Ask the Author: Jack Drafahl
Answered Questions (6)
Jack Drafahl
Jack: I went diving at Santa Barbara Island in 1996 and found a deep cave that went back inside the island. When I came up from the dive, I wrote three chapters of the book. Ernie Brooks, the president of the school was on board, read the chapters. He saw it as a new direction in life. We were still doing magazine articles at the time, so it was put on hold. We stopped writing for the magazines in 2005, and started writing novels full time.
Jack Drafahl
We both went to Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. We found out that we had a better chance of getting our pictures published if we wrote the text that went along with the photos. For the next 35 years we wrote for 16 different magazines and ended up with over 800 published articles. All non-fiction. We wanted more and liked the idea of making stuff up instead of documenting a product of travel location.
Jack Drafahl
Jack: Sue is rewriting Acroname Book four O.M.G. I am researching the next Acroname book D.I.Y. and a new book in our "Time and Space" series called "Polaris".
Jack Drafahl
Writing to make money should be always second. It is nice to get paid, but when that is your motivation, you will not write as well as when you write for fun. When you first start, write about what you know. Then learn how to become experts on subjects you would like to write about, but have very little knowledge. Create a team of proofers that have people who can spot missing words, find mistakes in continuity, and someone who is very good with grammar problems outside the norm.
Jack Drafahl
As a husband and wife writing team it gives us something to do together. We see good and bad writing. We try to improve ourselves to the level of those that we consider very good, and make sure we don't make the mistakes that we see in those we don't like. We like the idea of writing about things we may not be able to do, or impossible to do.
Jack Drafahl
Jack: We both have been writing for 45 years, and can't remember ever having that problem. One thing that makes that possible for us is that we write in series. I write the core, and Sue expands it to a full novel. We then negotiate the final edit, and agree that Sue is right.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more