My Writing Process Blog Tour

When I first joined the Twittersphere on Jan 20, 2014 (yes, I am that anal — I mark such dates in the calendar), one of the most welcoming and friendly voices I was found was dystopian novelist, D. M. Cain. She continues to be a source of great support to newbies and indie authors, so when she asked me to join the Writing Process blog tour, I didn’t hesitate.

Unlike normal blog tours, this is an ever-expanding, ever-growing tour, because every author passes the baton onwards to two new authors. On our own blogs, we answer four questions. Here are mine:

1) What am I working on?

I’m working on a new story, a full-length novel, currently untitled. This time, I hope to keep the story in Pakistan (Butterfly Season is set in England), give my readers a glimpse of a world that is so misunderstood.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

It’s set in Pakistan. There are practically no English language romance books out of Pakistan, hardly any popular fiction at all (support for English language literary fiction is rising, on the other hand). And, I’ve learned from the school of Urdu romance, which always revolves around a social issue. Urdu popular fiction is prolific and diverse, widely read within the country, and a great source of ideas for our TV and fledgling cinema industries.

3) Why do I write what I do?

Romance is always about individuals. It’s about their emotions, their reactions, the decisions they make, the path they choose in life. I enjoy that. I like examining our reasons for doing things.

But I am also hoping to write a fantasy novel—an imaginary world, a representation of the First and Third Worlds. This is a longer project, though, and I don’t expect to complete it any time soon. It’s still percolating.

4) How does my writing process work?

I’m an impatient writer. I start off with an idea of my main characters and a vague plan for my plot. I put in the effort of creating an outline, writing character and plot sketches, coming up with scenes and how I want them to develop. But without fail, I’ll get bored shortly into the process and just start writing.

It’s normal for me to go back and adjust the outline to fit into something I wrote. Characters tend to have a life of their own. When I start writing them, they surprise me with how they develop, which means I have to go back and change the plot or certain scenes. Or I’ll hear something, or read something, that will spark another idea and I’ll write it into the book. Needless to say, odd scenes like this will disrupt the plan of the book, and I’ll be back to fiddling with the outline.

It’s a fairly haphazard process, when I think about it, though I prefer to call it organic!

Thank you to D. M. Cain for tagging me into the blog tour! D. M. Cain is author of The Phoenix Project and is currently working on the Light and Shadow Chronicles.

I’ve also tagged two new and exciting authors for you to check out:

Roopa Menon (Author of Pyar Aur Poetry)

College beauty Arundhati Basu would rather stick her head in the proverbial oven than host this year’s Founder’s Day event with tongue-tied nerd, Nikhil Menon. Compared to the brilliant but elusive poet, D. G. Beckett, Nikhil is a green toad.

As Arundhati gets to know him, however, she finds herself oddly drawn to the shy geek, and he, in turn, grows in confidence as he spends more time with her. His hopes for a lasting relationship with Arundhati seemed to be within his reach.

If only she could forget D. G. Beckett!

You can find Pyar Aur Poetry on Amazon, Smashwords and on Indireads.

 

Yolanda Ramos (Author of The Seventh Sentinel)

The world is unaware of the war that rages between Heaven and Earth, a war to gain control of untold power hidden in ancient artefacts on Earth. The key to finding these artefacts is the seventh, and most powerful, of sentinels.

Yolanda Ramos’ first fantasy novel, The Seventh Sentinel, is yet to be released, but promises to be an engrossing story. You can connect with Yolanda via Twitter or her blog.