Why do I #Write? A Conversation with Myself.

Why Do I Write? A Conversation with Myself

Thomas J. Nichols, Award Winning Author and Former Chief of Police

After being a cop for 50 years and suddenly becoming an award-winning author, two questions arise persistently. Why do you write, and how do you write? My responses are simple yet complex: like writing a straight line with crooked letters.

Let’s take the first part—why do you write? I write for the joy of writing and the pleasure of telling a story.

“Wait a minute,” you reply. “That’s just saying the same thing twice.”

“Nope,” I retort.

If we were here together I would show you, but you aren’t here so just follow along. At this point I would hold up my favorite 1921 Silver Dollar—Lady Liberty on one side, and the American Eagle on the other. The two sides are separate but equal—without either side, there would not be a complete coin, and so it is with the joy of writing and the pleasure of telling a story.

I find tremendous joy in creating an idea for a story, then traveling to wherever the setting of that story is located, spending time walking the streets, visiting the cafes and shops, talking to the people, and in general, getting the feeling and the culture of the locale. Then, and only then, can I relate that atmosphere into the story.

From developing a storyline, I jump to the characters—generally up to 10 primary people and potentially up to a few dozen pedestrian characters who fill-in the storyline.

My fiction is closely based on real-life events, so I identify several key incidents that fit the story, carve them up to rephrase the factual event and create it anew as a fictitious happening that resembles the true-to-life incident. Then I weave together those incidents with creative writing. In an ideal situation, those events are so tightly woven the story becomes a seamless, page-turning manuscript.

The “joy” itself is manifested when I sit down at my computer, flick on MS Word, and start with that blank page. Normally, the end product will consist of nearly 100,000 words. Then comes the almost never-ending process of critique and edit ad nauseam, but eventually, a final work is completed.

We come to the second part of “why I write.”— the pleasure of telling a story. Certainly, there is a sense of accomplishment with having completed a novel, but that is only one side of the coin. Now we flick the coin over: from head-to-tails. The pleasure comes to me by knowing that someone somewhere has my book in-hand and is reading it.

I told the story, and you, whoever and wherever you are in the world are reading my book. Or as the case may soon be, listening to my story as an audiobook.

That, my friends, is a feeling of accomplishment—a joy and a pleasure. However, there is so much more to my story of writing. Stay tuned.



PROMOTIONS

I have combined my Christie Cole Trilogy into one special eBook that contains all three books. You can purchase that here for only $6.99 here:  eBook Trilogy

Please take a minute to check out my books on my website. Each book has a sample for you to read. I welcome any feedback in the way of reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble if you are so inclined.
 

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