How the Magic Happens

This week I taped a radio interview 

I was interviewed for radio this week by Sheila Bender, poet, author and accomplished writing instructor. It's a real treat for a writer to be interview by a writer. 

The questions were different from those often asked. She wanted to know HOW I do what I do. Process questions. I had to actually think about the answers. 

With my eighth novel, "Raft," in final edit, my ninth, "Without a Prayer," in the final pages, I spend most of my time writing and thinking about storylines and character arcs. In other words, DOING rather than thinking about how I do. That's what she wanted her listeners to hear. 

For example, my first paid, published work was short stories in CRICKET Magazine, way back in the '70s. In a world that didn't pay much for writing, I got twenty-five cents a word—a fabulous sum— and presentation with fabulous illustrators. It was heaven. 

It was a CRICKET editor who said of one of my stories, "This should be a book." 

"Great!" I thought. But for twenty years, that's as far as it went. I had no idea now to make that leap.

I started out writing short

I wrote songs in high school, and my first college-published work was poetry. So, I could tell the whole story in sixteen or twenty lines. A short story, to me, was an opus.

Sheila asked me, how did I get from the short story to writing a whole book. I heard myself saying, I wrote one line and then the next. Which is absolutely true. 

She also pointed out to me the number of times I mentioned walking as part of my process. Walking, with my brain in neutral, often results in me coming home say to my wife ... "I just figured out ... " whatever it is. 

It happens to me driving, too, on longer trips. Out of the blue ... I mean really, I didn't even know I was thinking about it, I say to Billie, "Oh, I get it!" Because suddenly I do. 

Writer's block? 

We interviewed Jane Yolen years ago. Said she never had writer's block because she always had multiple projects going. If one stuck, she went on to the next. 

Judy Jance told us she took a shower when she got hung up. That works! Something about negative ions from falling water and its effect on the brain. 

The thing that works for me, is simply remembering that the main magic in writing is the seat in the chair. As an ad writer for thirty years, I faced an empty page every day and got paid for filling it with real ideas. I built up that muscle. 

According to Billie, here's when it changed

Billie has known me since high school, though with a twenty year break. She's seen me work from early. It was she that pointed out I made the leap from short story to novel when I began getting up at six, nearly every morning of the year, to do nothing but write. 

Yes, as writer MacKinlay Kantor observed years ago, I ... "put my butt in the chair." I know, it doesn't sound very magical. But if you've wanted to write or something similar, I'm here to tell you. 

It's how the magic happens.