Advice to Beginning Novelists on Getting Started

The biggest hurdle for me as a beginning novelist was finding the right story—the kind that would inspire me and keep the juices flowing. Too many years were wasted floundering around trying to find a comfortable vehicle that would enable me to write the next "Lovely Bones," "The Great Gatsby," or "Farewell to Arms."

It was worst than writer’s block. Because I was dealing with architecture, not just words and ideas to move the plot forward.

I certainly tried. I had half a dozen plots outlined in my head, but only a page or two of writing. I kept seeking the great story from my own experience. And when I finally came up with something I could sink my teeth into, I realized at least 100,000 fellow copywriters were doing the same story.

Then I got lucky. My advertising agency in Philadelphia was constantly being courted to do public service ads and commercials. One of our clients was Fort Mifflin, www.fortmifflin.com an almost forgotten Revolutionary War outpost on the Delaware River that held the entire British fleet at bay for six long weeks. I became so enamored of the fort’s untold story, I simply had to write the novel. My dream was that it would be published and then made into a movie like "Rocky" that would bring thousands of new visitors flocking to Philadelphia to visit the fort.

I created my own characters to go with the real characters. I made a villain by stitching together a brutal British Marine colonel who was the bastard son of King George II. My hero was a natural—a young American naval lieutenant who as a child witnessed the colonel murder his mother. The headstrong Quaker beauty I gave birth to had both men fighting to the death for her hand.

I’m not saying it was easy. I did my research. I worked the plot to the bone. I rewrote the original draft fourteen times and threw out a dozen chapters. But the result, "The Lion and the Eagle," at 81,500 words, became a flesh-and-blood first novel I could be proud of.

Then it happened again.

A PBS documentary caught my eye. It was based on "The Johnstown Flood," a non-fiction account by David McCullough of how greed and neglect in 1889 by the first families of Pittsburgh—the Carnegies and Fricks, the Mellons and the Pitcairns—caused a dam to collapse and virtually drown a whole city.

The tragedy really got to me. And I vowed to tell the story to a whole new audience.

So once again I created my own cast of characters. And the result at 97,500 words was "The Lake," the story of how star-crossed lovers Caleb McBride and Annabelle Prescott try to prevent the flood from happening—and then become its victims. (Take a look at my first post. It features Caleb's clumsy first attempt to get the story across to Annabelle's father but in doing so finds himself crashing a party for the wealthiest men in America.

I’ve written three more novels since "The Lake" and "The Lion and the Eagle." But I’ll forever be thankful for the crutch I found—and impressed by how many accomplished authors resort to the comfort and predictability of history to get things moving.