Gina asked Linsey Hall:

Hi Linsey, Your real life story is so inspirational! How did you make the transition from archeologist (and scientific nonfiction writing) to fiction writer? Did you take any courses on writing fiction or have a mentor? Thanks for your time!

Linsey Hall Thank you! Archaeology was super fun. I did not have a writing mentor, but I took loads of classes. Though the archaeological writing is very different, I had one archaeology professor who was a real stickler for simple writing (as opposed to the real sciencey sounding stuff where the writer is clearly trying to sound smart but it's just a mess). He took a red pen to EVERYTHING. If the word "that" was excessive, boom! Red pen. It was pretty painful but it was an amazing lesson that I'm so grateful for. Now my writing style is designed to be simple and clean enough that it flows right into the reader's brain instead of them having to stop and decipher any flowery language (hopefully I succeeded at this!). It's my hope that they can then focus more on the adventure at hand. I'll always be grateful to that professor, who probably has no idea what I went on and used that skill for :-D.

Once I decided I wanted to write fiction, I joined Romance Writers of America and it is an absolutely wonderful organization. I went to loads of conferences and local meetings and sat in on lectures, took online classes, bought lots of writing books (which I confess to not always reading, I prefer lectures). But one of the most useful things was hiring really great freelance editors. My favorite editor (in hindsight) made me cry and rewrite the whole second half of a book. Of course I whinged and moaned and declared I wouldn't do it because I was indie and didn't have to, but she was totally right (which I realized after my hissy fit) and I rewrote the book as she directed. I think every book after that was better because of the lessons I learned.

flag