Tuesday''s Inspiration - Sue Grafton On "The Creative Cycle" #MFRWauthor

I may not finish this bit in just today but I found this an interesting look at the way someojne becomes a writer. The cycle may be a little different for some people but I really think this is what happens at least my road to becoming a writer followed much of this paty and sometimes I do go back to review a step or two.

First comes the urge. I know though I'd written bits and pieces over the years, not much of what I wrote made sense. Then I found books on writing and began to read them. Not everything I found made sense to me but often I discovered just a thread or two that led me to find some way of stringing words together in some way. I also read other writers fiction, a lot of fiction. I've always been a reader but this time the reading was different I began to look at how a writer defined their characters, used the setting or found a plot that made sense.

The second step in this cycle is Inspiration. A bit different from these weekly ones. Something tells you it's time for you to begin that story. My spark came when I was recovering from pneumonia and I received a bag of "nurse" romances. As I was reading them, one day the spark struck. "I can write one better than these." Of course I could -- Not. But I sent the story off and received editor responses. They hurt but they also made the spark brighter. From these rejections and by trying to do what the editors said, I finally sold that book.

In Ms Grafton's cycle the third step is research. Since I began my road from writer to author writing nurse/doctor romances and I was a nurse I had a built in research factory on those days when I went to work. My research was a lot of observation, and a delving into what I learned but as I continued writing, I began to look to other things and have accumulated a lot of material on other professions, other places in this world and off the world. Who knows what bit read or seen might trigger a strand in a story.

This is to be continued but look at your own cycle or road to becoming a writer and did you skip any of the steps?