My Writing Process--Blog Hop

I recently wrote about how my writing process is similar to building a house, and my friend Debora Dennis, http://deboradennis.blogspot.com challenged me to continue the story by answering four simple questions. #mywritingprocess

So here we go! 

1)     What am I working on?  Earlier this month, I turned in Book Six in my historic series about The Cotillion Ball. Then, I began writing a contemporary trilogy about three generations of women in the same family. Since I decided going in that it was going to be a series, I had to think about all three, and decide the story line for each. That kind of advance planning helps me, not only in where the story will go, but which one to start with. Since all my characters will factor into each different book as secondary characters when they're not in the spotlight, I needed to spend some time thinking about each one's problems, not to mention mannerisms and eye color, etc., for each. 
2)     How does my work differ from others of its genre? I write both historical and contemporary romances, and even though they're set in different centuries, I like to think the story elements are the same. I like to write about women overcoming the odds to make their lives truly great, regardless of which time frame we're in. My historicals are set in America before the Civil War. And my contemporaries place women in different settings from their normal routines. 

3)     Why do I write what I do?  I love history. Not the boring memorization of dates and places, but I like to take normal people living their normal lives and have them react and respond to events in history. I live in a town that was a big underground railroad stop in the decades prior to the Civil War, so I think that's been influential. Or maybe it was kismet that I moved here. Either way, the rich history of my town has worked its way into my writing to some degree. I've had the opportunity to live in a variety of places in the US, and I tend to set my contemporaries in the places I've been. And for some reason, there seems to be a body of water close by in all of them. Oceans, lakes, pools, ice skating ponds, which is odd, since I can't swim. Who knows what will be next?

4)     How does your writing process work? I am at my most creative in the morning. So, I get my coffee, let the dog out for her morning constitutional, and turn on my computer. I check emails, overnight sales, visitors to my website, the whole time thinking about the next scene. I write a flash first draft, with my own kind of shorthand, then go back through it from start to finish and add details, senses, emotions, and extra dialogue or description. Then, I go through it with my checklist, eliminating the words I tend to overuse and making certain I include the senses. I go through it several times after that's done. So, by the time I'm finished with it, I've read through it five or six times. And that's before editing! When I'm in the early stages of the story, I can usually write around 1,000 words, or one big scene, a day.

That's it for me, next week (June 2), I hope you'll visit this talented author: 

 Bio:  Rena Koontz is the author of "Love's Secret Fire" and "The Devil She Knew," both romantic suspense novels loosely based on true cases she covered as a news reporter in Pittsburgh, PA., and Cleveland, OH. Having gained an enormous respect for law enforcement personnel during her career as a journalist, cops are the good guys in all her books. Her third novel, "Thief of the Heart," releases next month.

Blog link: http://www.renakoontz.wordpress.com/renas-ramblings