WE ARE WHAT WE WRITE

I can't imagine any writer of fiction and certainly non-fiction that hasn't lived and experienced what he or she writes about. Logic tells me that, that is just a fact.

I wonder what Boris Pasternak lived that he was so inspired to write Dr.Zhivago? I suppose in a few minutes in Wiki Internet search, I would know. Sometimes I think it is better to just wonder about things and leave it at that. And not for the fact of disappointment of what you would find out. It's just that these are the kinds of things that random thoughts and daydreams are made of.

When I wrote OVERLAND for the last year and a half, the experiences I called upon happened some 20 years ago. But these were my travel experiences from which I could write with authority and authenticity without actually traveled to some of the places I wrote about. Of course some good and intensive research made up for that!

What's my point in all this?

We are what we write. I am currently pondering on what to write for my next book. I certainly couldn't write any spa novels, or paranormal romances. Nor westerns. No, my genre is travel/adventure and love stories. This is what I know, this is what I think is exciting...and I would think there's a pretty big audience for travel/adventure love stories!

If not, maybe I need to enlist in the military and get some new experiences in a different genre....yeah right! Like what army would take me? To paraphrase an old line: "I would never join an army that would have me as a soldier".

Yep, we are what we write. I know I want to write the sequel to OVERLAND. I have some pretty interesting ideas for it...can't really talk about it here until enough people have read it, then you'll know what I mean.

Then I would ask my readers what they would like to see...but that is another conversation for another posting another day.

Everybody has lived something. And I would encourage anybody that reads this post to try writing about it. Whether it turns into a book, a blog, some notes to yourself. There are some things that you will feel when done writing it: joy, perhaps even cathartic release. When you get it down on paper, it just seems to be more official, to take on truer meaning.


Does that mean whatever rambles around in our heads isn't official? Well, no. But writing it down could clear your head of what you've written, which frees your mind to think of something else...or even release some old demons or think of nothing. And then you begin to think of something else. And then you think about what you wrote and go back to your writing and write some more to where it gushes and then you'll want to turn it into something.

How exciting the process is....try it!

WHAT'S YOUR BOOK ABOUT?

When I tell people I wrote a book, the natural reaction usually is, "what's it about?" Well, sometimes they don't even ask that.

But when they do, I explain with a quick answer, "oh, well, thanks for asking. It's a love story". The typical reaction from women is "awwww". Ah, a signal of interest about the book! And then I get deeper into it for another few seconds: "Oh, "it's a travel adventure love story of historical proportions on the first days of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan." Huh? The looks become more quizzical at that point. I should have stayed with "love story."

If I'm telling a guy, I say it's about "traveling, meeting girls, fending off foreign invaders." The quizzical looks return.

It's coming up on two years of having this idea in my head, and even though the book is out, I still have a tricky time explaining it. If I go the historical route, I lose them at this juncture: "It's a love story on the day the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan in 1979". Oh boy, does that lose them. Afghanistan?

Ask my sister, who painfully sat through the first time I told the story out loud. It was at a Starbucks in Brooklyn and it was three hours of story telling. She was either being really nice (she's my sister) to sit through it or in total rapture about the story. Or, maybe because it was raining and we had no where else to go. Heck, the movie Dr.Zhivago wasn't quite three hours but that won like a million academy awards that year.

Nevertheless, I will let the book speak for itself. As you read into it, it is gripping, it's a page turner and you do really want to know what happens next.

So, if you read the book, I am open to your ideas on how to describe it and would be happy to hear from you!