365 / 36: Guest Blogger John Abramowitz

I have the pleasure of giving you a guest blog post by my friend John Abramowitz (find him on Twitter at @onthebird or follow his blog at http://onthebird.blogspot.com). He is author of two successful books being Weaver and Atticus of the Dead. Both are great reads and worth the effort of getting. You should be able to find them on Amazon by using this search.

I am proud to present John Abramowitz.

I’ve heard some people say (and I used to believe) that writing is a solitary endeavor. I can’t begin to tell you how true that isn’t. Let me tell you a few stories about how much my books would, for lack of a better word, suck if I tried to write them by myself.
When I sat down to write my most recent novel, Atticus for the Undead, for example, I drafted a first chapter in which the main character, Hunter Gamble, defends a girl on a trial for witchcraft (a teenage girl named Sabrina, in fact). At the time, I planned to use that chapter as the audience’s “first date” with Hunter, to let them spend some time with the character before introducing other elements into the story. Sabrina was supposed to be a throwaway client.
And then I showed the introductory chapter to my friend Michael. One of his first questions was, “What are you going to do with Sabrina?” To which I replied, “Nothing. I’m not planning for her to appear again in the book.”
“You have to bring her back,” said Michael. “I like her too much. She’s too good a character to throw away like that.”
Well, I’m a firm believer in giving people what they want, so I sat down and thought about ways to work Sabrina into the larger story arc I had planned. I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who hasn’t read it already, so I won’t say much about what I came up with. Suffice it to say that, at this point, I can’t imagine the story without her in it. (And she gets bonus points for giving me the chance to use the song Defying Gravity in a story, which I’ve always wanted to do.)
And then there’s my first novel, Weaver. One of the main characters, Moira McBain, was handed to me wholesale by my friend and frequent beta reader Ericka. She had only the vaguest idea of what sort of story I wanted to tell, but I created the Wells Society out of the character sketch she sent me. Anyone who’s read the book knows how pivotal the Wells Society is to the story. Anyone who hasn’t read it, well, what are you waiting for? (Really. Please?)
In short, I’m a much better creator because there are people around me who help, to varying degrees, with the creation. They keep my characters likeable and their actions believable. They supply characters I can plug into my plots into, or give me an idea for where to take a plot when I’m stuck. They keep me sane and keep me writing in the (many) periods when I want to give up.
Though they still haven’t weaned me off of my addiction to parentheses….