Anna Michaels's Blog

In the workshops and seminars, university classrooms and writing conferences,  book signing parties and casual conversations, people ask me how to begin a novel.  Each writer's process is unique. There will be similarities, of course, but

one of the most important aspects of the writing process is that it works for the particular writer.

In a lecture I heard several years ago (and, of course, I paraphrase), John Grisham stated that his process involves layering plot on plot in much the same way you'd build a model house from Lincoln logs, from the foundation up.

On that same stage, Stephen King described his writing process as catching hold of a red string protruding from a baseboard, starting to pull and hoping the string didn't break until he got to the end.  (Again, I am not quoting directly.) In that case, plot and characters are so intertwined they come to the writer  simultaneously, fully formed and eager to be put on the printed page.

My writing process is more akin to King's than Grisham's. Though sometimes a novel will drop unexpectedly into my mind – complete right down to the names of the each character, the plot lines, and the resolution – I usually start with the beating heart of a story.  Characters.

I want readers to care about my characters, to turn the pages and find out what happens next, to be so invested in the lives of my fictional people that they laugh and cry with them, root for them, and above all, love them.  And so, in the beginning stages of a novel, I treat my characters as people I've just met, folks I'm eager to know. I start with the name, and then I create the details you'd usually discover if you stopped to chat with someone you'd just met. Where are you from? What's your profession? Are you married with husband and children?

Next, I gain a friendly footing with my characters. As I get to know them better, I discover whether they share my love of music and art and books, whether they love cherry ice cream or chocolate, whether they love the capricious outdoors or prefer to stay inside where rainstorms will never catch them unaware.  I find out what scares them, inspires them, motivates them.

Finally, I unearth my characters' dreams. What do they want most in the world? And how can I, the writer, make their story interesting by withholding their dreams until they've earned the right to triumph?  Heartless, I know. Still fiction must be larger than life. It has to grab you by the heart and not let go.

Anna is currently withholding the dreams of another set of characters she loves. Her debut novel will be in bookstores on May 17th.  Tour listed on the website.

Where do you get your ideas? Where do stories come from? These are the questions I hear from fans across the country.

I wish I had a definitive answer. I wish I could say I found the ideas underneath my rose bush or in a fairy's cup or on the wings of a red bird. And maybe I did. I don't know.  When a story comes to a writer, the process is magical.  There is no one moment when I can say, Aha, I have captured a story.

Capturing a story is a bit like catching a unicorn. People say the unicorn once existed but no one has seen him for a long time. He's the stuff of legends, the inspiration for beautiful art and fantastical movies and amazing books.

Vigilance won't capture a unicorn. He won't show his face if he knows I'm waiting at the computer, agonizing over character and plot and pacing.  I have to sing and go about my business and pretend I don't know he's hiding somewhere in the forest.  I have to relax, listen to great music, play in the sunshine, plant a rose bush, watch the birds and wait for the unicorn to come to me.

Ahhh, and when he does, I am swept away by magic. I am no longer ME, but an open vessel waiting for the unicorn to fill me with amazement and wonder and pure joy. Those are the best stories, the ones that flow from the inside out.

The next trick is to get it all down on paper before The Story vanishes back into the mystical nether world from whence it came. That's where the computer and the desk and the chair come in. That's where Wearing Pajamas All Day and Subsisting on Hot Tea and Not Answering the Door or the Telephone No Matter What pays off.

And that's where I am now. I've captured another Story, and I'm chained to the chair. Send Chocolate and Tea.

Anna lives in Mississippi among the many gardens she designed and planted – Angel Garden, Enchanted Garden, Secret Garden, Sugar and Jefferson's Garden. There's a unicorn underneath her tea olive. He is faux stone and hardly ever speaks, but he makes the Angel Garden looks mystical and wonderful. When Anna can unchain herself from the chair, she enjoys tea and chocolate with the unicorn.

Naming literary influences for my debut novel would send me scurrying to the bookshelves to find the lyrical stories of Pat Conroy and Elizabeth Berg, the powerful prose of Jodi Picoult and John Steinbeck, the wonderment of Alice Hoffman, Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, and Emily Dickinson. But the truth about writing The Tender Mercy of Roses is that that no matter how much I admire the work of another author, I had to vanish to a place that's all my own in order to create the kind of magical realism the story deserves.

Initially my writing place was filled with sunlight spilling onto my desk,  cardinals swinging on the lady banks rose outside my window,  gardenias scenting the room, silly floppy dogs under the desk licking my ankles,  a cup of hot tea within easy reach, and wind chimes singing a silvery song beyond the porch swing. But that's merely the physical realm. This novel could never have been created solely with the conscious mind grounded in a place that can be seen and heard and touched.

This story came from dreams spinning their magic while I slept and a rambling rose in my Enchanted Garden that only bloomed after the death of a beloved friend and the beat of Native drums called up from memories buried so deeply they could only surface when I let myself vanish into a place somewhere in the unconscious mind.  It's a place not easily found, one that requires abandonment of the ego and total surrender to the Writer Who Listens to Music Only She Can Hear.

How do I know? Because each time I read the story during the long journey from creation to publication, I fell in love.  I laughed and cried and cheered. And I felt as if I were reading a novel written by someone else.

Actually, it was. When I'm writing I am not Me.  The flesh and blood writer in baggy sweat pants and tee shirts who  battles chocolate cravings, hates exercise and constantly tries to keep two not so smart but mostly lovable dogs from vengefully soiling the rug while she glues herself to the chair in front of the computer somehow transforms herself into a Woman Whose Dogs Would Never Pee on the Rug, a Woman Who Sees Deep Inside the Soul and Writes With Wings.

I wish each of you a holiday season filled with joy and peace and magic.

Anna Michaels lives in an enchanted cottage in Mississippi with two obstreperous dogs who think they run the show.  Her debut novel, The Tender Mercy of Roses, will be in bookstores May, 2011. Visit her on Facebook and at www.annamichaels.net.