The word “writer” is sometimes frustrating because writing a book involves so much more than the simple act of immortalizing letters in an organized fashion. There’s a huge measure of planning, strategy, and eraser-chewing that goes into it, too. Imagine many thousands of tiny, broken-off pieces of that hard rubber that seems to leave more of a black smear on the page than actually erase anything–and that’s a fraction of what later becomes a novel. Life experiences; character observations; setting and style and dialogue research. Sometimes you just have to turn something over and over enough times in your head that you eventually stumble across the solution. It takes talking over with a friend, and occasionally just a good night’s sleep.
I sit down at the keyboard and pound on them like an angry chimp maybe, hmm, three hours out of every day. But how many hours do I actually spend working each day?
Sitting in a car with some friends, I quizzed them about superhero tropes. “What does every superhero have in common?” I’ve been playing with different possible origin stories for a superhero character that sidesteps boring clichés. I want to give him a history that’s both creative and caricatured, so it feels familiar, but pointedly sarcastic and funny. I really liked that about Soon I Will Be Invincible, a novel that’s both clever and original in its method of poking fun at Marvel and DC. (more…)
