Four Days to Go

Writing fiction is, for me, a very different challenge than writing and editing television news. By that I mean the actual process of writing, not everything else that goes into journalism. All those years in newsrooms I assumed fiction would be easy compared to news. 

News stories generally start when something happened or is about to happen.  (Yes, there’s much more to it, but your attention span is probably as short as mine, so…) External factors usually shape the basic framework and developments of the reporting. The facts of a news story evolve, depending on when it’s told or who’s telling it. News reports themselves can shape events and opinions and affect people’s lives. Writing and producing news is a huge responsibility. 

Writing fiction is all internal, all me (except, of course, for my editors, publisher, online research, early readers, random people I’ve trapped into conversation, etc.). There is no external set of facts and developments that determine the story. I do get to just make stuff up! It’s liberating, but it’s all on me to make the story work. Creating characters and developing the plot was fun and exciting but weaving those elements together (I have an aversion to outlining) was akin to herding cats. Writing fiction is personal. My name is on it. I made it up. I picked where it started and where it ends. For now.