Ask Heidi Cullinan discussion

Ask me anything you like here about the craft and PITA of writing.

Have you always written or did you start later in life and have you written in any other genre?

Macky wrote: "Have you always written or did you start later in life and have you written in any other genre?"

I seriously have been writing novels since I was 12. Before that I played Barbies and Weebles and they always had epic plotlines. When I first started I wrote fantasy mostly, but it was always romantic fantasy. In high school I started writing historical romance, and then in college contemporary. I actively began attempting to get published in 1998.

I didn't begin writing gay romance until much later, though gay characters began to seep in right away. They always took over the show, and everyone found them more interesting than my straight characters. In 2005 a friend told me to stop making them secondary and make them the heroes. "But where will I sell that?" I asked, and she said do it, and if it's good it will work out.

I meant Hero to be a novella, but it went long, and meanwhile I'd been working on Special Delivery for three years. (It was supposed to be a short story. Fell THAT fact, as Damon would say.) When they were done I started googling, and the rest is history.

I write even when I don't put it down on paper. There are probably fifty novels in my head I'll never write down because they were thinks that entertained me on a car trip or some such but they eventually drifted out. Ideas I'm never short on. Time and a body able to keep up? Always a problem.

Do you find it harder to write a short story than a full length novel?

Macky wrote: "Do you find it harder to write a short story than a full length novel?"

I seriously suck at short. Almost universally people either think it's weird or wish it were longer. The last short I wrote I ended up turning into a novel.

There are people who do short well. I'm not one. I'm even worse at poetry. Like, beyond the beyond bad, unless it's satirical.

No probs.. The rest of what you do is awesome! Sod the poetry.. Hehe! Thanks for taking time to answer. Gotta go but " I'll be baaack " as the big Austrian guy says.

I'm supposed to be reading this book called Love Lessons.. ;D

Macky wrote: "No probs.. The rest of what you do is awesome! Sod the poetry.. Hehe! Thanks for taking time to answer. Gotta go but " I'll be baaack " as the big Austrian guy says.

I'm supposed to be reading th..."

I'm here all week, and if there turns out to be desire for it to go on longer, we can do that too.

Heidi, do you work from a plot outline or fly by the seat of your pants? Do you have a fairly good handle on your MCs before you start writing or do you discover most about them as you write? For that matter, what comes first, the story idea or the characters?

Evaine wrote: "Heidi, do you work from a plot outline or fly by the seat of your pants? Do you have a fairly good handle on your MCs before you start writing or do you discover most about them as you write? For..."

Okay, this answer is kind of strange. Somewhere in New York City, Damon Suede is also rolling his eyes.

My process is very, very messy, and any attempts I make to alter it usually shut everything down, often permanently. I do create outlines at different points in the process, but I never stick to them. Fever Pitch, for example, is sold, and I wrote a synopsis to do so, but I still have a third of the book to write, and already it's taken right turns away from what I said it would be.

Outlines are at best skeletal guides for me, and they morph and change to suit the story they support as I go. I begin writing with an idea. Often I cannot remember how it began. Special Delivery happened when a (gay) employee at my local food co-op leaned over to a checker as I was paying and said, "That delivery guy is hot." The alley hookup scene exploded in my head before I got to the car, and everything expanded from there. Nowhere Ranch happened when I was incredibly angry for my friend who was marrying her longtime partner but whose parents were being complete asshats, making her cry and sending horrible letters and basically turning her happy event into their personal pulpit. I was washing dishes, fuming, and suddenly I heard, very, very clearly, a flat Midwestern drawl start talking to me, telling me his name was Roe Davis and he had a story. Roe was very loud, very sharp, and he was one of the more seamless packages I ever got. Miles and the Magic Flute came out of a Vicodin drug trip, ditto Kissing the Dragon.

Many, many times though even the idea is a journey. Fever Pitch happened when I'd turned in Tough Love and was writing something unattached to a publishing house because Saritza wanted to play the field because New York has been interested in gay romance. I said, okay, we'll give it a try and see if they've got anything worth biting. I tried to revive a story I've been playing with for years about two guys in a small town, one reclusive, one outgoing. That story always dies, but I kind of nudged in those ashes, keeping the small town concept, and somehow I got to thinking about a story built around the idea of a hookup gone wrong but then the guys got thrown together. Like, they'd think they were never seeing each other again, but then SURPRISE. I thought, they'll hook up in the small town, graduate, and then one will go to college, and the other will follow as a kind of fluke.

I had a whole college built in Dubuque, Iowa, because I was FINALLY going to set something in Iowa. I mapped out the synopsis...and then all of a sudden I just KNEW one of the guys knew Walter from Love Lessons. I tried to say no, this is Saritza's book for whatever, and then it EXPLODED. I could see the whole damn thing like crazy, so clear. When I thought about doing anything else, it died in my head like a wilting flower. So I wrote Sary an email with the synopsis. She said, "Fuck New York, I want this book!"

It's changed again since that initial concept. I learn a lot about my MCs as I write the first 30k, which is the section most likely to be revised heavily or completely. I have 60,000 discarded words in Love Lessons. Special Delivery likely has 150,000, and I'm not kidding. It's not always that stark, but it often is. Double Blind, Nowhere Ranch, and Let It Snow came out like butter. Everything else was a battle, very often reducing me to tears and swearing.

I have a lot of soundtracks, and I listen in the car and while I clean the house and while I write, and the songs usually reveal things somehow. I'll get whole scenes or concepts out of a song on repeat. Like, Fever Pitch got born because of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFVhSD... You won't watch that and think, "Oh, okay," but my muses do.

My family puts up with the same soundtrack for about six months while I work and edit. They notice when new stuff drifts in and sometimes ask what that sparked. (The also get really damn tired of some. My daughter says she never wants to hear JLo again after Tough Love.) Music is often how I get unstuck. I know I'm in trouble when I don't like the music for a book anymore, and often I can get the juice back by browsing iTunes. I'll also use my huge whiteboard in my office, sometimes notecards, and sometimes I just whine a lot. My husband listens and then says, "You'll get it. You'll be fine." He's a smart man.

That's my process. It's insane. I do not recommend it to others, and if yours is similar, I'm so sorry.

I love, love, LOVE seeing into the mind of the author, how things work for them, how things DON'T work and what things are mutable. Thank you for being so open and detailed about your process. I find it fascinating. :)

Well, for what it's worth, I do see some similarities, enough to know that I am not Doing It Wrong, as they say these days.

That is fascinating - I love how each of us finds a very different path to putting out a book.