How did you come up with the idea for your book?
All of the following made some contribution to the formulation of the idea for my novel, Romantic Misadventures of Two Miami Denizens.
military experience-I served in the U.S. Army and my duties were at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Fort Knox, Kentucky, Fort Story, Virginia, and Point Barrow, Alaska. So the two denizens from Miami in the novel also joined the Army and served at these posts.
reading program-constant reading led to ideas for stories and information regarding writing style. I enjoy reading biographies and autobiographies of famous writers as well as books such as Interviews with Flannery O’Connor.
Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism (1973) contains innovative ideas useful to both journalists and writers of fiction.
interacting with persons that crossed my path-this type of stimulation was most helpful for developing ideas for characters. When one of my fictional characters is similar to a real person, I use the person’s real name initially in writing. This makes it easier for me for I can anticipate the character’s actions and words. Later on I employ the Microsoft Word’s Replace command to change the actual name to a fictitious name.
living in Miami-Since I lived in Miami for many years, I used this city as the geographic basis for the novel.
attending professional conferences---especially those held in New Orleans. This led me to employ this fascinating city as the starting location in my novel.
summer jobs-I worked right on a farm one summer and assisted the dairy farmer in delivering milk another summer. These experiences crept into the novel.
What expertise did you bring to your writing?
As a college professor, my activities include writing and editorial work. I publish articles in refereed academic journals. I often wondered whether scholarly writing would have any carryover to the writing required in the “creative domain.” Although the two areas of writing have certain differences, there is a great deal of overlap. Both require knowledge of word usage, spelling, and punctuation, as well as organization and lucid communication of a message to be delivered, etc. I therefore learned that there was indeed transfer of training.
I found that certain courses studied in high school and college gave me background for writing stories. In my case, the classes that proved most useful were English Composition, American Literature, Experimental Psychology, Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy of Education. In the last three courses students were required to produce brief, tightly written papers.
What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?
My mother was kind to an old woman who appeared to be poor. The lady lived in a tumbled down shack. She would go to the back door of a restaurant and say, “Do you have any old bread or fish heads or bones or other food scraps for my dog?” But the woman had no dog. My mother would often provide food, clothing, and other needed items to the old impoverished lady.
But when the woman died her will revealed that she had in reality been rather wealthy. And in the will she bequeathed a tidy sum of money to my mother’s first child, which was me. I inherited the money when I turned 21 years of age, at which time I immediately purchased a metallic blue Jaguar XK 120 fixed head coupe with Dunlap road speed white wall tires. My father thought this was foolish and he urged me to instead invest the money in blue chip stocks. But this English machine was the car of my dreams, so I went against his will.
After completing Infantry Army basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey and serving duty at Fort Knox, Kentucky, I was assigned to Point Barrow, Alaska. Before I left for the frozen north, I gave the keys to the car to my father. While at Point Barrow I received a letter from my mother telling me that my father had fallen in love with my Jaguar. He liked to drive along the narrow, curvy, country roads near our hometown, enjoying the speed and road maneuverability of the machine.
So when you read in Romantic Misadventures of Two Miami Denizens that York inherited money from his favorite aunt and that the two denizens, York and Biff, served military duty at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Point Barrow, Alaska, you’ll know where these ideas came from. And if in any of my writing you encounter a character driving a metallic blue Jaguar you will be aware of the antecedents for that idea.
As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?
I would like to write a criminal detection thriller. To prepare, I am perusing Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels to gain knowledge of police procedurals. I am also reading works by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie, and Elmore Leonard. I may read some of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Best of Mystery in case I decide to give the criminal detection novel a spine-tingling twist.
I am thinking of preparing a book comprised of a sampling of my short stories, essays, poems, reviews, sketches, a play, and correspondence. A tentative title is
Potpourri. It is modeled after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 blockbuster, This Side of Paradise, which is also a composite work.
When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?
I took several small steps before undertaking a big step. I submitted poems, short stories, and essays to E Zines. I also experimented by writing very brief pieces, never more than 500 words, that I call “Snapshots.”
Incidentally, I found the private website of Piers Anthony, the well-known science fiction writer, useful in locating publication outlets. “Predators and Editors” is also useful for that purpose and contains a wealth of other information useful to prospective authors.
I pieced together some of the earlier, less ambitious works to generate longer stories---first novellas and then a novel.
The fact that some of the published works I encountered were not of great quality encouraged me to try my luck.
What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)
The worst advice was: “Give up on writing. You will never get anything published.”
The best advice was to cut down on narration and inject more dialogue. One of my editors said that I should employ dialogue to make the story move along and develop the plot. She said I should do more showing and less telling and thereby get the reader more involved. This was initially difficult for me, for as a professor I like to pontificate. I also found Elmore Leonard’s ten rules of writing useful. He spoke of making the author invisible or unobtrusive and outlined certain mechanisms to enable the writer to do so. His tenth rule is: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” An analogy in the domain of drama might be: “The actor should convince the audience that he/she is not acting, so that believability can set in.”
I studied the dialog in the novels of Ernest Hemingway and Elmore Leonard, as they are the masters of dialog. The novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were also helpful. Chandler’s use of metaphors and similes is first rate.
Do you outline your books or just start writing?
I have never used an outline in my writing. I do take copious notes, however, some of which are influenced by my readings. On occasion I say the words I have written onto a tape and then listen to them. Depending on my mood and level of confidence, I start off a story using a legal pad or a word processor. Even if I don’t have a clear idea for a story, I write almost every day. I never wait around for a sudden flash of creativity or originality. In my opinion one must write and write and write, and supplement the writing with reading and with interacting with persons in one’s environment. In my case I set aside a definite block of time for writing each day and my work is conducted in a fixed setting. I like it to be relatively quiet when I write, although I sometimes play instrumental music while writing. And in between the time I stop writing for a day and then resume the next day, I engage in unrelated activities. One such activity is to read good detective novels, such as those authored by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie, and Ross Macdonald. Or the activities might be physical in nature. It is possible that my subconscious is implicitly working on my own story during the interim.
Here is my website: http://manicreaders.com/richardhwilliams/
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