By far the most common question I get from people who are interested in my writing is: “How do you do it?”  Mechanically, how do you get the words onto a page that ultimately form a book?

I think they like to hear quirky stories about the writing process, like what George Will told me about how he writes his op/eds—longhand with a fountain pen.  Or like the novelist who writes an entire book longhand on yellow pads, gives them to a typist, and never looks at the book again (thankfully I forget which author it is who does that).  Or the author who uses a MANUAL typewriter, because he always has.

Frankly I don’t understand why anyone would use a manual typewriter for anything except a museum exhibit.  You occasionally hear that he started writing that way and that’s just how he does it.  I guess that makes some kind of sense, but I started writing with crayons.  I don’t think I’m stuck with them forever “because that’s how I started.”  My father, who has been writing books for sixty years, certainly started with a manual typewriter.  I watched him write many books on a manual typewriter.  But I also know that he just bought a new computer last week for his book writing.

In any case, the way I write is also a big quirky, I guess.  For the first two novels I published I did what most would do.  I sat down at night after work, after the kids (all five of them) went to bed, and wrote for an hour or so on a computer.  The usual Microsoft Word document creation.  I was so afraid of destroying or losing my book that I created each chapter as a separate file.  When it was done, I printed it and sent it off to my agent and editor.  Very common.

But for the third book, and every one thereafter, I have dictated the first draft.  As an attorney who started practicing in the 80s, I had to learn how to dictate.  Not with a secretary sitting across the desk and taking shorthand—although there were those who could and would do that—but dictating into a small hand-held micro-cassette recorder after which you’d give the tape to your secretary who would transcribe it and bring it back as a printed document for editing.

After learning that skill (takes about an hour to learn) I grew accustomed to dictating most everything from letters to long briefs.  In the early 90s when computers became more common on attorneys’ desks, many stopped dictating and started typing.  That is the norm today—more attorneys type their letters/emails/and briefs than dictate, but many still dictate (it is much faster, in my opinion).

So the way I do it, and am doing right now on my next novel, is to dictate in my car while driving to and from work.  My commute is about twenty to thirty minutes, and I spend most of that time dictating into a micro-cassette recorder.  When a tape is done, I FedEx it to my former secretary who has a transcription machine at home.  She transcribes the tape into a double-spaced manuscript and emails me each section.  When I get each section (they’re not chapters yet), I unite them with the previous sections and the book grows until it is completed.  I don’t really even look at the sections when they come in, I just incorporate them and save them until it’s time to edit the entire book.

I know some won’t believe I actually do this, so I found a tape of me dictating Falcon Seven and have had it converted into a file you can listen to see how I actually do it.  If you are interested in how I introduced a character or dictated punctuation, you can  you can listen to it here and here.

So what am I looking at when I dictate?  Mostly traffic.  Sometimes stopped, sometimes moving at eighty miles an hour.  It can get interesting sometimes, because the car I drive has a six speed manual transmission.

I don’t use outlines, I don’t use summaries or anything else, and I don’t look at the previous sections.  I just watch the story unfold before my eyes, and dictate what I see.  On occasion I will even dictate at home.  If I have some time, and it’s quiet, I’ll go out on my back patio and watch the moon come up and dictate in the evenings.

It usually takes twelve to sixteen tapes to complete the first draft (and about six months).  Once I’m done, I then edit the manuscript at home on my iMac.  The editing can take about the same time as dictating, usually six months.  I start at an hour a night or so, and as submission dates get closer, I have to take more time.

Then it’s time to submit the book to my editor at St. Martins.  In the old days, I’d print out the manuscript, single-side double-spaced, 500-700 pages, put it in a big padded envelope and mail it in to the publisher.  Not any more.  Now, like most things, you just email it as a Word attachment.  Saves a lot of printing and postage.

That holds true until it’s time to do the copy editing.  But I’ll save how that works for another day.

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