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Hi Steve,
Thanks for rising to the 'why I wrote the darned thing' suggestion. I think the process is just as important as the end product. I started to write after a serious illness put paid to my squash playing days. What would I do to replace all the time I'd spent chasing a little rubber ball round a room (a crazy activity, I know)? I took a creative writing course and tried all sorts of writing, finally settling for the long distance kind. Because I'd lived for many years in Central Africa, I decided to write 'what-if' books. What if someone arrived in Africa at a certain time in history - that sort of thing. And I found that I loved it. The process took me back to Africa, more or less every day, and the plots simply grew and grew ... like Topsy. I left Africa for Iran for my third book, which drew heavily on an overland trip to India in the seventies. Again, I was back there, sweating it out in a LandRover with my then travelling companions (names changed to protect the innocent). I can't think of a better way to spend time. My last two books (so far unpublished) I wrote as NaNoWriMo's (a book in a month) and are totally different to my first three.
That's my potted 'why I done it' account.
MJ
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