starrwriter
11-23-2005, 02:00 PM
How does one become a fiction writer?
To a large degree, I did it while traveling. For 15 years I took two or three trips each year to mainly tropical destinations. I wrote long letters to friends back home describing what I saw and the people I met. My friends raved about the letters and at some point I began to feel I could use my experiences to write fiction stories set in exotic locations, like Somerset Maugham.
There is something about being in an unfamiliar place that lends itself to fantasy -- and lying, which is what fiction writing is in some respects.
I bought my first word processor while I was on vacation in Naples, a little beach town on the Gulf coast of Florida. It was one of those clunky self-contained word processors, not a computer, but it served the purpose of getting me started writing fiction. A typewriter was out of the question. I'm a lousy typist and I knew I would spend more time XXXing out mistakes and re-typing whole pages than composing stories.
One day my landlord asked me what line of work I was in. With a burst of unbridled (and as yet unwarranted) pride, I said I was a fiction writer. He loved the idea of having a fiction writer in house, so to speak, and he offered to discount the apartment rental price if I wished to stay through the winter season.
It was a very good beginning, even though I didn't know what I was doing at the time.
It was November and still hot in Naples. I slept with a large fan blowing on my bed. One morning I awoke chilled to the bone and discovered the temperature had dipped to 50F after a cold front arrived. On my walk to the buy the morning newspaper I found the town engulfed in a ghostly thick fog. I rushed back to the apartment to write a description of the fog (which I later used in a story about San Francisco.)
As far as I'm concerned, Naples is where I became a fiction writer, even though it would be 9 years before I got my first book published. Getting published isn't the ultimate criteria. Learning to think like a fiction writer and doing the actual work of writing is more important.
I soon learned that some travel destinations are good places to write and some aren't. On my second trip to San Blas, Mexico, I accidentally discovered an old hotel I swear hadn't been there during my first visit. It was an eerie place -- large and empty of guests with a dry wind blowing through it like a desert wasteland.
I decided not to check in because I was afraid I could never check out, as with the Hotel California. I pictured myself trying to write there: sheet after sheet with nothing on them except "All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy." I could see madness and axes and blood running down the hallways -- The Shining in Mexico! Not for me. I rented a small condo and sipped mescal while battling a case of Moctezuma's Revenge. Writing was just not to be in San Blas.
Singapore and Australia were much better and so was Costa Rica. I even wrote travel articles for the Tico Times, the English-language newspaper in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. I rented a monthly apartment with satellite TV in the suburbs and grocery shopped at the largest "supermarket" in Costa Rica, which was no bigger than a country store in the U.S. At the newspaper I met an interesting woman reporter who was an American ex-patriate and I wrote a short story inspired by her life.
I also wrote a wild story based on my airline flight to San Jose. I had stopped off in Florida to visit my mother and one day I went to see the film "Fearless" with Jeff Bridges. It portrayed an airliner crash so realistically I felt like crawling out of the theater on all fours. When I told my mother about the movie and where I was going, she cheerfully reminded me of a special program she had seen on TV about an airliner crash in Latin America. She kept shaking her head and saying "all those bodies scattered through the jungle." Thanks a lot, Mom.
My flight from Orlando was supposed to stop over in Tampa to pick up passengers, but I noticed we were headed south instead of west. I assumed we would stop in Miami instead of Tampa -- until I saw the Florida peninsula slip behind us. I wondered if the flight had been hijacked to Cuba, which lay directly ahead of us, and I started ordering drinks two at a time. The flight attendant finally calmed me down, explaining that flight plans had been changed this would be a non-stop flight to San Jose.
I'm glad I was feeling no pain when we landed at San Jose airport in a 40-knot crosswind. The plane bounced two or three times and nearly ran out of runway before it screeched to a halt. I staggered into the terminal building clutching my word processor. I was already writing the story in my head.
To a large degree, I did it while traveling. For 15 years I took two or three trips each year to mainly tropical destinations. I wrote long letters to friends back home describing what I saw and the people I met. My friends raved about the letters and at some point I began to feel I could use my experiences to write fiction stories set in exotic locations, like Somerset Maugham.
There is something about being in an unfamiliar place that lends itself to fantasy -- and lying, which is what fiction writing is in some respects.
I bought my first word processor while I was on vacation in Naples, a little beach town on the Gulf coast of Florida. It was one of those clunky self-contained word processors, not a computer, but it served the purpose of getting me started writing fiction. A typewriter was out of the question. I'm a lousy typist and I knew I would spend more time XXXing out mistakes and re-typing whole pages than composing stories.
One day my landlord asked me what line of work I was in. With a burst of unbridled (and as yet unwarranted) pride, I said I was a fiction writer. He loved the idea of having a fiction writer in house, so to speak, and he offered to discount the apartment rental price if I wished to stay through the winter season.
It was a very good beginning, even though I didn't know what I was doing at the time.
It was November and still hot in Naples. I slept with a large fan blowing on my bed. One morning I awoke chilled to the bone and discovered the temperature had dipped to 50F after a cold front arrived. On my walk to the buy the morning newspaper I found the town engulfed in a ghostly thick fog. I rushed back to the apartment to write a description of the fog (which I later used in a story about San Francisco.)
As far as I'm concerned, Naples is where I became a fiction writer, even though it would be 9 years before I got my first book published. Getting published isn't the ultimate criteria. Learning to think like a fiction writer and doing the actual work of writing is more important.
I soon learned that some travel destinations are good places to write and some aren't. On my second trip to San Blas, Mexico, I accidentally discovered an old hotel I swear hadn't been there during my first visit. It was an eerie place -- large and empty of guests with a dry wind blowing through it like a desert wasteland.
I decided not to check in because I was afraid I could never check out, as with the Hotel California. I pictured myself trying to write there: sheet after sheet with nothing on them except "All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy." I could see madness and axes and blood running down the hallways -- The Shining in Mexico! Not for me. I rented a small condo and sipped mescal while battling a case of Moctezuma's Revenge. Writing was just not to be in San Blas.
Singapore and Australia were much better and so was Costa Rica. I even wrote travel articles for the Tico Times, the English-language newspaper in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. I rented a monthly apartment with satellite TV in the suburbs and grocery shopped at the largest "supermarket" in Costa Rica, which was no bigger than a country store in the U.S. At the newspaper I met an interesting woman reporter who was an American ex-patriate and I wrote a short story inspired by her life.
I also wrote a wild story based on my airline flight to San Jose. I had stopped off in Florida to visit my mother and one day I went to see the film "Fearless" with Jeff Bridges. It portrayed an airliner crash so realistically I felt like crawling out of the theater on all fours. When I told my mother about the movie and where I was going, she cheerfully reminded me of a special program she had seen on TV about an airliner crash in Latin America. She kept shaking her head and saying "all those bodies scattered through the jungle." Thanks a lot, Mom.
My flight from Orlando was supposed to stop over in Tampa to pick up passengers, but I noticed we were headed south instead of west. I assumed we would stop in Miami instead of Tampa -- until I saw the Florida peninsula slip behind us. I wondered if the flight had been hijacked to Cuba, which lay directly ahead of us, and I started ordering drinks two at a time. The flight attendant finally calmed me down, explaining that flight plans had been changed this would be a non-stop flight to San Jose.
I'm glad I was feeling no pain when we landed at San Jose airport in a 40-knot crosswind. The plane bounced two or three times and nearly ran out of runway before it screeched to a halt. I staggered into the terminal building clutching my word processor. I was already writing the story in my head.