Steve Patton's Blog: Mepho Press - Posts Tagged "natives"

I am often asked, "How do you write?' And I know the answer should have some logic and form to it and it doesn't. I have had both High School and College writing classes...yes, I've been taught the "correct" way to write a book...you have a writing plan, you map out your chapters, you pre-plan everything from start to finish. That's not me.

I write chapter by chapter. Even I don't know the ending or I may know how I want it to end, but not how I get there.

When I sat down to write The Marsh Chronicles (now The Marsh Adventures), I intended to write a one-page happy story about a dragonfly having fun with his friends in a marsh setting. That soon became two pages, then three, and the story started morphing and changing. Then I heard a sound...not a sound, but an ominous feeling coming to the marsh..."what is that?" I asked myself, and then I saw an insect flying into the marsh, once it was close enough, I recognized it myself, a spider wasp. That is how I write. Kincaide was never an original character...and if there is a spider wasp, there must be enemies. That was the first time the book took a turn and it was no longer going to be "happy days in the marsh."

The second book I wrote for my son was "The Sun Also Sets"...my protagonist gets bit by a viper on the African plains and lays dying...I had no intention to kill him off this early in the story, I did intend for him to lay three days in agony with a fever until he started coming out of the poison though...then I heard a voice "I will save him.." and I said "who are you?" "I am an unnamed native of Africa, but I will save him"...enter Kondoo, the Postal Worker from the North. I had no intentions to have this character in my book, but he showed up one day and offered to help my protagonist.

People would probably think me crazy on my writing style, but that is how it works.