Today we have hysterical author Laura Bowers joining us to say a little bit about her writing life. I hope you enjoy as much as I have! She’s awesome! 
Thanks for joining me, Laura! Let’s get started…
What is your brainstorming process for a new book?
Brainstorming? Oh, please. I do not brainstorm. Once an idea pops into my head, I simply float to my computer and tippy-tap the day away.
Yeah, right.
In reality, my process is chaotic, detailed and borderline anal-compulsive. I scribble all ideas—the good, the bad and the ugly—in a notepad. If one of them feels right, I’ll start off with Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. It’s a fantastic tool to help you figure out the core of your story. Then I do major character sketches. Carolyn Green’s Prescription for Plotting, John Vorhaus’s The Comic Toolbox and James N. Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II offer great techniques. After that, I’ll outline, plot, doodle, snowflake, stare blankly at the computer, bash my head against the desk, drool, crumble torn pages from a legal pad, smooth them back out and outline all over again. Then I’ll start to realize that my obsessive plotting is just a means of procrastination and I force myself to begin the rough draft.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
http://www.theplotdoctor.netfirms.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Comic-Toolbox-Funny-Even-Youre/dp/1879505215
http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Damn-Good-Novel/dp/0312104782
Can you explain your typical work week day?
It depends. If I’m writing a rough draft, I try to crank out 2,500 words daily in between work for my husband’s company and playing chauffer to the kids. Rough drafts are painful for me, so I need a peaceful, quiet setting—and my iPod.
Editing is a different story. If I’m deep in edits, I could work all day and all night—even during my boys’ basketball or baseball games. There have been many times when I had to shield my computer from foul balls!
Tell us about when you made the decision to write.
Would it be inappropriate to say I was on medication when I decided to write?
Okay, I better explain that one. When I was younger, I used to tinker with stories and write a family newspaper, but I never thought that someone like me could be an author. Authors were smart, educated, worldly and sophisticated and I viewed myself as anything but smart, educated, worldly and sophisticated. This attitude followed me into my twenties so I pushed away those pesky fantasies to write, “The Great American Novel.” But when my extremely stressful job and life put me in the hospital with a severe migraine, I realized it was God’s way of telling me that I needed to take a different path in life. So after I was released—and feeling quite loopy from painkillers—I sat down at my computer and started to write a mystery novel.
And let’s just say that what I wrote was hardly The Great American Novel . . .
What suggestions do you have for aspiring writers?
You have one thing that no other writer in the world has: Your voice. Embrace it. Read. Write. Edit. Repeat.
And remember: This is a tough business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie or seasoned pro with ten books under your belt—each and every stage offers new challenges and difficulties. With me, it was the dreaded Second Book Blues that knocked me for a loop, but I’ll never quit. My life would then feel empty and unfulfilled—and all those voices in my head would drive me insane if I didn’t write them down.
Besides. Tom Hank’s character in A League of Their Own was correct when he said, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”
Tell us about what you’re working on right now and what we can expect from you in the near future.
I’m hoping, (and praying, begging, living daily on anxious tenterhooks,) to have good news soon about my young adult novel, NINE RULES OF FLIRTING. It’s about one campground, four girls and eight ways to get revenge. Until then, I’ve been working on both another young adult novel and a mid-grade novel about baseball that’s long overdue, seeing how my kids have been playing travel ball for eight years!
NINE RULES OF FLIRTING sounds fabulous! We hope to hear good news from you soon, too! What a great interview. For those of you who want to read more of Laura’s fabulousness, check out her website here. Stay tuned until next time’s writers on writing!
