Lynn Garthwaite

I grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota – a suburb of Minneapolis. From a very early age I told everyone I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I was an avid reader, and it just seemed that telling stories had to be the best job in the world!

I may take a little time away from the writing when I feel stymied, but I find that if I just sit back down and type some random things in the notes I’ve been making about my current project, it jump-starts the creative flow.

Since some of my creative endeavors have been writing screenplays, Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally” to name two of hers) was one of my favorites. For books, I love mysteries, so I’d list Harlan Coben, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Sandra Brown among my favorites.

I keep thinking that one of these days (I’ve been at this as a full-time job for over 15 years now) I need to establish some kind of disciplined schedule – but I never have. I have a home office, so I don’t need to commute, and typically I start on my writing after checking my e-mails and messages in a forum where I am a moderator. By then it’s usually about 10:00, so I guess I start writing at about 10:00. Some days I’ll write for two straight hours, take a break and write for another hour or so. Other days my total time might only be about a half hour because I’ve got other obligations that take my time. I’m not a good role-model for disciplined writing.

Pretty much just the daily news was my inspiration. We hear about domestic terrorism, and see the effect it has on entire communities and our nation, but I started to imagine it from the point of view of one person who has become a target of one of those domestic terrorist groups. Pretty soon, in my mind, I created her back-story and how her own personal history affected how she handled the terror that she encountered.

My writing has definitely changed over the years, primarily in the genres that have attracted me. Right out of college I was determined to make my mark as a screenwriter, and I studied the genre as if it was a school project. But after six or seven years of butting my head against a brick wall (Hollywood is pretty hard to break into unless you know someone), my focus turned to children’s literature. I wrote a series of four Early Readers and then three picture books while raising my own kids, and then later wrote an American history book, which means I finally got around to using my college history major. Finally, since mysteries were the primary kinds of books I read, I decided it was time to write my own, and Starless Midnight was the result of that. And oddly, now I’ve come back full circle, because I’m writing screenplays again.

I’m over the moon excited about this. I mentioned above that I tried to break into screenwriting right after graduating from college so, all these years later, to have been a part of working with a producer and a professional screenwriter to adapt my novel and write the pilot episode has been amazing. I have gone into this clear-headed, however. I understand that the industry is not like many other writing endeavors, and projects can be greenlighted but then cancelled at any step along the way. The producer is shopping it to studio execs as I write this, and I can only cross my fingers and hope that one of the streaming networks picks it up.

One of my beta readers chose not to finish reading the book because he objected to what he characterized as my “appropriation” of a different race. I am white, but the protagonist in my novel is bi-racial. It stung me for a bit, but then I realized that if writers only created characters that lived the same experience as they did, books would be pretty dull. I created a complex character who is smart, intelligent, creative, and who finds it within herself to fight back against a group of people who set out to harm her. She just happens to be a different race than I am.

I think it might be because I began my writing career with a goal to sell screenplays for the big screen, but I pretty much always visualize my books as they might look on film or as a tv show. Maybe most authors also think “Hey this would make a great movie!” as they write their books. I did have to adjust to the producers’ suggestions, but I was very willing to go with most of the changes he wanted to make because his area of expertise is knowing what the market is for a series like this.

I’ve learned a lot from being an avid reader of mysteries and suspense. I write short chapters, because I think it keeps the reader more likely to keep turning pages if starting a new chapter doesn’t require a 30-page commitment. And I planted plenty of cliffhangers throughout the book, very often ending a chapter on one and then starting the next chapter on a different scene to keep them even further in suspense until the storyline switched back to where I had left them hanging.

One of the characters in this book was someone I actually created more than a decade earlier for one of my screenplays that never went anywhere. The character stayed with me over the years and when I started planning this book, I knew I was going to revive him and make him an important part of this story. It was like a reunion with an old friend.

I plot a ton of it out in my head before I ever start typing it on my computer. Once I’ve rolled it around in my brain enough that I think I know where I’m going with the story, I open a word document that I’ll label “notes” and then just write out everything that’s been in my head for those previous weeks or months. These notes are almost always out of order because it’s just a stream-of-consciousness pouring out of everything I’ve thought of. Only then do I start writing, constantly referring back to my notes where I’ve sometimes even put in snippets of dialogue that have come to me, as well as full or partial scenes.

Sadly, the first thing I tell aspiring writers is: “Don’t quit your day job.” Most writers don’t actually “make a living” with their writing until many years have gone by. Of course, many never reach that stage at all, but we can’t help ourselves. We have stories in our heads that have to come out. The second piece of advice I’d give is to be an avid reader in the genre in which you want to write. Don’t worry, you won’t accidentally steal a plot or a character. What you’ll get is a sense of what makes a really good book, and only when you know it can you write it.

Yes, I’ve been very lucky that way. The producer and I spent several months on phone and zoom calls (I live in Minnesota, he lives in L.A.) storyboarding and talking about how we can develop the story into something that he can sell to studio executives. He valued my input, and I have deferred to him several times when he wanted to change something that I kind of wanted to keep the way I had it in the book. Overall, his experience in the industry is very important, and I trusted his judgement on those things. He also said I’ll be welcome on the set at any time when it is shot, and I can’t wait for that. Unfortunately, shoot, I don’t have any say in the casting, but again, they’re the experts, and there may be some unknowns out there who would be fabulous in some of the parts.

I joined in April of 2023, which is only eight months ago as I’m writing this. I value the mock-up-banners that the site has created for my book, and I’m enjoying participating in the cover contests. Overall I feel like AllAuthor is a great site for writers who are looking for help with marketing and exposure, and who want to follow other authors in the genres that they enjoy.