Like a lot of things, it's all about the preparation. So much to write but how to order it all...

Fiction is one thing. You can make it up. Tiresome detail is never allowed to dominate. However hard we try for it to be gutsy or 'real', fiction to some extent comes sanitised.

On the other hand, biography, and particularly auto-biography, is stuffed full of detail and if not grubby, then at best chaotic. To tell a story well someone or something needs to impose some order on the chaos. And then there is the dance with truth... sticking to the facts should not be confused with the truth... They are not the same.

So the first task for me is defining a structure - a sweater - to head up the thoughts and divisions in the first story, 2 SWEATERS & SOME PIES. This is in play. Breaking up the biographical detail of a family dating from 1830 and putting those people, dates and things into a framework based around a sweater. It could be a quilt, a deck of cards, the ingredients for a meal. Anything to carve up the information into smaller more manageable pieces...

The second task for me is to wait for the voice for the second story, THE PAYSCALE OF THE DOVE. To do that I sometimes try out all sorts of different voices, by writing. More often than not the voice comes to me when I am doing something else. Eventually I will hear it and then it will speak through me, often at great speed.  IN THE SMOKE OF THE SAGEBRUSH was written almost in one sitting.  FIESTA LATINA took only a week. But each of these books was a long time, even years, in the brewing...

This blog is part of the process that is being shared with you...