Defiance Press: Rick, you describe yourself as a “pantser” – someone who writes without an outline. For many writers, that sounds terrifying. Can you walk us through how this actually works for you?
Rick Steeby: [Laughs] It probably should be terrifying, but it’s the only way I know how to write. As a pantser, I don’t work from an outline, and my characters direct me until I hit the end. It all starts with an idea – a “what if?” moment that gets stuck in my head.
Take my first manuscript, for example. I had recently been to Playa del Carmen, a timeshare resort. My wife came across it – a free week in a resort where they tried to sign people up for ownership. We had a great time, and then I read a news article about a van load of bodies dumped at a truck stop not far from our resort. So what if I was in Playa del Carmen and witnessed a mass murder, and the local police participated? Worse yet, what if they framed me in the press as the killer? How would I escape with no money, no passport, and crooked cops chasing me from the scene?
Defiance Press: So you literally start with just that “what if” and begin writing?
Rick Steeby: Exactly. I generally wade in, and once I get wet, I drive the story forward. I never outlined before I started writing, and I’ve never driven into a story that I know of – I wade in. [Chuckles] Sorry, I couldn’t help myself with that water metaphor.
The characters start talking to me pretty quickly. In Escape from Playa del Carmen, the character was based on the person I know best in the world – me. I originally wrote it in first person. His wife was based loosely on my wife, and everyone else was based on what I learned about Mexican cartels and corruption from my time as a policeman.
Defiance Press: How do you avoid writing yourself into corners with this approach?
Rick Steeby: Sometimes I don’t have directions for my story to go, and I put it down and write something else I need. With all my homework from Defiance, I have plenty of projects. When I come back to the original story, I’ll read what I have so far, and then the following lines seem obvious.
I also run possible plot paths through my head constantly. Often when I have to stop writing and go somewhere with my wife, I’ll think through scenarios on the way there and back. My writing space is really in my head – I work on a laptop that travels with me, but the real work happens upstairs.
Defiance Press: What does a typical writing day look like for you?
Rick Steeby: Being retired, it’s any day of the week, after coffee. Weather permitting, if I have yard chores – lawn care, garden, hedges, fruit trees, or washing cars – I like to get those things done first. If it’s raining or snowing, I might start writing before the coffee is cold.
I try to do social media in the morning and email, again before bed. I’ve learned to bend my writing around my bride’s schedule. She handles my commitments for socialization, but I find it easy to stop and then start when I get back.
After chores and lunch, if I don’t have projects – working for my kids, laying floors, building decks, or something my wife or I came up with – I will sit down and start. We make dinner time a hard break to spend with each other and talk about what we’re doing, because we live very different lives together, and it becomes our bonding time.
Defiance Press: And after dinner?
Rick Steeby: After dinner, until my wife uses the smartphone light app to shut off the light at 9:45 – that’s my 15-minute warning – I sit in the easy chair and pound the keys. There are times, usually towards the end of the book, when I get excited about what’s going to happen, and I ignore the warning. She’s come downstairs at two in the morning asking when I plan to go to bed. I didn’t realize I’d missed 10 PM by four hours!
Ask my wife, and she’d say I write all day. When I’m actively working on a book, maybe four hours a day when I’m rolling. But I also write blog pieces, email, respond to social media, and write short stories that supplement the novels – usually something that occurred in a character’s past. I used to write them so I would know my characters better, but they make great bonus offers for fans on my email list. All in all, I tracked my writing to about half a novel a day if it all went into writing a book.
Defiance Press: You have two favorite writing spaces. Tell us about them.
Rick Steeby: I’m a firm believer that my writing space is in my head, but I do have two favorite physical places at home. My easy chair in the living room is one. The other is a shed building in the backyard that I built for tools and divided in half, making a home office in the front half.
Summer is too hot and winter is too cold out there, so I added AC and an electric stove. I trimmed it out to look like a log cabin with lots of bookshelves. I hang my artwork and my friends’ artwork out there, and it’s a cozy hideaway. I have an easy chair out there too.
Defiance Press: How do you know when a story is finished?
Rick Steeby: The characters tell me! I know that sounds strange, but when you’re a pantser, you develop this relationship with your characters where they guide the story. Sometimes I’ll be writing and think I want the story to go one direction, but the character just won’t cooperate. They have their own logic, their own motivations.
As a pantser, I usually run about 20,000 words over my target when I finish the first draft. But cutting that many isn’t hard – I kill a darling or two, eliminate bad grammar, and rewrite sentences and paragraphs more concisely. I usually end up right around 90,000 words.
Defiance Press: What’s the most challenging part of this approach?
Rick Steeby: Editing and reverse plotting are the hardest parts for me. Trying to fit the story to proper beat points was very difficult, but AutoCrit made it much easier with their newest tools for identifying beats and deciding if they’re where they’re supposed to be or missing entirely.
I like having a professional editor review it after I’m done to tell me where I need to tweak it to fit the genre better. I love seeing the difference afterward, but it’s that slog in the editing phase I find hard. Unlike some of my author friends, I’m not the introvert type, so I actually enjoy the marketing side – meeting people and speaking to groups. Twenty years of Toastmasters training helped get me past the public speaking hurdle.
Defiance Press: Any advice for other pantsers out there?
Rick Steeby: Trust your instincts and don’t let people convince you that you need to outline if it doesn’t work for you. Every writer finds their own process. The key is to keep writing, keep finishing stories, and keep learning. I’ve written thirteen novel-length manuscripts, and each one taught me something new about the craft and about myself as a writer.
And remember Orson Scott Card’s quote that I put in all my emails: “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.” As a former police officer, I saw people’s lives change in an instant by random occurrence. Keep your eyes open, ask “what if,” and trust that the story will reveal itself as you write.
Experience the results of Rick’s intuitive writing process in “Gold Miner’s Daughter” – coming soon from Defiance Press and Publishing.
