Ask the Author: Lisa Slabach
Answered Questions (4)
Lisa Slabach
I'm at the editing stage of a novel about a women who marries her high-school sweetheart after becoming pregnant her senior year, only to have him leave her when their daughter graduates high school. Additionally, I am working on a collection of short stories roughly based on my experiences growing up in a small farm community in Washington's Yakima Valley and a coming of age story, also based in Yakima Valley.
Lisa Slabach
The simply answer is I muscle through--make myself write 50, then 100 words. The practical answer is I go back and reread, asking myself what the possibilities are based on what has happened in the story thus far and honing in on how the emotional state of mind of the characters might influence their actions. Beyond that, I find having an outline helps me stay on course. I don't write with a super detailed outline, but knowing where I need to move the story next helps.
Lisa Slabach
First of all, thank you for the compliment--so happy you enjoyed the read! You are correct--it took me about 6 years. I didn't work on it continually though. In between I wrote two other manuscripts and a handful of short stories. I'd polish, get feedback, let it sit for a year or more, and come back to it. At one point it was a whopping 115,000 words and now is approximately 95,000. Thank you so much for the question and interest!
Lisa Slabach
When I was a VP of sales, I traveled a lot. During a particularly grueling back-to-back travel period, the idea for the story came to me while I watched a well-dressed woman jetting through LAX. That night I had dinner by myself in a Marriott hotel lounge and spent most of the time observing the other business travelers. They were easy to recognize. Some, like me, brought a book and sat alone, while others saddled up to the bar in hopes of conversation. I left the lounge, went to my room, and scrawled out a scene. Over the next month or so, ideas kept coming to me and dialogue relentlessly bounced around my head. Whenever I got a chance, I scribbled thoughts in a notebook until it finally dawned on me that I was actually writing a novel.
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