Last year I published my first book. And it was a success. I had favorable critics, and the people I talked about it said that it is a page-turner. I was delighted.
It was written in Spanish, and about a true story. I worked with documentation, diaries memoirs of real people, and investigated actual historical facts. All these go along with my background as a journalist
After that experience, I have left with a willingness to write more narrative, maybe to explore the world of fiction. So I began to follow an online course of creative writing. The problem is that the teacher is a known thriller author I like. He gave me excellent advice to create characters, outline a story, and visualize scenes. But the exercises were all about writing about situations of danger or action.
I imagined a set of characters, outlined a sketchy story, with a murder, a police investigation, a bomb in jail, even a backstory of political corruption. I have written two or three chapters to follow the course, but not to write a novel with them.
Now I finished the classes, and I’m trying to begin to write a story from scratch.
When I’m trying to imagine a new story with a new plot, I discovered that I’m too attached to the characters I created for the class, and to the crazy story I imagined for the exercises. I can’t create new worlds. It’s too difficult for me.
Too many years working as a journalist made me too dependent on the true stories I can check and investigate.