Thank you so much Jason for being my first guest blogger! Readers can buy his book here at Amazon.com for the kindle. Also, please follow his blog Infamy and Misfortune to follow his writing adventures!
Heidi asked if I’d talk a little bit about the writing and
research process behind my recently released novel The Day I Left. These are both directly linked to the main reason
why I begin writing anything: inspiration.
Much of my work is set in foreign environments because I
have an insatiable passion for travel, a passion for breaking out of my comfort
zone into places I wouldn’t normally go, and these unfamiliar locations inspire
me to write about them. I’d written three novels (which, if you are wondering,
were locked in a trunk, chained up, and tossed into the ocean) before a single
line of The Day I Left was committed
to paper. One of those novels was set largely in Paris, written almost
immediately after my first trip to France. Another novel alternated settings
between Scotland and Brazil, shortly after . . . well, you get the idea.
In 2007, I began a year of study abroad in the southern
French town of Pau, about an hour’s drive away from the border with Spain. And
though I didn’t work on it right away, I knew I would eventually write a book
about the place.
It took me three years to start that book. And when I did, I
only had the seed of an idea. What if an
American kid came to study in France, but witnessed so something terrible and
life changing that he spent the rest of his days running away from the truth of
what he’d seen?
Okay, the idea needed work. And a lot of it. But at least I
had a setting.
The writing process was easy. Sit down, churn out words. I
don’t really subscribe to the idea that writing is some magical, esoteric thing
where the writer’s conscious mind shuts down, and the blah blah blah of “the
characters come to life and tell me what they want to do” takes over. While
that does happen from time to time, writing is mostly just work. It’s long,
exhausting, and sometimes tedious work. But without that work, the characters
are nothing. If you love it, which I do, it becomes easy.
But it is work.
Once the first draft of The
Day I Left was complete, I found myself researching locations I hadn’t been
to in three years. I pulled out all my old maps, pictures, home videos, and
hand-written notes. I memorized the layout of Pau in a way I hadn’t before,
even when I actually lived there. But there was one problem.
The town had changed quite a bit since 2007.
So, what did I do? I took a bit of artistic license. I wrote
the town as I remembered it all those years ago, but exploited the hell out of
Google Maps to make sure one street still connected to another, and to make
sure the general layout of Pau worked within the context of my story. I think
it did.
And if it didn’t, well, that’s why we call it fiction.
Great story, Jason. I love stories with exotic, or at least foreign locations. It allows me to travel a bit, too. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm such a fan of studying the differences--and similarities--between countries. It amazes me, and it's attractive to readers, I think, because many cultures seem so different on the surface, but are really quite similar to our own. There's that exotic--or simply foreign--element, which is alluring, but there is a strange sort of familiarity, too, that people find comforting. Having said all that, the novel I'm finishing up now takes place entirely in one small New England town, which is about as familiar as it gets for me.
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