The Genesis of a Novel
I went for a walk with my sister one day, about 6 months after I had quit my job. We were talking about the next thing in my professional life, and I wanted to stay in healthcare, but the job-hunting landscape had changed pretty significantly with artificial intelligence software, aka applicant tracking software, doing the review of resumes and rendering scores based on keywords and then elevating the applicants for review by a human. I didnât have a handle on the best keywords, and the interviews were few and far between.
While we were walking, though, I told her about a guy I had seen on a Ted Talk. He talked about determination, saying he could do âanythingâ for 30 days. I think he decided he wanted to do a 5K, and he trained every day for 30 days, and at the end, he did a 5K. I canât remember if he ran or walked the route or did a combination of running and walking, but the takeaway is that he achieved what he set out to achieve.
One of his initiatives was to write a novel. He said he would write 1,000 words every day for 30 days, and at the end of 30 days, he would have written a novel. He said it may not have been a great novel, but he could tell people he was a novelist. My sister said, âYou should write a novel. You could do what that guy did.â
I thought about it. I could definitely write 1,000 words a day, but I had no idea what I would write about. Then I started thinking about a conversation I had had with my son and one of his friends. We were driving to Cincinnati around 4 years ago to visit colleges. We were talking about how to get away with a murder, and we thought the killing wouldnât be the hardest part. We thought most murders get discovered because of the failure to dispose of the body properly. Then we started talking about how to get rid of bodies. None of us had any desire to kill anyone, but it was a spirited discussion.
When I sat down to start writing It Could Have Been Murder, I thought back to the Ted Talk, and pulled in the conversation with my son and his friend, and I went from there. I think the other big influence was being a healthcare worker for a large healthcare system. No one builds culture and leadership like a hospital or large system, and healthcare people know planning and strategy. I pulled a lot of what I used in my book from my experience in healthcare.
When I started writing, I also started doing little 1-2 minute videos on my phone and talked about the process of writing. To me the process is this: Get an idea and start writing and donât stop until you run out of words or ideas for the day. When youâre stuck, walk away.
My goal was 30,000 wordsâbased on the guy from the Ted Talk. Early in the journey, though, I wanted to know if 30,000 was too many or too few words or just right. I was taking The Three Bears approach to novel writing. What I found was that 30,000 words was novella length, and my goal was to write a novel. My 30 day journey to writing a novel required a different map, and I required a reset on my output to getting the job done. Now, I was shooting for 70,000-80,000 words. When I reached 25,000 words, I wondered how the heck I was going to get to 50,000 words, let alone 70,000. Then I reached 65,000 words, and I wondered how the heck I was going to end the book in the next 10-15,000 words.
The book didnât take 30 days. I finished the first draft in approximately 4.5 monthsâAugust 1. When I placed the final period in the last chapter, saying goodbye to the story and characters felt great. It wasnât a sad thing, and it wasnât like seeing friends who have come to visit going back home. It was just a thing. It was done, and now it was time to move on to the next thing. But being finished with the process of writing something longer than a short story or term paper or lab reportâI wanted to celebrate completion of this project. And now, this book, sort of my kiddo, is out there in the world. Hereâs hoping he or she isnât the last kid chosen for dodgeball in gym class. https://edrichfiction.com/