WHY DO WE WRITE THE BOOKS WE WRITE?

What motivates an author to write THIS specific book at THAT particular time?

Some writers share their thoughts.

ROSELYN TEUKOLSKY

I’ve always had a dark soul.

In life, I’m a sunny person, quick to smile, full of brightness and light. I’m polite to strangers. I empathize with others.

But you could never tell that from reading my mysteries and thrillers. The fiction I write is dark, very dark. Evil-doers everywhere.

Somewhere deep down in my psyche there must be a dark core that emerges only when I write stories.

In my debut novel, A Reluctant Spy, my protagonist is betrayed and embittered. She seeks revenge as she spies on her colleagues in the dead of night, breaks into their offices after dark, and hacks into their computers.

In the sequel, The Fourth Woman, the same protagonist looks for love by dipping her toes into the treacherous pool of online dating. Because she is unlucky enough to be in a novel by moi, her first date goes horribly wrong, and menace stalks her throughout the dark plot.

I’m currently writing the third book in the series, Blood Match, in which my beleaguered protagonist must deal with the bleak world of organ transplants, evil doctors, and malfunctioning artificial kidneys.

I confess that I write these books because my dark soul revels in the worlds I create. There’s no escape.

It’s what I do for fun.

We writers all have different motivations. My friend and colleague, Edith Lynn Hornik-Beer, shared with me that her motivation for writing her book was her divorce! I was intrigued.

Edith Lynn Hornik-Beer

Here she tells it in her own words.

We never know what inspires us to write a book. Our imagination may be triggered by something we notice or a need we have. I am sure that I am not the first writer who was inspired by her divorce to author a book.

It turned out to be a business book. Like most women I realized I had to support myself. Thus, I asked a lot of questions of the financial advisor my bank had recommended. Whenever the advisor mentioned a word I didn’t know, I wrote it down on a pad. This was in the days before the internet. When I got home, I would look up that word in my financial dictionary, but often, the definition wasn’t enough: I needed to know what other words I should know connected with this particular investment.

This is how my book came about! I wrote a business dictionary where each chapter was a sole dictionary for one type of investment. The index showed you in which chapter you could find the word you were seeking.  And all the other words associated with that particular type of investment, were alphabetically at your fingertips.

An investment book with all related terminology at your fingertips

Edith continues: Before I gave the book to Simon & Schuster who were enthusiastic about it, I asked an expert in each field to vet each chapter. Today, even though we have the internet, when we look up a financial word it still does not automatically give us the other words associated with that one term we’re looking up. Since those many years ago, my business book has been updated to include new words which of course also includes Crypto’s vocabulary.

Today I have my book in my computer as an eBook. Most of my friends have it on their cell phones.

A click brings them to the index which tells them which chapter has the definition and all associated words. Thanks to the internet I was also able to include the websites of the related business and government associations … Edith Lynn Hornik-Beer

Here is dear writer friend of mine, Susan W. Green, who can best be described as a killer shark in sweet porpoise clothing. (Sorry, Susan, terrible metaphor.)

SUSAN W. GREEN

Why I write small-town and second-chance Romance novels.

For almost four decades, I was in banking, the last twelve years as an Executive. I always enjoyed my job and worked hard to climb the ladder. Retiring was difficult.

After my retirement, the pandemic hit, and I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Fortunately, we found it early, and after a grueling six months, I’ve since been cancer-free. But both the pandemic and the cancer taught me that I couldn’t control everything, no matter how hard I worked or how effective I was at working through complex processes.

 
In late 2020, I decided: 1) everyone needed a happily-ever-after, 2) I needed to find a creative enterprise to utilize my skills best 3) whatever I did had to be something without regulatory guidelines and strict rules, 4) that something had to give me full creative license to “just make it up as you go along”.

Hence, I took an online writing course, where I had a wonderful instructor who helped me find my niche. 

the Crystal Lake Series

 Editor’s note: The sweetest books you’ll ever read.

My fourth book in the Crystal Lake Series is due out November 7th.

Susan adds: Who knew a former bank executive could become an award-winning romance writer?

And here is another superwoman friend, Kim Gottlieb-Walker, a photographer extraordinaire. She spun her photography career into fictional gold.

KIM GOTTLIEB-WALKER

Why I wrote Lenswoman in Love:

In the 1960s and '70s, my career in the alternative press, with rock bands, and on movie sets, was so colorful, I wanted to give others a taste of that experience. But I didn't want to write a memoir. I needed a structure, and to be able to invent and add a little wish-fulfillment...so I reimagined my early career as a second-chance romance novel - which was MUCH more fun to write!

Kim and her literary babies, highlighting her brilliant career as photographer to the stars.

A love story set in the turbulent sixties and seventies.

Sex, Love, and Rock ‘n Roll!

Here is a writing buddy of mine, Paulette Brooks, who had a different kind of inspiration.

PAULETTE BROOKS

Here is the story behind my first novel.

My husband and I were new to Indiana and looking for nature trails in 2020. Our home was just north of Indianapolis, Indiana, and we happened upon MacGregor Park, a beautiful nature preserve nearby, which had informational signs explaining about the natural world and the history of the land.

The photo of a woman standing in a field looking off into the distance caught my eye. Here was the woman who at the end of her life donated this property to the county so all could enjoy the trails she walked with her dogs.

I took a photo of the sign and the story of how she got to Indiana from Scotland. During Covid, I had extra time on my hands, and also the genealogy research skills of a retired librarian, to check out this immigrant's story.

When I found her two-line obituary, which stated: Sheila MacGregor was born and died, was an important man's widow, and in conclusion "she was a homemaker," I felt compelled to find the expanded story of an extraordinary woman.

I was thrilled to find this idea for a book set in central Indiana where I could conduct research on the ground.

The whole experience has prompted me to continue writing … while working on my next novel.

In retirement, I have found a satisfying second career as an author… Paulette Brooks.

Dear Writers, there are so many books out there, all with their unique motivations. Do you have a story behind one of your books that you’d like to share? Please mention it in the Comments section below. I’m fascinated by the stories behind the stories. For example, what would compel a sane person to undertake the solitary pursuit of banging their head against a rock, otherwise known as writing fiction? Please tell…