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I’m often asked why I write crime-thriller novels. Sometimes, I think the answer is easy: I love to read them, so I write them, too.
But why crime? You can tap the range of human emotions and experiences in virtually any genre, so what about crime novels is so attractive?
Read more on the Huffington Post >>
It’s always daunting to begin writing a new novel. I’m filled with questions: will I find the right voice? Will it come to me the way the others have? Will I run out of ideas? And a million others. A sense of dread pervades me, and I wonder if I’m half the writer I’ve been told I am. If I ponder these questions too long, paralytic inertia can take over.
Is it a crisis in confidence?
I don’t think so, at least not for me. It’s the usual apprehension I feel—a sense of dread—before I begin the creative trek through the minefield of the writing process. For me, it seems the natural prelude to the hard work (and the pleasure) of writing, of creating. Yes, I have a skeletal outline of the novel’s basic trajectory (or part of it) but that can never ensure full-blooded characters and a rich plot with a compelling narrative drive.
Read more on Literary Wealth >>
How things have changed. Writing on a computer or some other technological tool is de rigeur these days.
In the old days (like 15 years ago) I wrote on a typewriter, or legal pad. If I needed to communicate with someone, I wrote a letter or made a phone call.
But now, the computer is the center of this writer’s life. E-mail communication with the editor, copy editor, art department, publicity people and others is crucial. If there’s an e-mail glitch, most communication stops. Or I must revert to the telephone, which is a jangling intruder in other people’s lives. How effortless is the e-mail, while the telephone call is cumbersome.
Sometimes, the computer freezes, or some insane gremlin seems to have invaded the machine. Files get locked, a manuscript is inaccessible, words and sentences get distorted, and I have to suspend writing until my computer guru straightens things out. Now, I’m at the mercy of technology beyond my comprehension.
In the old days, I simply would have changed a ribbon.
Mark Rubinstein,
Author, Mad Dog House
“Mad Dog House” has many favorable reviews, even though it’s been out for only one month. I find that very gratifying. Many reviewers have commented that it should become a film, while others ask for a sequel. I never wrote the story with either a sequel or series in mind; rather, it was written as a stand-alone novel.
But while it has its own power, the novel, leaves plenty of room for a sequel. My concern is that I’ve read many suspense/thriller novels that were followed by poorly written sequels. They were obviously rushed so the novelist could ride the seductive wave of demand. The second book suffers as a result.
I’ve decided to write a sequel to “Mad Dog House.”
But I’ll do it only when there’s been enough time for the creative juices to flow. I find that reading reviews and listening to readers’ comments help cement the undercurrents in the novel. They also provide insights about the characters I never willfully thought about. The novel and its characters need time to marinate in my mind. It will all evolve into a new and perilous situation from which Roddy and Danny must extricate themselves, if they can.
The last thing I want is for “sequel fever” to take hold, resulting in a formulaic novel. I want Roddy Dolan and Danny Burns to ride a perilous, fear-filled rollercoaster just as they did in “Mad Dog House.” That will satisfy readers far more than a rushed sequel.
After all, a good story takes time to tell.
Mark Rubinstein,
Author, “Mad Dog House”
I’m often asked how I made a transition from psychiatry to writing fiction. As residents in training, we had to present case histories. To me, each case seemed like a mini-biography or short story. Some were stranger than fiction, and it struck me that psychiatry–of all medical specialties– emphasized the human dimension of living life. Each patient has a compelling story. It’s unique, but taps into a shared commonality. Really, we’re all different and we’re all somewhat the same, aren’t we?
Above all, psychiatry appealed to me because it aligned itself with creativity and the arts.
When I co-authored nonfiction medical books, we illustrated issues with case histories. This took some creativity, whether a story was about a man who broke down because he’d had a heart attack, or a woman was struggling with breast cancer, or a young girl was jealous of her newborn brother.
But once I began writing fiction, I could use imagination.
So, in a sense, I was always telling stories, whether they were psychiatric, medical or pure fiction. (Is there any pure fiction?)
The freedom to make stuff up provides a strange feeling of pleasure. There’s little to match the exhiliration when a patient suddenly “gets it” (that ah ha moment) or the incredible sensation you get when a novel’s plot twist suddenly falls into place, and the story assumes a life of its own.
It’s really an exploration followed by discovery and may mean finding the hidden clues within one’s self. Some psychiatrists would say it’s the revelation of the unconscious or the getting of wisdom.
When all is said and done, the very process of writing fiction is really a bit of a mystery to me. But the transition to fiction came easily.
Over the years, I’ve co-authored five non-fiction medical books for the lay reader. Now that I’m writing fiction, I’ve been asked to compare fiction and non-fiction.
I’ve been lucky in a very real way. When writing non-fiction as a physician, I often had to write case histories of patients (without revealing their identities, of course). These were always fun to do because each person is unique, and in dealing with psychologic issues, each has a unique story to tell. So, there was some inventive license in describing case histories to illustrate various points.
But one thing was certain in non-fiction: its purpose was to convey information about a specific topic (heart disease, breast cancer, psychotherapy, or child-rearing) in an informative, readable and reasonably entertaining way. So, the creative freedom was limited.
Fiction, on the other hand, involves a synthesis of experience with what the author knows of life, along with wholesale flights of imagination.
You just know when reading a novel that the author knows a great deal about certain subjects ( For instance, in Peter Heller’s “The Dog Stars,” he obviously knows plenty about flying an airplane, fishing, hunting and hiking, among other things). But he engages in wholesale flights of imagination that take the reading to another level of knowledge and beauty.
It’s that soaring imagination that propels the novel, and it’s much more difficult to capture those chimerical flights of ideas and fantasy on paper than it is to write effectively about a non-fiction topic.
Writing fiction is far more satisfying to me that non-fiction, after all, making stuff up is pure fun. Kids do it all the time.
To paraphrase what Saul Bellow once said, “When I was a child I was called a liar. Now, I’m called a writer.”
Readers often ask how an idea for a novel comes to an author. I’ve been asked how MAD DOG HOUSE (due October 23rd) came into being. It’s a very strange—almost dreamlike—process for me. I’ve found it the same way for the other three novels I’ve written which will be published over the next two years).
It’s as though my mind went through some semi-conscious period where things from the past and present seemed to coalesce and began building on themselves. In all honesty, once the story was on paper, I was unable to reconstruct its genesis. It seemed very strange, almost the way you feel when you wake up some mornings knowing you’ve dreamed, but the dream dissolves before you’re completely resurrected from a sleeping state.
Read more on the Huffington Post >>
We’ve all heard the old saw, “Write about what you know.”
In a general sense, that’s probably true, but there’s much more to writing than just sticking to those areas with which you are most familiar.
With my background, it’s easy for me to write about medicine, or psychiatry, or certain aspects of the army, or about courtrooms, or business matters–all of which are, or have been, part of my life. But I can’t limit myself to just those areas, easy as they may be to write about.
So the next logical question is, “If you’re going to write about what you know, what do you know?”
We all know much more than we may think we do. We’ve all had experiences in life.
Haven’t we all felt lust, or envy, or love, or anger, fear, anxiety, or sadness? And haven’t we all experienced loss, or a sense of triumph, large or small? Haven’t we all quested for something, or been scared, disappointed, or felt unsettled, worried, exhilirated, or encountered people of every stripe–those who are kind, gentle, caring, or mendacious, manipulative, even evil? Or people who are naive and childish, while others are braggadocious or intolerably overbearing?
We’ve all been to school, to parties, movies, concerts, business or professional meetings, and we’ve all had experiences as kids, as teens, as young adults, and we’ve encountered illness, threats, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, or guilt, or shame. And at some point in our lives, we must deal with the death of a loved one, and eventually with the realization that we ourselves are mortal.
In other words, we all live life, and that’s what we know.
If someone has an inborn talent for writing along with the desire to write fiction, it’s crucial to read, read, read, and to write, write, write.
The value of reading fiction cannot be overestimated if one wants to write fiction. It’s fascinating to read novels by different authors and see what they do-how they use language, metaphor, sentence structure, dialogue, descriptions, and how they transition from one scene to another, or from the present to the past, and back again.
A reader can learn a great deal by observing these things, by looking beyond the story’s content and observing the writer’s form. It’s a process-learning about writing by reading other writers-it happens gradually, incrementally, and without the reader quite realizing it. It happens with time and exposure. There’s no substitute for reading the genre in which you would like to write.
Again, Stephen King’s advice is worth repeating: no matter how talented you are, you’ve got to write in order to get better at it. So, while nature is important when it comes to writing, nurturing one’s inborn ability (by reading) is critical to being a writer.
It’s the old nature versus nurture question: are some things (talents of many kinds) inborn or can they be learned.
No one has a quick or easy answer to this. For sure, a writer must have certain verbal abilities and love words, whether spoken or written. Such ability comes naturally to some people and there’s little doubt that “nature” is involved.
That being said, I’m reminded of Stephen King’s excellent book, “On Writing,” where he says, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
Aside from mastering the fundamentals of language and the basics of writing fiction, reading fiction (if you want to write it) is crucial.
I’ll have much more to say about this in my next blog.