption at the end, but that was it. How was that going to happen? Don't ask me. I can't answer the question.

So, how does it feel to have finished? It's good and bad. It's good because I've accomplished what I set out to do. It's bad because it's over, the relationships I have with the characters and the story. What's next? I'll set it aside for a while, several weeks maybe (Stephen King sets his aside for three months), but I'll still be thinking what I'm going to do to make it better. I'll get ideas, I'll jot notes, I'll answer questions that should have been answered in the book (why does that guy bite people instead of say hello?) and so forth.

In the meantime, I am going back to Of Mists And Murders, #4 in the Thomas O'Shea series set in fictitious Rockbluff, Iowa, which is what I was working on when the idea for this other novel shoved its way into my schedule. In other words, when I finish writing something, I write something else. Grand, isn't it?