Ask the Author: Tim Merriman
Answered Questions (4)
Tim Merriman
Write something for someone if you want to be a writer. Write regularly in a blog about an area of interest for you. Write short pieces for some audience. Get feedback and listen to it. Find a friend with editing skills or hire one to look at your work. Thoughtful, critical, encouraging feedback is important.
Tim Merriman
We wrote The Leopard Tree after watching a Bill Clinton special about HIV in Africa. The touching explanations of young people about how they contracted the disease suggested a potential story. Most fiction starts with "what if." We combined the improbable journey of three orphans from Africa on an odyssey across America with their attachment to their only book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We have worked and traveled in E. Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Malawi) on eight occasions and have met people working with HIV and malaria programs, so we had some sense of who we were introducing as characters.
Tim Merriman
We are writing a sequel to The Leopard Tree TLT. It takes the lives of Ramla and Masozi, our two leading characters at the end of TLT, and follows them into adulthood. African orphans raised in middle-class America are changed in their new environment but the beginning of their lies in war-torn Africa will follow the and shape their choices in the future.
Tim Merriman
I don't usually have writer's block if I know where the story is leading me. But, when I am stalled, I change projects and always have two or three in progress. Fiction requires me to stay tuned daily or I lose the voices of the characters. Non-fiction is just easier - write an outline and flesh out a chapter at a time. I write with my wife, who is a better writer and editor, and know I can just turn my work over to her to improve it. I am the storyteller of our team.
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