The cruising part of my life has begun in full force. #writetip It’s been a whirlwind of travel through the north-east of the United States, and today I’m writing from Severna Park, MD. I’m looking at the Chesapeake and feeling rather spoiled. It’s only two days now until we reach our sailboat. She’s up on the hard and we’re about to begin our preseason maintenance on our Lagoon 380. Somewhere in the midst of that, I have to find time to write.

So my question today is: what’s the difference between a journalist and a fiction writer? A novelist is not restricted by facts. I think a journalist can report and still keep themselves separate from the person they are writing about. It might be hard to do sometimes, but possible.

To me, when writing a novel, the author must put themselves in another person’s place. Understanding a character’s motivation can only be done, if you as the writer can switch places with the character. A scene comes to life when the writer controls the events, decides what will happen when, who it will happen to and so on. Sometimes writing a scene is an emotional roller coaster for the writer, but then, I think , it’s probably an emotional scene that’s worth reading.