Top Five with Robin T. Popp

What is your writing schedule?

I work fulltime as the manager of contract administration for a Fortune 15 company. Between my day job, family and kids, there is no such thing as “finding” time to write. Therefore, I have to make the time; carve it out of my normal schedule by eliminating something else. Typically that something else is sleep.

My days start at 4:30 in the morning. I dress and make the 40-minute commute to the office. There, I pull out my pocket pc and wireless keyboard, put on a set of headphones, crank up the tunes on my iPod and write, write, write.

The advantages to writing at my day job office before the regular workday starts are that it’s quiet, I have an endless supply of coffee (which is definitely needed) and I don’t have to worry about having to stop in the middle of a scene because it’s suddenly 8:00 and I have to get to my desk. On a good day, I can kick out ten to twelve pages in two hours. On a bad day, I’m lucky to get out two pages.

I also write during my lunch hour and spend most of my weekends writing. It’s not an easy schedule, but being an author was always my dream, so I do what I have to.

Where do you get your ideas?

My usual reply to this is that my creative ideas are the result of severe sleep deprivation (reference question 1). The sleep deprivation is probably truer than I care to admit. I often get ideas in the early hours of the morning while I’m driving into the office. It’s dark; there’s not much to see and I’m too tired to expend the energy worrying about things, so I listen to music and let my mind wander. I’ve come up with some interesting ideas this way.

I’ll also get ideas while researching something for another book or while surfing the Internet.

The most helpful source of creative ideas for me comes from talking to plot partners – a group of friends who play the “what if” game with me. “What if the hero was a vampire who was allergic to blood?” These games can be lots of fun and very productive.

How did you become published?

My “road to publication” story is a bit of a fairytale. Growing up, I was an avid reader with a vivid imagination. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I actually began writing down some of my ideas – but I never got past the first two or three chapters. Still, I loved the idea of writing and publishing a novel.

Not long ago, my father showed me a letter he found while going through my grandmother’s estate years ago. My grandmother passed away long before I sold my first book and there’s no reason why either she, or my father after her death, should have kept this particular letter. It was written by me in my senior year of high school. I was taking a creative writing class that year and loved it. In the letter to my grandmother, I told her that I had finally decided what I wanted to be when I “grew up” – a published author.

Upon entering college, that goal seemed childish, unreal and totally unachievable, so I devoted myself to obtaining the education I needed to get a “real” job. One undergraduate and two masters degrees later, I had that “real” job working on the business end of the health care industry. My dream of becoming a published author was dead and buried. Or so I thought.

A chance encounter with a former coworker introduced me to the Romance Writers of America. That was the beginning for me. The dream was reborn. It took me awhile to decide what kind of romance I wanted to write. I’d read mostly science fiction growing up so writing a futuristic romance seemed logical. I was only a few chapters into the story when an agent told me I’d never break into publishing with a futuristic.

I’m one of those people who are motivated by a challenge and I vowed to prove her wrong. I made it my goal to learn as much about the craft as I could – and then I started entering contests. To my surprise, my story – Too Close to the Sun – did well – finaling in several contests. In February 2002, the full manuscript was requested by a Dorchester editor who had judged it in a contest. Unfortunately, I only had about 200 pages written. It took eight months before I could finish the rest of the 450 page manuscript, but on October 30, I put the completed work in the mail. On November 6 – less than a week later – I got The Call.

How long does it take you to write a book?

It takes me about six months to write a four hundred page novel. I usually spend the first month plotting out the entire book and then spend the next four months writing it. That gives me about a month to revise and polish it. I’ve been known to write a book faster than that, but it’s not a pretty sight. Kind of like lowering your head and running full-out toward a brick wall. You get there – but not in the best condition.

It doesn’t help that creativity is a fickle thing. There are times when the muse is strong and ideas and words flow easily. And then there are times when it’s like extracting teeth with a pair of rusty pliers. The key, I’ve found, is to write every day.

What do you find easy to write? What do you find difficult to write?

Everything between “Once upon a time…” and “The End” is difficult for me. I absolutely hate writing the first draft of a book. Whether that’s due to the time of day that I’m writing (because I’m dog tired) or because I’m fighting my internal editor the entire time, I’m not sure. I just know I hate it. Worse than writing the first draft of a story where I know what’s going to happen is trying to write something off the cuff. It’s for this very reason that I rarely blog. I stare at that blank screen and feel every thought and idea vanish.

What I love most about the writing process is the revising. I love wordsmith-ing and finding that perfect turn of phrase. I could spend months reworking a document until it’s perfect. Of course, I never get that kind of time.

Within the context of a story, I enjoy writing action scenes, unexpected plot twists and witty dialogue. I struggle with internal dialogue (character’s thoughts and feelings) and the love scenes. It’s difficult to make the latter seem fresh and interesting – and I abhor gratuitous sex scenes. They should serve a purpose in the story – a melding of souls, not just body parts.

Now it is your turn… got a question for Robin? Go for it! She might not get to it until later in the day (bad day job bad bad) but she will get to it.