I remember when I first read The Hunger Games, I liked almost everything: the action, the dystopian world-building, the character development.

What I didn’t enjoy was the use of first person, present tense point of view. It seemed silly to me.

Well, guess what? Several years later, I find myself employing the same POV as Suzanne Collins, and many YA authors who followed her, for my suspense novel.

I suppose that makes me the silly one.

Actually, I realized that the immediacy that both the writer and the reader feel when “I” am telling the story is powerful. You are able to get inside the head of the protagonist and follow him or her on a compelling journey in which all other distractions are cast by the wayside.

When I wrote Fool’s Luck, I would sit for hours on end, banging away on the keyboard as I tried to capture the words flooding out of my head. I lost track of time and external reality as the story itself became the world I was living in.

I only hope by using the first person (and the present tense in the first and last chapters) that readers will get as lost in the story as I did.

Writer Anne Lamott is famous for talking about the importance of writing a “crappy” first draft (well, her language is a little more colorful, but you get the idea). She argues it’s better to finish the whole tale than get lost in the weeds and stall out before the end zone (I think I mixed at least three metaphors there, which may well be a record for me). 

With a few exceptions, I am a linear writer who relies on a general outline to guide my creative process. 
 
The problem is, after writing four books, I tend to think my first draft is good to go with only a little polishing. I forget that after draft one, the most important step in my process is a thorough critique by my wife, a fellow writer who takes no prisoners when it comes to poor storytelling or clichéd writing.

On my latest project, I thought my draft was sufficient to send to some well-connected friends for possible dust jacket reviews. Then I realized one problem: my work was still a diamond very much in the rough. It needed a lot of tender loving critiquing to be ready for even my closest friends.

So, swallowing my pride, I had to ask they trash can the flawed draft while I made some necessary repairs.

My first writing career was in journalism where speed was the name of the game as we wrote the first draft of history. In composing novels, I am learning there is plenty of time for a second go around.

​The COVID-19 pandemic and safer-at-home orders gave many of us a chance to work on a project we normally wouldn’t have time to complete. Personally, I took the opportunity to finish my current novel, a fictional memoir of a schoolteacher who wins the lottery and decides to run for president.
 
Considering the current global struggles with a pandemic and systemic racial injustice, you would think this would be perfect “ripped-from-the-headlines” material for my book.
 
These are vital issues for us to grapple with as a global community to be sure, but there are three key reasons I won’t be doing so in my novel.
 
The first of which centers on the fact I am seeking traditional publication for this book, meaning it could be a year or two (or more) before it hits the shelves. Will these issues have the same resonance then as they do now? It’s impossible to tell.
 
Second, to embrace these new issues means I would need to reject my original narrative, which was complex and nuanced already. I’m sure there is a great story out there about a president dealing with such issues in his/her first or last year in office, for example, but that’s someone else’s tale to tell, not mine.

Third, is is hard to tell such sensational stories without looking making your work look like a cheap and insensitive imitation of real events. That's the last thing I would ever want to do.
 
For now, this is my story to share. Hopefully it will make headlines of its own.

When creatives speak of being inspired by the Muses, one envisions the gentle whisper in the ear to add a stroke on a canvas or a phrase in a sentence. Perhaps that’s how it works for my fellow artists, but not with me (at least not on my latest project).
 
Normally, I’m the guy who sits down for a month and pounds out a manuscript. Solitude and focus are my primary needs, with food and water being a distant second (Maybe Henry David Thoreau was on to something in Walden).
 
For my latest book, the Muses don’t seem to want to whisper their ideas while proffering a grape or two. I get the characters from my book waking me up at 5 a.m. to start dictating their story. A professional writer would get up and start writing. Then again, a professional writer doesn’t have to get up in an hour to go to a job to pay the bills.
 
Those of us who are independent artists for whom art does not fuel our income, creating our works come in between work and chores and family and sleep. As much as I want, I can’t go to my boss and say I need to take the next week off to write a novel that may, or may not, make back the money I put into it.
 
So, in response to this challenge, I write what I can remember when I get the chance. In the end, hopefully most of the perceived brilliance will make it to the page.

While I made the leap to streaming TV last year, my wife and I still watch some shows that have a traditional 24-episode arc.
 
Recently we watched two season finales of series we have enjoyed for years. Both of them used the plot twist of bringing back old characters who had been written off years earlier. One show did so in a believable fashion that stayed true to the character and her motivations, but the second attempt was much less successful (in my eyes at least). The latter featured a storyline about a couple who rode off into the proverbial sunset after years and years of romantic tension but when we checked in with them today, their (and our) hopes and dreams had been dashed on the harsh rocks of reality.
 
While the technique worked (it wasn’t like they had been abducted by aliens and just returned to Earth to save the hero), it was so unfulfilling that I have taken to choosing the “reunion” never happened. I simply erased it from my mental hard drive and reverted back to the previous version of the story.
 
I admit this is a radical step for TV show fan and perhaps a rude one for a fellow writer with nowhere near as much experience. But I was reminded of a valuable lesson: writing is not merely an art but a responsibility.
 
It is easy to introduce more and more complex twists and turns in your narrative. The problem is we can just as easily forget we write for an audience of more than just ourselves. A series of movies or a long-running TV show has developed a loyal following and, as have we learned from the Game of Thrones ending (well, others learned, as I am apparently one of a dozen Americans who is not a GoT fan), pleasing, or at least respecting, the audience is the number-one goal of a writer.
 
Let’s just hope I get it right with my own script. Thankfully, I have a fellow scribe much better at the craft to keep me on the straight and narrow.