One of the
first questions people ask when then find out I am an author is, “Where do you
find the time?” Most people know me by my day job, being a doctor. That takes
time. I have a family, husband, two boys and a giant, slobbery Newfoundland
dog. That takes time. I feel I can only write when I have stretches of
uninterrupted time, to create characters and plot and plan and shuffle scenes
around until they fit correctly. That takes time.
In Seattle in the summer, the sun gets up at about 4:30 AM and shines into my eyes and gives me hours of extra time. With all that sunlight comes energy and excitement. Winter brings darkness and coziness, with my family sleeping in extra long and no reason to stop my writing. The huge dog by my side makes sure I am never alone.
Because time is so precious, I
cannot squander my chunks of time and I write no matter what. Throughout the
day I jot down ideas or turns of phrase, but I’ve never been able to concentrate on
actual writing or produce anything meaningful just in snippets here and there.
When I sit with Albert the Dog in the morning, fingers flying on the computer
keys, magic happens. Though I plot and outline, my favorite part of writing is
when characters I’ve created take off on their own and get themselves into
unexpected situations. Enid Carmichael, one of the characters
in my new cozy murder mystery, The Fog
Ladies, discovers Starbucks lattes at the ripe old age of eighty. She loves
the bitterness, the froth. I wrote that. Then she craved more, and the next
thing I knew, she was stealing Starbucks coupons from her neighbor’s newspaper
to feed her addiction. She did that. Not me. She would have never had this
luxury under time constraints. With enough time, my brain and hers became one
and Mrs. Carmichael took over the writing, with excellent results. In the book
she has a tiny, white, fidgety, high-strung bichon frise, as far from my
friendly, phlegmatic black Newfoundland as you can get. Her dog, Snowball, was
nowhere in my mind when I set out to write her first scene. Again, she created
him, again adding richness to the story.
Time is no one’s friend, and I
take time where I can get it, which for me is early morning, with my big dog,
Albert, who, unlike the rest of us, has nothing else to do, ever.
About the Author
Susan McCormick writes cozy murder mysteries. She is also the author of Granny Can’t Remember
Me, a lighthearted picture book about Alzheimer’s disease. She is a
doctor who lives in Seattle. She graduated from Smith College and George
Washington University School of Medicine, with additional medical training in
Washington, DC and San Francisco, where she lived in an elegant apartment
building much like the one in the book. She served nine years in the military
before settling in the Pacific Northwest. She is married and has two boys, plus
a giant Newfoundland dog.
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