Showing posts with label The writer's life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The writer's life. Show all posts

Saturday, August 13, 2016

A crazy life by Linda Wiken

On this steamy August weekend, I'm delighted to welcome as this weekend's guest blogger my very dear friend Linda Wiken, who's been in the mystery business as long as I've known her, first as a founding member of Ottawa's Capital Crime Writers, and then as one of the creative and editorial forces behind The Ladies Killing Circle anthologies and the owner of Ottawa's mystery bookstore and still later, as the creator of the website Mystery Maven Canada to showcase Canadian crime writers. Then finally, a few years ago, she spread her wings and launched her own novel writing career, first with the Ashton Corners Book Club series under the name Erika Chase and now with a brand new dinner club series under her own name. Her first book in that series, Toasting up Trouble, has just been released. Take it away, Linda!

What a crazy life we writers live. That thought filters through my mind at odd times, usually when I’m procrastinating or as this morning, sitting on my deck enjoying my first espresso of the day at an hour when the outside temperature is actually pleasant.

Think about it – we live in a fantasy world for more hours in the day than not.  Need proof? Witness the wary husband (or wife!) who shakes his head and walks away after explaining that the gutters are full of leaves and he needs you to hold the ladder. Did he say something?


Or the child who decides to get even by  sneaking a Magnum dark chocolate ice cream bar before lunch after you say, yet again, “I’ll be with you as soon as I write this idea down.” Hours later…..
Friends get the short shrift, too. But it’s really because they don’t get it. That phone call that says all the gang is going for a play day of shopping and lunch but you say, “I can’t go. My manuscript is due on Friday.”  Don’t they know? After all, you’re moaning about it all the time.

And, let’s not get into pets!

They really don’t understand, any of them, that you’d rather be holding that ladder (well, maybe not your first choice), playing soccer with the kids, or shopping till you drop. But you can’t. You’re a writer and even when you choose to take some time off, that fantasy world keeps creeping in and taking over. It won’t leave you alone. Those characters you’ve created have become friends, maybe even a second family, and you need to get back to them and make sure everything’s unfolding as it should.

Which is a good thing. Otherwise, who would write the books?

And let’s face it, as crazy a life as it can be, it’s also one that’s totally satisfying. What more enjoyable, self-fulfilling activity than living in a parallel universe and writing it all down to share with others!


Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Rhythms in the life of a writer

The lazy days of summer
Barbara here. The first week in September has a special meaning for me, as I think it does for much of the Western World. That is the week when the real work of the year begins again. August is lazy, often hot; businesses operate at half-staff and half-efficiency, tourists flood the streets, and friends and family are posting pictures from Ontario lakes or Scottish castles or Parisian cafes. But the first week of September, I suddenly notice the nip of fall in the air, the tinge of red in the trees, and the swifter descent of night.

For about sixty years of my life, I was governed by the rhythm of the school year, starting at age five when I headed off to my first day of kindergarten. Back in the mists of time, children walked to school, usually accompanied by an older sibling or neighbourhood child, and we didn't carry a backpack worthy of a trek up Mount Everest. We skipped along, trampling lawns and jumping over small privet hedges, our hands free to pluck dandelions.

For the next thirty years, I sat in one class or another, pored over books in the library, and hunched over a typewriter, as I slogged my way up the academic ladder to a PhD. I was a slave to the school year. July and August were months of lightness and relief, September arrived with a thud, and then every week had its own small echo of this. Friday night was a night to celebrate surviving the week, and Sunday night was a night of panic and dread as I faced the looming week of unmet deadlines and unfinished work.

No sooner did I stagger across the finish line with my PhD clutched in my hand than my children began their march through school, and I landed a job as a consulting psychologist for a school board. Once you become a parent, days off become a distant mirage, but even so, there remained a relaxed rhythm to summers and a hectic pattern to school days. Alarm clock, up, wake kids on way to shower, race downstairs pulling clothes over head, breakfast on table, lunches in bags, boots found, jackets, etc. etc. You've packed a full days' work into the morning and you aren't even out the door yet. On days when the driveway needed shovelling, well ...

Throughout the following quarter century, the week was for work (and soccer and ballet and music lessons and and and), while the weekend was for everything else– shopping, cramming in appointments, seeing friends and family, and having fun. Work hung over my head, usually in the form of presentations to be prepared or reports to be written, but generally my non-work life took priority. There was a pervasive sense of "not enough time!" for either work or fun.

During all those years, I was a writer in my "spare" time, driven by a compulsion to tell stories that began when I was a child, and I squeezed out moments of writing time from my already overloaded day. That's why my first novel took over fifteen years to complete. But once it was published in 2000 and I embarked on a new career as a writer in addition to psychologist, I discovered there really were only twenty-four hours in a day and no amount of screaming on my part would change that.

When I retired from psychology, and turned my full attention to writing, I thought I would have all the time in the world. No more September panic or Sunday night despair. Time would spread out before me, mine to fashion and fill as I wished. I discovered the joy of shopping at times when the whole world was not also trying to shop, the joy of navigating the streets at non-rush hour (although increasingly there is no non-rush hour), the joy of scheduling appointments at midday, midweek.

I also discovered that without the imposed rhythm of the work year, it was up to me to impose my own if I wanted to get anything done. Moreoever, to finish a novel at deadline and do all the other writing-related stuff the job requires (like writing this blog, which is late today), I had to put in hours of work every day. Aspiring and beginning writers ask, rather wistfully, how I manage to finish a book a year or so. I do so by writing at least a scene a day, every day. Skip a day, and the story slips away from you. How easily that one day stretches to two or three, and the momentum of the growing story is lost. Writing does not always mean pen to paper– it can mean research, rewriting, scouting out locations– but the story is always in mind, worming around in my brain.

At a book signing at Sunshine Coast Festival in BC
After the story-related writing, which can take three or four hours, mainly in the morning, I have to attend to the other writerly activities like blogging, social media, preparing presentations, planning and travelling to signings and tours and launches, etc. People ask me how I'm enjoying retirement, and I have to tell them I am not retired, I am on a second career. It's a career I love, and one I continue by choice, but it's serious work nonetheless. My life is no longer governed by the rhythms of a regular job. No longer 9 to 5, no longer Monday to Friday, no longer September to June. The leaves still turn in September and the days grow shorter, but now I am just as likely to be hunched over my computer on a Sunday morning or Friday night as any other time.

But I can shop when I like, and make sure I'm home before rush hour. What day is it today, anyway?


Thursday, May 21, 2015

I Feel Your Pain...

I, Donis, get so many ideas for blog entries from my fellow Type M-ers. When they write about their writing influences, about being over-committed, on-line presence, plotting and characterization, conferences... Oh, I understand every word. I feel you pain, your worry, your love and longing, your satisfaction, in my bones. It's the joy of writing. I had difficulty deciding which theme to follow up on this week, but when I read Rick's post of May 12 (Ah, the Writer's Life for Me), I was immediately reminded of a post I did many years ago about what really runs through an author's head when she's doing a book signing. I would bet that there is not a published author living who has not had at least one of these thoughts run through her head. Please indulge me, Dear Reader, as I repost an entry about an experience to which we can all relate.

What did you just say?

The Author is spending her afternoon in a bookstore, doing a signing. She is pulling out everything she has in her bag of tricks, trying to interest shoppers in her latest book.  She does not sit.  She has all kinds of things to give away, including candy, on the table.  She hands bookmarks and flyers to anyone who comes within ten feet of her table.  She smiles so much that her cheeks hurt.

She does not bother those who pass her table with their faces averted in order to avoid eye contact, but she engages with anyone who seems interested, and she talks about whatever they want to talk about, all the while trying gently to steer the conversation around to her book.She is tact itself.  She knows exactly what to say to the questions and comments that are directed at her again and again.  But what she says and what she is thinking bear little relation to one another.  Let’s listen in…

COMMENT 1: I don’t like mysteries.
THE AUTHOR SAID: What sort of thing do you like to read? OR Do you know someone who does like mysteries?
BUT SHE WAS THINKING: What do you mean you don’t like mysteries, you knucklehead?  Have you ever read one?  Do you know what a mystery is?  A good mystery is a psychological drama extraordinaire.  Even Hamlet is a mystery – did Uncle Claudius kill Daddy, or is Hamlet just nuts?

COMMENT 2 : I don’t read anything that doesn’t have a contemporary setting.  If it happened before I was born, it doesn’t interest me.
THE AUTHOR SAID: Sometimes you can learn a lot about what is happening today by reading about the past.
BUT SHE WAS THINKING: Come over here so I can slap you upside the head, whippersnapper.  Don’t you know that people in the past were exactly the same as they are today?  Don’t you know that people never learn, and the same things keep happening over and over again?  That those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it?  Of course you don’t, since you were either born yesterday or just fell off the turnip truck.

COMMENT 3:   I have a great idea for a novel.  If I tell it to you and you write it we can split the profits and become millionaires.
THE AUTHOR SAID:  I’m sorry, but I’m under contract to write X number of novels for the next 20 years and just don’t have time to ghost write.  But there are people who do that.  Look on the internet.
BUT SHE WAS THINKING: Are you too busy/handicapped/lazy /illiterate to do it yourself, or do you simply have no concept of reality?

COMMENT 4:  You’re the first real author I ever met.  I just finished my first novel.  Will you show it to your editor/edit it for me/recommend me to your agent or publisher?
THE AUTHOR SAID:  I’m sorry, but my agent/editor/publisher won’t allow me to read or recommend unpublished manuscripts in case one of my future stories has similar elements and we get sued for plagiarism. But I can give you some tips on how to get started.
BUT SHE WAS THINKING: No.  I’ve never seen you in my life.  How do I know you’re not a psychopath? Get away from me.

COMMENT 5: I’m not interested in your book.  I’ve never heard of you.
THE AUTHOR SAID: (she launches into a long tale about how years ago she bought a signed first edition of Outlander before anyone ever heard of Diana Gabaldon and now that book is worth at least $650.)
BUT SHE WAS THINKING: Actually, I’m going to be on the six o’clock news tonight after my arrest for assault.

(The author is just joshing.  I LOVE everybody who speaks to me during a signing and would never have an ungenerous thought about any of them.)

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Ah! The writer’s life for me!

Looking at Vicki’s post yesterday and what she currently has in her job jar sort of made my head swim. If I had that kind of workload, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

Wait a moment! I do have that sort of workload. My issue is that it doesn’t involve just writing. If you were being generous, you’d say I cast my net widely. If you were being ungenerous, you’d say I was a bit schizophrenic. Let me tell you folks, it would be just lovely to have only writing deadlines.

Anyway, it set my mind to thinking on comments I’ve had over the years from people who are intrigued when I tell them that I write crime fiction for (part) of my living. Here are some memorable ones:
  • “Do you like sit in a room and work all day long on your novels?” (I wish!) “Doesn’t that get really boring?”
  • “You must be doing well. Writers make a lot of money, I hear.” (I wish!)
  • “What do you do with the rest of your time?” (I usually spend it drinking…)
  • “I’d write a novel if I had the time.” (Usually followed by…) “Hey, if I give you my plot premise, you could write the novel and we can split the money 50/50!” (Good luck on that one!)
  • “You’re so lucky doing something you love that’s also pretty easy. Must be nice.” (I’m not even going to comment on this one!)
  • “Isn’t it a really depressing thing to do? Novels are usually so sad and stuff.” (And yes, this person did say “and stuff”.)
  • “Well, I wouldn’t read your novels. I only have time to read magazines.” Then I asked how many magazines per week. “Three or four.”
  • “What a waste of time!” (Seriously)
  • “I would really like to write a novel, too. Do you have time to walk me through what I need to know?”
  • “I’m writing a novel, too! I’ve written over 40,000 words!” Then I asked what it’s about. “I’m not really sure yet.” (Houston, I think we have a problem…)
  • “Have you ever been on TV? Every author’s on TV!”
I’m sure the other writers among those who visit Type M, must have similar comments with which they’ve dealt. Come on, share the good ones!