All hail the King: Writing Process Revealed Part III

My residency at Bradley Place was only one year. Even though I moved away -- and moved on -- in some ways that place never left me.

Almost three years after I packed my meager belongings and moved out of my studio apartment, I returned to it for the first time.  Not in reality but in fiction.  Little did I know that I would be staying there for the better part of four years.  That's how long it would take for me to finish telling my little story.

Not unlike the first time I moved into this place, I brought little with me.  One thing that I perhaps should have had, but didn't, was an outline.  For that negligence I will accept my flogging from the headmaster of the School of Proper Novel Writing Technique.  Honestly, I wish that I could be that organized.  My mind just doesn't think that far ahead. 

All I had with me was this budding situation (i.e., What if the quiet, unassuming neighbor was charged with killing his neighbor) with no idea where I would go with it, which may explain why it took me four years to reach the ending.

As I would later learn from master storyteller Stephen King, in his book, On Writing, this isn't as awful a starting point as it might sound.  (On Writing, you should note, is the only non-fiction book to make my Ten Books list of books that made me want to be an author.  Without it, I very much doubt that I would have finished writing my own book.  So for writing On Writing, I owe Mr. King a huge debt of gratitude.)

In On Writing, Mr. King gives six key rules for writing a bestseller.  The first of these is the one that stuck with me: Forget plot, but remember the importance of 'situation'.  In his view, "plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible."  He goes on to argue that "A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot." 

Such statements were considered blasphemy by some in the creative writing world.  But for me -- a writer who never took a creative writing course -- they were liberating.  I was suddenly freed to take my situation wherever my sometimes wild imagination goes.  The result was Lost in the Ivy.

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[Pee Wee Herman]

Wha are the Ten Books that made you want to become an author? Don't leave us hanging man!!