A little about my writing process and why, even though the Cardinals are whiners sometimes, they are still better than the Brewers.

I know all of the sports fans out there don't want to read my thoughts on my writing process first, so I'll mention the National Championship Series first.  The Cardinals are going to win this in seven games.  My saying this will almost surely be enough to curse the Cardinals and cause them to lose.  I have been reluctant to make any predictions, but my publisher Bruce Sarte had kind of challenged me, so I feel that I must now speak up.  The Cardinals team is loose; they know they are not meant to even be where they are, and perhaps they shouldn't be here, but in all honesty, that no longer matters because here they are.  I think the Cardinals are going to continue playing loose.  The pitching staff is going to come through for them and the big three will get hot.  Berkman, Pujols, and Holliday have not hit Brewers' pitching well this year, but I think they are going to break out.  Finally, any team that has Nyger Morgan on it should lose if the baseball gods have any influence whatsoever.  May the Cardinal rally squirrel raid his nuts and hide them for the entire series.

In one of my facebook updates, I remarked that I am really happy about where my writing process has recently taken me.  I'm more of an organic writer.  I don't plan everything out word for word, scene for scene, page for page, chapter for chapter etc.  I get a vague idea of where I want to go and I ramble off.  I know that this causes me to waste a lot of time in my writing, but I have discovered that going the intense planning route does not make me a better writer.

Many things come together for me when I let them simmer.  Lately, the play Next to Normal has been brought to my attention which I've mentioned before, so I won't say anything else about that.  I did watch some scenes from it that I found on youtube. It's an incredible play, and it gave me the one element of my own novel that I needed to make it come alive.  I'm killing the half of the book that was supposed to take place in Shadowlands and concentrating on something more contemporary.  Next to Normal addresses the topic of ECT and its effect on the severely depressed.  I did some research and found out that it is also used for adolescents.  I decided that my main character's twin sister, Dee Knight is going to be an adolescent who has had ECT.  The dominoes of the rest of the story have been falling into place.  If I give it another few days, my subconscious will continue to work on it until the entire plot falls together.  I'm at that manic, anticipation phase where things are about to come together.  It's exciting.  Writers love it when a plot comes together.

One of the things I have to do is some research on ECT.  I've found some information, but what I would really like is to find someone who has actually had it who would be willing to talk to me in confidence about his or her experiences.  I know the portrayal you get in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is not all that accurate, at least today anyway.  So if anyone out there would like to talk to me, he or she can email me at stevecrosswords@yahoo.com.  Everything will be held in the strictest of confidence.

So, I'm excited about what this novel could be.  Hopeful, it will be what I'm hoping it to be.