The Writing Process Blog Tour

/ A writer's life, Multicultural / By

This week I was asked to do this week\’s post on The Writing Process (as if I have a for-real process.)

I want to thank my friend and fellow author Ellen Parker or inviting me to join The Writing Process
blog hop. Ellen writes Romance from the Heartland and you can find out more about her at http://ellenparkerwrites.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/the-writing-process-a-blog-hop/.

What am I working on?

I\’m in the middle of multiple projects right now.

  1. I have to come up with an ultra-short story for a publisher who likes my Flash Fiction (he\’s been publishing me for the last few years and this month mine is the Featured Story). 
  2. I\’m preparing the Kindle version of my third contemporary, multicultural YA novel, Minority of One.
  3.  I\’m in the middle of editing a fourth YA novel about two teen cello players who end up dealing with a murder before I send it off to my agent. 
  4. Last but absolutely not least, I have dusted off an old adult romance novel I abandoned in 2009 while writing my YAs and and trying to get that into shape. Unfortunately that story deals with the newspaper industry, so it also needs modernization. (Who knew the world would change so much in only a few years)

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I beleive in creating a diverse cast of characters and letting them be as realistic as possible. My tagline – Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men and the People Who Love Them. I want to put the write kid into the right story, be he/she white, African American, Hispanic or of any other race or ethnic group.  And since many of my characters are male, I often find myself adopting the male persona and POV. I find I am much bolder as a guy than as a girl!

Why do I write what I do?
I believe everyone has a story, no matter what their age, gender, race, culture or ethnic heritage.  And everyone, especially kids, deserve to see someone they can relate to on a page. I have dealt with universal issues, especially father/son conflicts, but also such real-life areas as domestic violence, culture clashes, and adoption issues. These things impact everyone, not just the majority culture, and I want to reach the kids who seldom get to see themselves reflected on the pages of the books they see.

How does your writing process work?
For me it always begins with the character.
I admit to mild schizophrenia, I seem to accumulate alternate egos in my head. But instead of seeing a doctor for medication to vanquish them, I let them live. I get to know them. I seek out their strengths and try to figure out what lessons they need to learn to overcome their weaknesses and make them better, more complete human beings.

Once I know the characters, I pull together a plot, the events and turning points necessary to make them change and grow. For David Albacore whose weakness was a near-crippling guilt after his mother is killed, that meant PULL found ways to help him save others so he could retrieve himself. In Minority of One I needed a plot that would let Neill realize he had a right to his own future, not one others planned for him.
For more information, catch me on Goodreads or my website, http://babinns.com

Interested in checking out the process used by other authors? Next Monday there are two exciting writers:

1.  Patty Blount, who writes novels for teens that feature kick-ass characters who can certainly save themselves, but prefer having friends to help along the way. Her debut novel, SEND, featured an unlikely hero in Dan Ellison, a bully searching for forgiveness after he causes a classmate\’s suicide. SEND was a Junior Library Guild pick in 2012. Her latest story, SOME BOYS, is a story about rape and rape culture, and will be released in August, 2014.

You can find Patty\’s Writing Process on March 31 at http://www.pattyblount.com/category/blog/.

2.Shannon Kennedy lives and works at her family business, a riding stable in Washington State. She writes mainstream western romance as Josie Malone and young adult fiction as Shannon Kennedy. She currently has 11 books under contract, eight in print and three that will be released this year. Visit her at her websites, www.josiemalone.com and www.shannonkennedybooks.com to learn about her books.

Her writing process will be up on March 31 at http://www.josiemalone.com/writingtherangeblog.php