When I first started writing stories it seemed all there was to do was, well, to write stories. But time and experience has shown that is not quite true and that I do, in fact, have to be a man who wears many hats. Let me explain why.
Writing stories is a creative activity. You are constantly dreaming up characters, plots, dialogue and anything else that’s needed to go into a story. Sometimes it is pure inspiration, something that appears out of the ether, others it may be that you riff off something you’ve seen or heard, felt, smelt or tasted. But wherever the inspiration comes from you are engaged in creating something new.
And I’ll be honest here, this creative part of putting together a new story is, by a country mile, my favourite bit of the whole process. For me it’s what it’s all about.
However, if I was to package and release a new story as soon as this stage is completed then I would be doing a disservice to both myself and my readers. Frequently, much of what appears is peppered with spelling and grammar mistakes, and often it is far from being a consistent and high quality product. And then there’s the inconsistencies in plot and character than insist on creeping in.
It’s at this stage that I have to change hats for the first time. Off goes the writer’s hat and on goes that of the editor because this is where I have to start re-writing in order to remove the mistakes and inconsistencies and more generally bump up the quality.
The important thing to understand here is that this really is a different activity and, as such, it uses a different part of the brain. There’s more logic to what you’re doing here. It’s no longer an entirely creative process.
But it doesn’t stop there, because once I think I’m done with my re-writes and before the work is shipped off to my editor, I like to read it through wearing a third hat, that of the reader. Now this can be tricky because it requires you to take an entirely different perspective, but it helps in producing something that is as appealing to readers as you can make it.
So, there we have it. Being a writer is a multi-faceted activity and that’s why I like to view myself as being someone who wears not just the one hat but many. I am a man of many hats.
The Banbury Cross Murder Mysteries, classic murder-mysteries with a splash of humour and a little romance.