I read a very nice article this morning in the New York Times by Lee Child called “A Simple Way To Create Suspense“. Refreshingly free of pretence (yes, I know … ‘pretense’, but Child is British). So far, my toe-dip into the enormous corpus of literature on writing seems to indicate that most of it is not very helpful. This article was a welcome exception. Child mentions that writing instruction is often like explaining the recipe for baking a cake … ingredients, mixing and cooking protocols, etc. He points out that the writer’s more important purpose is to “make the family hungry.”
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Author: John Rogers
I have thought of myself as a writer for most of my adult life. In 2011, I became a fiction writer full time. I studied creative writing as an English major in college. Then came family and career. I worked in finance and biotech and did a wonderful stint in Vienna. Now, I have the opportunity to use those experiences as the substrate for my stories. My first novel takes on the world of Big Data and the very timely issue of cyber war. The second uses the manipulation of financial derivatives as impetus for attempted murder during a trip from Vienna to Budapest on the Danube.
I have taken writing instruction at the Cape Cod Writers Conference and from The Loft in Minneapolis. I am finding writers’ groups to be very helpful as concept editors, as well as practical advice from the published authors. I am in three such groups. I have taken writing instruction at the Cape Cod Writers Conference and from The Loft in Minneapolis.
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