Thank you to Kimberly Grenfel, aka Devon Winterson, who invited me to participate in the “My Writing Process” blog tour, where I answer four questions my writing process.

And where did the last two months go? Oh, yeah, right. No snow days and working like a fiend! So much for New Year’s Resolutions! LOL. I will try to be more dedicated to researching and making blog posts. I have actually read a couple of great books to blog about over the last couple weeks.

My Writing Process . . . answered by author Monica Mynk:

1) What am I working on? – Cavernous. Its a YA dystopian Christian fiction where Callie Noland’s world falls apart when her mother goes missing and turns up in handcuffs on national TV following a presidential assassination. In the aftermath, seven US states declare themselves seceded and create a new, somewhat unstable government.  Callie is snatched from her father and hurled into the new government when men claiming to be federal agents bring DNA results that seem to prove that he’s not really her father. Okay, yeah. I really need to work on the blurb. But that’s the general idea. Will Callie compromise her faith to blend into this new government safely or even to escape and get back to her father?

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre? – As far as I know, there are not many people out there writing YA dystopian Christian fiction with a political/social media spin. The ones I’ve found are either older, like 1984, or more fantasy/sci-fi oriented. My dream is that this story will be the Hunger Games/Divergent of Christian fiction an inspire faith in young ladies everywhere. One of the accusations of YA dystopian novels is that the characters are sometimes underdeveloped. The romances are not fully evolved, etc. I’m hoping to do better at that.

3) Why do I write what I do? – Honestly, I’m not sure. Some of the things that show up on my page end up surprising me. I have this dark side that doesn’t physically manifest itself, I guess LOL. I write Christian fiction because I am a Christian and I don’t want to ever be pressured into including something in a book that isn’t up to my spiritual standards. I want to write books that my kids will read and be inspired to deeper faith.

4) How does my writing process work? – I always start with the idea, which usually comes from an observation or dream, and write until I have about 10,000 words of gibberish. Then, I sift through the garbage and try to find my story. After that, I outline a general timeline, which will certainly change eight or nine times. I research for a few days and then push up my sleeves and write a few chapters. Usually I find things I need to go back and explain, so what ends up being my chapter one is about six or seven chapters earlier than my original chapter one. I try to avoid prologues.

Once I have a full draft, I try to find holes–places where adding another chapter will enhance the story. My full drafts tend to be around 50,000 words and I want 70,000. Then, I add things to deepen the POV and details to make the characters and setting pop off the page.

I am working with a freelance editor/writing coach for my current story. This really helps because she finds the big flaws in my story and rewrite them before it gets too far in. I also participate in several writing sites, primarily Legendfire, and Scribophile 

Next Monday, on March 24th, I’m supposed to have three other writers give you their own “My Writing Process” answers. I asked several people who couldn’t do it for various reasons, so if you’re a writer and you’d like to participate, feel free to tag along. All you have to do is link back to my blog, answer these four questions, and then find three other writers do the same in the following week.