Each of us is an author because we each have a story to tell

I wrote a book titled “An Angry God” about a young American who gets drafted during World War II. You can read this book on two levels: if you skim it, lit can be read as a “rockem sockem”  “shoot-em up” war  book.

If you read it on a deeper level though. There are a few threads or story lines that occur throughout the book: the universal struggle between good and evil; the effect of evil on individuals caught in the maelstrom of war, after that evil genie has sated its blood lust and returned to its bottle till the next time; this is what today we call post traumatic stress syndrome – it’s also one of the major themes in the book, one that may help anyone who’s dealing with this in their life by offering some insight into this condition.

The corollary to the evil genie are the acts of compassion and graciousness, small and great, that occur even in the midst of unspeakable horror and suffering, the inevitable byproducts of war.

Briefly let me talk about the writing process for fiction. You have a word  picture to paint and much like an artist applies paint to canvas, you apply those words to paper to give color; dialogue provides texture; and scene creates the context. And the thing that brings these all together is the editing process.

In honesty though I have to admit that I don’t know who it was that wrote this book. You’ve heard the expression of  an “inner muse”; whether we’re aware of it or not each of us have one. Well, my inner muse was really the author of my novel.

You have a story you want to write, something that’s been following you around all of your life. When you sit down to do that it doesn’t make sense to struggle to get the words out; rather you can do what I do which is to relax, open your mind and concentrate on following your breathing, wondering “what happens next?” Then when you get your inspiration, when your muse starts dictating, write like crazy to capture the thought, capture the words before they escape in a fleeting instant. My own creative process involves more of a frantic effort to capture my muse before it disappears into the ether than anything else.