Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is L. M. (Mark) Weeks, a Senior Counsel and former Partner in the global law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.. In addition to his work at Orrick, Mark has done pro bono work with young HIV+ parents, indigent criminal defendants, and fisheries conservation organizations. He was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and raised in Nampa, Idaho. Bottled Lightning is his debut novel.
Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?
Yes. The idea for the protagonist in my novel, Bottled Lightning, arose out of my experiences practicing as an international lawyer and living in Japan. I have practiced law in New York and Tokyo for more than 30 years, representing both Japanese and non-Japanese clients, mostly IT and biotech clients, in connection with their cross-border transactions, which range from technology collaboration agreements to joint ventures to mergers and acquisitions. I have also lived, studied, and practiced law in Japan for more than half of my adult life. Along the way, I have had some fascinating experiences, including some wonderful and sometimes crazy motorcycle riding, and thought that it would be fun and interesting to write about a motorcycle riding international lawyer in Japan representing a client with disruptive technology that entrenched forces want to prevent from seeing the light of day.
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
Good question. In addition to being an iterative process involving numerous rewrites, it was a bolt-on process to a certain extent as certain major ideas such as the lightning-on-demand technology came like a flash (pardon the pun) after struggling with what to write about or how to address a certain thorny issue such as a transition in the plot. It seems that the subconscious is always working like background software even when you’re not writing, but I noticed that I got the best results in terms of inspirations that came to me while in the shower, the middle of the night, or after a day of fly fishing after doing the hard work of actually sitting down and writing.
For example, I had a general idea of building the story around some form of cutting-edge technology, but didn’t know what or even the industry. Our law firm does a lot of both conventional and clean energy work, and when a colleague told me about a proposed off-shore floating wind project, I thought a revolutionary new energy invention would be interesting to write about but had no idea what it might be. Later, while cowering on the bottom of a boat in the jungle contemplating the end of my life while thunderous lightning bolts dropped all around us, it occurred to me that on-demand lightning generation would be very interesting. After surviving that terrifying experience and doing some research on how lightning is generated, I decided to use that because scientists aren’t sure exactly how lightning is created, which gave me a gray area of the unknown with which to work. Saya, the inventor in Bottled Lightning, solved the problems of not only how exactly lightning is generated but also how to replicate that process.
Then I had to decide who was out to destroy Saya’s invention and her in the process. Would it be a country such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or Iran, a company such a British Petroleum, a government agency such as the US Department of Energy, an individual such as an oil and gas investor who would be wiped out if a new technology made fossil fuels obsolete or some combination of the above?
Next, I had to decide how the identity of the antagonist is discovered (the denouement) and whether and how they are thwarted, if at all.
Each step along the way I struggled to develop something that was exciting and fantastic, but also believable.
I note that I chose the settings for the story based on places I have lived, such as Japan, or traveled extensively, such as the Russian Far East.
Once I had the major components of a plot such as a protagonist, antagonist, inciting incidents, plot twists, a climax, a resolution—i.e., a beginning, middle and ending—I struggled with which inciting incident to begin the book. I wasn’t sure what would make the best hook. Only trial and error through restructuring the story line several times revealed an elegant solution. At one point I put the title pages for each chapter on the floor like pieces of a puzzle and started moving them around until they all fell in place in an order that made sense not only in terms of what would best hook the reader but also from pacing, plot development, and character development standpoints.
Along the way, I had myriad issues to address, including in what tense and point of view to write, whether to change point of view among characters, how many characters to have and why, whether and when to use flashbacks, what details to leave in or take out, and how descriptive to be about such things as people, places, rooms, motorcycles, the private thoughts of certain characters, and physical intimacy.
As an aside, one interesting thing that happened after I had written the original manuscript was that the main character morphed from a white American man into a biracial dual citizen. I derived inspiration from my son, who is biracial, and the children of many friends in mixed race marriages.
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
Many times. It changed a fair amount after the initial manuscript was finished, including the sub-themes, build up to the climax, nature of the antagonist, and the resolution.
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
I have a very long backlog of stories I want to write, all based on specific experiences from my life. I am wondering if I will get through them all, given the remaining runway I have.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
I focus on the most compelling and relevant to me when I start writing. But some stories arise out of events involving close senior relatives who might be hurt or at least offended by the stories I have in mind, even if fictional in nature. I have put those further down the queue because those relatives who are likely to be impacted may not be around by the time I actually write the stories. And some stories need to percolate more.
I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?
My mom has you beat. She’s got nine, but seven are “outdoor cats.” Only two are allowed in the house. Luckily, she lives on a farm. When I was staying with her last year after my stepfather passed away, I would play with the indoor cats between writing sessions. It was very therapeutic, but they became needy and would start walking on my laptop when they decided it was time to play.
Generally, however, I have no writing buddies other than YouTube. I’m a news junky and listen to YouTube for ten minutes between each hour of writing unless I’m really cooking. When I want to clear my head, I go fishing for a few hours or to the gym or take a long shower.