Teresa Orts, Author of The Year of the Great Seventh, Talks About Her Voices and a Giveaway!

Yesterday I posted my thoughts about Teresa Ort's wonderful,exciting book, The Year of the Great Seventh. You can read my thoughts here.

Today, Teresa is here giving us her thoughts on the question I like to ask authors about the voices they might hear while writing. It's always fun reading the answers.

I have heard other authors say that they 'hear voices in their head' and that is how they write their books: the characters are telling their stories. Not being a writer myself, that concept has always intrigued me. 

When some people hear voices, we get them medical attention, others end up becoming writers. Does this happen to you? How do you come up with your stories?

I've never dared tell anyone how I come up with my stories fearing I will be deemed insane. But since I seem to not be the only one with paranormal activity inside their head, I’m happy to come clean.

For me, it has never been about voices, it is a totally different experience. I see the characters inside my head. I've always had an overactive imagination, which has its own agenda. I sometimes struggle to keep the stories from unweaving at inopportune moments i.e., while someone is talking to me, trying to read a book, or even worse, while I’m out with friends.

The interesting aspect is that when I see (imagine) the characters, I don’t really have any power over what they do. They have their own will. I just describe the scenes I see inside my head. (OK, I’m starting to feel more and more insane as I type along…) 

When I’m stuck at a specific place (or chapter within a novel), I just close my eyes and imagine the characters. I keep repeating the scene in my head until they get to the point where they get stuck. I normally do this in my commute to work. (Thankfully, I don’t drive to work…) If I imagine that same situation several times, suddenly the scene moves forward, and I can see what happens next. I also do this while I go for a run. I play music on my iPod that relates to the scene helping me see what comes next.

If I ever get really stuck, and I can’t see what happens next, I go online and look at photos of the theme related to the scene. That normally sets my imagination free again, and I can see what happens next.

There it goes! That’s how my creative process works. It feels relieving to finally be out of the closet …

Thank you, Teresa, for the insight into your writing process, even if you did take a little step over to the insane side for a bit. I'm so glad we were able to help you 'come out of the closet'. Seriously though, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your book, and sharing such an important part of you with all of us. 

Teresa's Story/Bio

  

Unlike most authors, I didn't start writing books when I was five years old. In fact, I’d never been too interested in reading or writing. Hanging out with friends in the small Spanish town I grew up in always seemed more appealing than anything a book could offer. It took about twenty-seven years and a global financial meltdown for me to discover the magic world of writing.

At the time, I was living in New York City, and one morning I discovered I was no longer expected at my sixty-hour-a-week investment banking job. Most of my friends had very demanding jobs, so I spent most days wandering around on my own.

Like most unemployed people, I started living through the nights and sleeping through the days. New York is known as the city that never sleeps for a good reason! One night, tired of surfing the web and watching TV, I opened a Word document and started typing a short story, which I saved in my computer with little interest. That was the day Nate and Sophie were born.

Days later, since the financial industry seemed to be going into a downward spiral, I decided to spend three months traveling through Southeast Asia and New Zealand. I thought, naïve me, that by the time I returned, the financial crisis would have come to an end.

Something really strange happened to me during that trip. No matter where I went, I couldn't stop thinking about the story. Nate and Sophie followed me everywhere. No matter how hard I tried to forget about them, they just wouldn't go away. At the beginning, I thought I was losing my mind, but soon after, I realized I had to continue writing the story.

When I came back to New York, I went right back into it, and that’s how The Year of the Great Seventh was created. Unfortunately, halfway through the novel, I received a letter from the immigration department informing me that, with no job, I was no longer welcome in the United States. Without much of a choice, my boyfriend and I decided to pack our lives, along with my half-drafted manuscript, and begin another exciting adventure in London, where we now live.

This novel is the first in The Tropic of Cancer series

Connect with Teresa

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