I began my professional career as a mechanical engineer after graduating from the University of South Carolina with a Bachelor of Science Degree. My imagination naturally feeds my love for mechanical design, and the combination has allowed me to secure multiple US Patents in the field of robotics (see picture below). After discovering I enjoyed engineering technical writing, I joined the Florida Writers Association to hone my craft. I enjoy writing in several genres, but my current focus is on science fiction.
I always enjoyed technical writing associated with my engineering work, and began to suspect I could use the same basic data, with a twist of course, as the foundation for a decent science fiction novel. I was totally wrong but the effort did lead me to discover my love of writing, which has also been the greatest challenge of my life (excluding golf, but that’s simply impossible). I have a tendency to jump right into things, so my first attempt at writing came in the form of a 90,000 word novel called TLS Titan. Curious as to why it was not quickly picked up by a publisher, I joined the Florida Writers Association and attended the first available writer’s conference. It was painful, but I soon understood why the manuscript did not sell, and that was simply because it stunk, in every possible way. It’s funny how little you need to learn to realize there’s a great deal you don’t know. The shock of discovering that I knew so little about writing was a serious blow, but I recovered and started over with much shorter works, although probably not short enough. The novel was rewritten and has since been published under a different title.
When I write, I let my characters take the lead. I follow them. By definition, each character has an individual personality, which matures in my head as I roughly outline the book. Then once the story begins to unfold, I simply let each character react to the situation as they naturally would. The plot normally changes as the story unfolds, but this is driven by allowing each character to react, as they chose, to whatever happened in the last chapter. I can't foresee all these combinations in advance, so I'm as surprised as anyone as to how things finally work out. To me, that's what makes writing fun. I find myself laughing and crying, having no idea that "event" was going to happen. Many times I find myself telling my wife, Gloria, something like, "You won't believe what Becka just said to Kayla," and I honestly did not see it coming until the words were on the page.
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Want to talk about writing? Let's meet for coffee. I'm also available for editing if you have a manuscript of your own in process. You can also find me on Facebook under: LH Davis. I'm a writer and author of fiction.
Copyright © 2019 L. H. Davis, Author - All Rights Reserved.