ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
At the age of 5, Lindsey Loucks moved with her family to Liberal, and it was also about that time she first developed a passion for writing.
It was not until she graduated from Liberal High School and obtained a master’s degree in library science, though, that she got serious about writing.
Now a USA Today bestselling author, Loucks said she was unsure of what specifically drove her to write, but she did recall a summer when she began writing and could not stop.
“It became like a drug to me,” she said. “Still to this day, I find it incredibly addicting.”
Like most writers, Loucks devotes much of her time to her craft.
“These days, it’s less than I would like to,” she said. “I would say at least an hour every day, I try to devote to writing.”
Writing a novel takes much in the way of focus and concentration, and Loucks said she needs all of these components she can get when she writes.
“I can’t have any background music,” she said. “Sometimes, I’ll close the door in my apartment because my husband is making sounds. A lot of focus goes into it.”
Loucks’s primary genre is romance, and she said her love for reading books in that genre and its popularity with readers is what drove her to write in that category.
“It sells really well,” she said.
Among authors who influence Loucks’s writing are to Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and Robert McKinnon, but she said this is not what inspires her story ideas.
“My influence comes from pretty much anything,” she said. “There was one idea I had for a book that started randomly with seeing a person walking their dog, and for whatever reason, it just sparked the beginning of a book. I don’t know that I can explain Like many authors, for Loucks, the writing process is not always a smooth one.
“Sometimes, I’ll have an idea where I’m going, but then the story or the characters take a left turn I did not see coming,” she said. “That happens as well.”
Though she does spend some time researching and developing her characters, Loucks, however, does not do this through traditional means.
“I do most of that in my head while I’m doing household chores,” she said. “I know some authors write down all the character traits. I don’t do that. I hold it inside my head.”
For Loucks, writing is an escape from everyday life.
“It is how I keep sane,” she said jokingly. “I really love escaping into my imaginary worlds where I can control things that happen and how they happen, and it keeps me sane.”
Loucks said she also spends much time perfecting the wording of her stories.
“I usually have a vague idea where I’m going with the plot, but as far as how the wording takes shape, I will sometimes spend an hour staring at one paragraph trying to perfect it,” she said. “That part of it is kind of annoying, but that’s just how the process goes.”
To be an author, Loucks said, takes a vivid imagination and the drive and will to complete a novel.
“That’s pretty much it,” she said.
Naturally, Loucks likes the idea of being a bestselling author.
“It’s pretty cool because nobody else really knows, but you can’t tell just by looking at me that I’m a best selling author,” she said.
Getting to that point, however, takes much in the way of hard work.
“You have to do so much promoting of yourself and your book and hours and hours of research and time spent doing the promotion,” she said. “To be honest, it takes money too.”
Loucks’s books can be found at all major online book outlet stores such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as her Web site, www.lindseyrloucks.com, which she admitted could use some updating.
“My Web site is woefully out of date,” she said. “I need to work on that.”
