Lotsa people ask me how I decided to write about New York’s “Mole People,” and what process I used to write “Shadow Swans.” So I’ll tell ya.

First, the genesis of the idea: A few years ago, I saw a fantastic documentary called “Dark Days” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235327/), a documentary by Mark Singer that profiles an entire population of people living inside New York’s subway tunnels. These outsiders are called “Mole People,” and they live on the fringes of society, begging and scraping together bit jobs just to get by. At the same time, they are able to construct actual HOUSES in the tunnels, with electricity, beds, televisions, lamps, carpets… Like the “Shadow Swans” protagonist Ruby, I was transfixed by the notion of people living apart from society, but still with some of the “comforts” of modern life (not that the Mole People’s lives are at all comfortable).

After seeing “Dark Days,” I bought the book “Mole People” (http://www.amazon.com/Mole-People-Lif...) by Jennifer Toth. Toth spent a year interviewing people who lived in the tunnels. She was in constant danger, and was nearly killed at least once, but she met some extraordinary, complex, and endearing people (along with some entirely un-endearing people). She discovered that some of the Mole People align into loose communities, giving distinct roles (nurse, teacher, protector) to individuals based upon their skills.

One day, I suddenly decided that I would write a novel about the Mole People. And when I say suddenly, I do mean suddenly. Like, one day I had never thought of writing a novel, and the next I was totally obsessed with the idea. Immediately upon deciding to write a novel, I got in the shower (where I do some of my best thinking), and by the end of the shower, I had written a general story outline in my head. In the end, “Shadow Swans” actually adhered to that shower outline.

Once I knew what the general story would be, I spent a week or two writing a detailed story outline, as well as further researching the Mole People (a term that the subway population does not use, which is why it doesn’t appear in my book), and preparing to put pen to paper.

And then I signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month - http://www.nanowrimo.org/). For those of you not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s a free online community of writers who commit to writing 50,000 words in the month of November. Each member has a personal web page, and every day, you enter the number of words you’ve written, and your “buddies” check in with you, encourage you, and vice versa. I signed up to do NaNoWriMo with a couple of friends, but by the end of Week One I was the only one still plodding forward, because it is INTENSE.

For that month, I would work at my day job (I research documentaries) from 8 – 5PM without a break, and then I would write from 5PM until midnight. No socializing, no breaks. I loved it. I felt like I was on crack every day. I don’t think anything other than recording an album has ever made me feel so high and so strong and so authentic. The characters just busted off the page – I didn’t direct them, or force them to do anything, but they leapt out of my head before I even knew what they were going to do. I know this will sound eye-rollingly cheesy, but Ruby and Den and Ben became my friends. I actually cared what happened to them, and when their lives were difficult, I cried with them. I believed that the world I created for them might actually exist. Writing “Shadow Swans” was both cathartic and magical, because my life ceased to exist for that month, and there is something really beautiful about stepping outside of your own life entirely. It was like a vacation from Me.

Anyway, by the end of November, my head had nearly exploded, but I had written 50,000 words! Of course, 50,000 words is not a full manuscript – that’s only about 200 pages.

So, the next November, I geared up for another head-blasting month, wrote 30,000 more words, and edited the full 80,000-word draft.

Woohoooo(ish)! It was done, but it was painfully mediocre. I sent it to a few agents, got some really fantastic constructive feedback, realized that my main characters were one-dimensional, and Ruby was far too morose and potty-mouthed, and the story wasn’t well-constructed. [Sad face] Then I abandoned the manuscript for a couple of years, until I broke my wrist in early 2011. Unable to rock climb, or play music, or do much of anything, I plunged my head into editing my manuscript (one-handed). And I loved the editing process as much as I had loved the writing process. After another intense month of editing, I had created a manuscript that I was actually happy to share with other peeps.

So now, as you already know, I’m slogging through the world of self-publishing, and although the book industry is giving me a permanent emotional migraine, I absolutely loved every single second of the writing process. Novel Number Two is in the works, and writing starts NEXT WEEK! DOUBLE YAY.

Thanks for reading mah blog people. I heart all of you, with all my teency little heart.