The Lonliness of the Long-winded Writer

If you ever decide to become a writer, expect to spend lots of time alone.

Writing is a very solitary process. Unless you are co-authoring something, writing is a one-person job. It's just you and your computer (or a pen and a writing tablet if you prefer to scribble long hand), and no one else. The story is, after all, coming from within you. Distractions are the hardest part. Seeing as how I'm no Barker or King, I don't have some island resort getaway to hole up in and churn out the words. I don't know that is what Clive or Stephen do, actually, I'm just sayin'... Me, I'm still a working stiff with a day job that has to put up with distractions, i.e., door-to-door solicitors, the neighbor's yappy little dog, loud passenger jets flying overhead. You know, life in pretty much any urban metropolis.

I'm luckier than most in the current economy and was able to afford a small home to call my own. I've set aside one room as my official "writing room" where I've set up my computer and will soon be turning part of it into a small research library. That is something else that I never factored into writing: Research. Seems that readers are more sophisticated than they used to be. Things have to actually be semi-factual or some people get all in a tizzy. I actually heard about an author who wrote in the intro to one of her books, (and I'm paraphrasing here), This is a work of fiction. I made all this stuff up. It probably isn't historically accurate, so don't write to me and bitch about it. Get a life and get over it.

The thing is, I prefer things to be as accurate as possible when I'm writing something. In my western novel, for example, I've done and continue to do research into the era in which it takes place. The reason being that you cannot mix eras and have the story be believable. You don't want to be writing a serious novel and have your Pony Express riders being chased down by a chopper gang on Harleys. It wouldn't make sense and readers would stop right there and chuck it in the garbage where it belongs. The same thing doesn't necessarily hold true for sci-fi, horror, or fantasy, though. In those genres, readers kind of expect the extraordinary and are more forgiving, than say, someone reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Even so, when I'm writing a zombie story, I still want the details to be as accurate as possible. Why go to all the trouble and do the research? Because when the reader gets into the story, I feel that it makes it all that much more creepier when they can relate to the surroundings. You take an ordinary, everyday setting with which your readers are familiar, then add in zombies, ghouls, demons, etc. By having the setting as realistic as possible, the reader can put themselves in the protagonist's shoes, and experience it along with them. Could this happen to me? In my home?

That was the approach I took when writing The Measure of a Man: Make the setting as believable as possible, then bring on the monsters. Apparently it worked. It has now garnered more positive editorial reviews. The latest is from Creature Feature Tomb of Horror which said my tale "brings a fresh slant to the zombie trope with [a] well-drawn and chilling period tale of ocean-going ghouls."

So, writing isn't a social occupation where you can spend time in the company break room swapping lies over coffee and bagels with your coworkers. It is a solitary effort where you may spend hours or even days without so much as seeing another human, but it has its rewards. As a newly published author, it is cool to know that what I've written, something that came from my imagination while sitting in front of my computer and daydreaming, has thrilled and chilled complete strangers.