Once I hit the specific scene, I can take the card down from the wall. Now that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent months waffling and agonizing about how to start a book, but once I get moving, it tends to go pretty well.Ĥ.Are you a plotter or panster when it comes to writing a story? I’m working on a new book which has a lot of characters and plotlines, and I’ve found it helpful to have scene “hits” for each character lined up on their own color-coded index cards. Then it’s about staying out of trouble for the rest of the day.ģ.Do you get writers block? If so, how do you overcome it? I’ve been lucky so far and haven’t hit the wall when actually writing a book. When I get started, those 2,000 words take all day, but once the book gets cooking and the characters start talking on their own, I can knock out 2,000 words in a couple hours. It’s an arbitrary figure I picked up from Stephen King, but it seems like a good chunk of text to go for. I guess I just got sick of sticking to the facts.Ģ.What is a usual writing day like for you, how is it structured? I like to write 2,000 words first thing in the morning. I wanted to take my stories to that next level where although you couldn’t prove the details, it seemed like a likely (and entertaining) outcome. But-if you’re doing your job correctly-journalism really limits where you can go with a story based upon the facts. It was especially good for learning how to set a scene and weave background info into a story. Send More Idiots is my 2nd novel ( Pac Heights, 2013)ġ.What got you into writing / what made you sit down and actually start something? I was a journalist straight out of college, so that was a great way to learn the mechanics of writing and researching a story. I went to the University of California at San Diego and now reside in San Francisco.

Send More Idiots by Tony Perez-Giese