Guest Post The Legend of Waterhole Branch

I’m hosting a guest post today by Lucas Wright, author of “The Legend of Waterhole Branch”.

MY INSPIRATION FOR WRITING A NOVEL

Guest post by author, Lucas Wright

My inspiration for writing a book was simple. Primitive even. It was to impress women and make money. That is essentially the basis for all my decisions in life: women and money. Hell, if it wasn’t for the desire of women and money, I would be probably be a high school baseball coach catching fly balls on a sunny afternoon, living in a shoebox apartment, making twenty-five grand a year with a three month paid summer vacation. Alas, the desire of massive fortunes and beautiful women compelled me to forego my stress free future for the long hours and tireless work required in high finance. And writing books.

As you might imagine, the release of my novel, The Legend of Waterhole Branch, yielded no money and no women. Shocking, I know. Luckily, I had some other inspirations that were a little more grounded in reality.

The truth is that I always wanted to write stories. I enjoyed reading as a child, my mother did a lot of writing, and I enjoyed certain aspects of writing throughout my life. There was a particular story that I had developed in my head, and I tried to get my mother to write it for years. Earlier this year, she conceded that health issues wouldn’t allow her to put forth the necessary hours to write a novel, so I decided that I should give it a shot. I mean, how hard could it be?

Turns out writing, a novel isn’t very hard. Writing a good novel is the issue. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a shot despite lacking formal writing training or any sort of developed writing skills. All I had was a story. The characters, the conflict, and the scenes – they had been building in my mind for years. I knew every anecdote that I wanted to tell and how they all came together before I put a single word on paper. So all I had to do was put them on paper? Seems simple enough.

My day job requires an immense amount of time as I help people buy and sell companies. Being an M&A consultant is a cool gig. I get to leverage my analytical brain to help with valuation, strategy, and myriad of other issues that are involved in a financial transaction. What is not readily available from the aforementioned lifestyle is time. Specifically, time to pound out a 90,000-word novel. This was the largest hurdle to overcome once I developed the inspiration to write. But the time became available in the strangest way. It unfolded just like you would expect for a 32 year old that just admitted his life is heavily influenced by women and money.

One upon a time, I had just returned from a two-week winter vacation retreat to the Caribbean with a girl I was seeing. There wasn’t much seeing thereafter, but that is beside the point. I spent an insane amount of money on the luxurious vacation sparing no expense, and it turns out she wasn’t the one. Work is slow during the winter months, so I wasn’t working my usual weekends, but I was newly single and I figured that time would be best spent replacing what’s-her-name. I was actually looking forward to getting out on the town and getting back into the game. Everyone loves the chase. Well, a cursory glance at my bank account quickly revealed that I was not going to be gallivanting out on the town. Or anywhere. I did want any broke bachelor would do and I stocked up on peanut butter, jelly, and bread. I figured this would keep me alive while I replenished the funds. It was during this time of poverty and boredom that I decided to write my story.

I sat down at my computer on a Saturday morning and starting banging out narrative describing each of the characters, their background, their interests, their conflicts, and how they might conquer all the challenges they faced. This particular weekend included a holiday on Monday, and by the end of the third day of writing, I had 25,000 words on papers. And probably twice that many spelling and grammatical errors. The following weekend, I decided that I didn’t like the fact that I had started the book in first person, and spent both Saturday and Sunday converting all the “I’s” to “he’s”. That was miserable. The next weekend, I went to New York for work and was able to take a girl out on a long distance blind date. I thought the date went well, but she effectively told me to get lost. I still had two full days in New York courtesy of my company and no money to spend, so I sat in a hotel room plowed through more plot. Within five weekends, during the course of the entire March Madness basketball tournament, I had completed the rough draft 90,000 word manuscript. I had more fun writing this book than I ever did going out to the bars chasing women. It was a great experience.

The moral of the story – don’t spend two weeks in the Caribbean with a woman unless you have a novel you want to write when you return and like peanut butter and jelly.