Dear Reader Column 09-01-2020

Dear Reader,

Please welcome today's guest author, Cynthia Ruchti. Her guest column today will encourage you to enter this year's Write a DearReader Contest. For all the info, cash prizes, deadlines, and to read last year's winning entries, click here.

Cynthia is an award-winning author of more than 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her work has been recognized by Readers' Choice, Reviewers' Choice, Retailers' Choice and other industry honors. Her latest release is the novel Afraid of the Light, the story of a clinical psychologist who counsels hoarders and their families. Cynthia and her plot-tweaking husband live in the heart of Wisconsin, not far from their three children and six grandchildren. Her tagline is, "I can't unravel. I'm hemmed in hope."

Cynthia has a copy of Afraid of the Light to give away to one lucky reader. Say hello and when you do, you're entered in the drawing. Email: cynthia.ruchti@gmail.com

Please welcome author Cynthia Ruchti...

When readers ask how much time I spend on research for a novel, my traditional answer is "anywhere from six to nine months." But I've been underestimating. The full truth is that writers are Experience Collectors. Every novel is threaded with a lifetime of curated images and sounds, smells and textures.

The unique combo of artist's dream sunlight and perpetual grape-scented air freshener in Sonoma County, California. The deafening rumble and crash of storm-tossed Atlantic waves. The vastness of an ocean of Iowa cornfields, each stalk making eerie music as its coarse leaves react to the hot summer breeze.

A writer collects emotions and body language. Small talk that seems even smaller at a funeral. Relentless remorse twisting the face of a young mom. The visceral comfort in an embrace.

Mist along a sea wall in Denmark. Sand that swallows footprints on a Florida beach. The aching, echoing call of a loon on a Canadian lake. An incandescent shade of hot pink geraniums in a hanging basket.

A tightly folded lovenote passed between middle schoolers, caught by a frowning teacher. A coffin too incredibly small. An ancient door with chipped paint and layers of fingerprints centuries-thick.

A devastating job loss. The somber way the phone rings when a doctor is calling with test results. The first flash of green after an endless winter.

All research. Writers build a collection of impressions with every breath. The impressions and memories and observations about human behavior dance with each other until they eventually twist themselves into stories that find their way to the pages of books.

How do writers create characters and plot? They borrow from yesterday's trip to the grocery store and from tracing their fingers on the etchings in their ancestors' tombstones. They draw from the sensation when they feel an airplane leave earth's magnetism the first time. And the first look that said, "You are loved."

For a writer, research starts in infancy, when fresh eyes drink in a world unknown until that moment. Life shapes and informs, sheds light, invites shadows, scents the air, wraps in cotton blankets and porcupine pain, soaring gains and a litany of losses. Years later, impressions become words, sentences, paragraphs, a book. Then another and another.

How long does the research take? Every day of a writer's life.

-- Cynthia Ruchti
Email cynthia.ruchti@gmail.com to be entered in the drawing for a copy of her new book, Afraid of the Light.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com

AUTHORBUZZ: Click here to discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.

KIDSBUZZ: Click here to discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.

Comments

[Barbara Waite]

Yes! Every day of a writer's life they are accumulating mind pictures of people, places, events, smells etc. I had been thinking that as I wrote about 1800's on the small island where we lived for many years. Some things remain, year after year. Some attitudes remain year after year. We capture those and store them away in our memory bank. Cynthas Ruchti has become a favorite author.

[Rebecca McLafferty]

This is such a great post, Cynthia. How true that is. From all of our years of experiencing and feeling, it all goes into our stories. Very well said. However, when asked how long it took to write my book, I don’t think I would want to reply to an agent, “all my life “. If nothing else, it would probably get a good laugh!

[Cynthia Ruchti]

Thank you for your comments. So meaningful to me!

[Carmen Kumm]

Hi Cynthia, Cindy, I'm so happy for you! I love your books.