A little bit about my writing history - Part 1

I was reflecting on my writing history today and decided I would share it with you.

I wrote my first short story in the 9th grade for a Literary Club contest. It was a horrible story about a teenager winning an auto drag race. It did NOT win anything. I might actually have a copy somewhere. Maybe I should frame it and entitle it "What not to do!"

I didn't write another one until I was 25. I submitted my first one at age 28 to a science fiction magazine - it was rejected. I sold my first one at age 51 ("He Wasn't Always Old"). I published the first of ten books at age 58.

From 1991 to 2003, when I sold HWAO, I had written about 30 short stories, all but two science fiction. I submitted about four or five and sold two, neither of which were science fiction.

The realization that I was not a science fiction writer finally hit me, and I moved on rather than trying squeeze the square peg into a round hole. In the fall of 2003, just before HWAO sold, I had already decided to write a novel. I had no idea how to do that, so I bought The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, written by Evan Marshall, and read both the book and the workbook.

I felt I was almost ready. I read Ken Follet's excellent WWII book, Hornet Flight. I wanted to see how Follet handled point of view, so I charted the entire book noting which character was the POV for each chapter. Then I counted how many and what percentage of the total each character had. This knowledge, combined with Marshall's nice plotting "plan," gave me my personalized framework I used to plot (in Excel) my first novel, Operation Devil's Fire, which by the way had a terrible working title of The Threat Of Horten 18. Yikes!

I still use the same version of the plot plan I devised in 2003 because it works for me.

Part 2 Coming soon: How I decided on WWII novels, how I picked Sgt. Tom Dunn as my main character. Why Operation Devil's Fire was NOT the first novel I finished writing. The pain of trying to find an agent. How ODF became the first novel I published.

Thanks for stopping by.