Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Guest post: "One Word After Another: My Writing Day," by Suspense Author Gabriel Valjan


I’m old enough to remember typewriters. Absent these days is the physicality of writing. A piece of paper had to be inserted into the roll. A story was smashed out with thwacks, thumps and the sound of a bell, followed by sound of a carriage return to the far side of the field for the next round. I think you can sense the pugilistic metaphor, but the one thing that nobody mentions about those olden days of writing with a typewriter was that writers did not know when the bottom of the page or canvas was approaching. Each page was a round. Each word was a punch.

I start my day with coffee. Every writer has a ritual. A routine comforts, repetition reassures and soothes the human. I’ll rouse myself to waking and I’ll work out. Mind and body follow each other, and the spirit governs both. I think you have to keep all three balanced and healthy. Writing is hard work and the human body is designed for motion. While your mind might be travelling elsewhere, the body is still in the chair. Hip flexors shorten, the back rounds, the neck juts forward and the neck will either tilt downward at the keyboard or stay locked staring at the screen. Exercise keeps the body limber and flexible, does the heart good and cleans the mental slate for the day’s work.

If you are a writer then you are a de-facto reader. You are a creature of language and images. I have no words about the creative process. Grammar can be taught. Editing can tighten the straps of sentences, but nothing can teach which words you’ll use and there is no logic as to why you will choose a particular image. You are you. Trust the lifetime of reading that keeps the imagination and subconscious bubbling.

Each day of my writing has a start and a finish. I relay the dream inside my head and create a reality on the screen. I write to get it all down first and shut off the heckler’s voice. I don’t revise as I go. I stop just before I feel I’m pushing too hard. I may put in copy edits later. The important part is to keep one word going after another until the end of a sentence, a page, a scene, or a chapter.

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ABOUT THE BOOK


Title: Corporate Citizen: Roma Series Book Five
Genre: Mystery-Suspense/Thriller
Author: Gabriel Valjan
Publisher: Winter Goose Publishing
Purchase linkhttp://amzn.to/2b9E2qE

A call for help from an old friend lands Bianca and the crew back in Boston. On a timeout with Dante, due to revelations in the aftermath of the showdown in Naples, Bianca is drawn to a mysterious new ally who understands the traumas of her past, and has some very real trauma of his own. Murder, designer drugs, and a hacker named Magician challenge our team, and Bianca learns that leaving Rendition behind might be much harder than she thinks.



About the Author:

Gabriel Valjan is the author of the Roma Series from Winter Goose Publishing as well as numerous short stories. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he enjoys the local restaurants, and his two cats, Squeak and Squawk, keep him honest to the story on the screen.

Connect on the web:

Twitter: @GValjan

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