John Gordon found himself with a lot of time on his hands after shelter-in-place regulations hit last spring. But instead of binge-watching Netflix shows, the Los Altos resident chose to write.
Seven months later, Gordon has written and self-published three books – “Bloody Waters,” “Drug Island” and “Road Rage” – with a fourth on the way.
This isn’t his first writing endeavor: Gordon started writing in the 1990s to fill time while traveling by plane for business. He published seven novels prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gordon credits his passion for “wordsmithing” as the reason he got started.
“The idea of wordsmithing – putting together words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters and all that – to me, is very intriguing,” he said. “When you do that, you feel that you can communicate something hopefully new, hopefully unique and hopefully something worthwhile. It’s a puzzle, and I enjoy it.
When the pandemic prevented him from doing some of his favorite things – taking trips, eating at restaurants, playing sports – he turned to writing.
“It gave me something to do to replace the things I otherwise would have been doing, which could have been writing part time as well,” he said. “But in this case, I started writing eight to 10 hours a day.”
Inspiration
Before he starts a novel, Gordon said he maps out the characters and their story arcs on spreadsheets. Often, he pulls from his own experiences, for example writing a novel about the Coast Guard patrol after serving as a volunteer search-and-rescue guard for the San Francisco Bay.
“I get my inspiration from my own life from things I’m interested in, from things I have experience with, from locations I’ve been,” he said.
Knowing what he wants to write ahead of time helps him avoid getting stuck during the process.
“I don’t really get writer’s block,” Gordon said. “By the time I start writing, I have a picture in my head of how I want the story to go and I build around that.”
In fact, he can often get so focused on his writing that he loses track of everything else.
“I wouldn’t pay attention to mealtimes and all that just because I was enjoying it so much and working so hard at wordsmithing,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I was pushing myself. I felt I was being pulled by the process.”
Once they’re complete, Gordon uses Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to self-publish his novels. All he has to do is submit his manuscript in a certain format, then add cover art and credits.
“Now, obviously, there’s some iterations in there to clean stuff up and make sure the formatting got on right, but KDP is amazing,” he said. “If I make it sound too easy, people are going to think I’m lazy, but it’s really become a nice platform for people who self-publish.”
His next book, the story of a female trucker, is a shift for Gordon. It’s an experience he’s unfamiliar with, so he has decided to do a lot of research.
“The lifestyle of (truckers) is different than any of us walking around Los Altos,” he said. “There’s nobody that, unless they’re a trucker, knows what the lifestyle is like. These people are gone for up to two weeks at a time, yet they still have families and they’re living in trucks. I’m doing a lot of research because I don’t know anything about it.”
Ultimately, though, he’s excited for the moment when he completes the story.
“I will say the satisfaction of just taking something right out of the brain and using a computer and then ending up with a bound story that is hopefully worthwhile for others to read – that alone is satisfying,” he said. “For me, it’s all about the puzzle of telling a story in a new and interesting way.”
To purchase Gordon’s books, visit amazon.com.
