Excitement And Fear

Starting a new book is usually a mixture of excitement and fear for me. Right now I’m in the dreaded “why did I ever think I could write another book phase.” This lasts until I finally feel like I’ve figured out the general direction I’m going in. It usually takes me several months to make my way through this period of unease as I slowly figure out my characters and the story they want me to tell.

It’s a phase that feels a lot like designing software. You do a lot of thinking, head scratching, walking up and down the hallway, and drawing diagrams. It always feels like I’m not accomplishing anything. I have to constantly remind myself that I really am getting something done. That all of this thinking and tossing ideas back and forth in my head is actually accomplishing something. That it’s all part of the process.

Talking to other writers about writing helps to remind me that I’m not alone. That other people find the beginning of a project difficult as well.

I got the opportunity to talk with a lot of writers (some who I’ve known for a while, some who I just met) at the California Crime Writers Conference in Culver City, CA a couple weekends ago, two days of workshops and panels on topics related to crime writing. So many things going on at the same time that it was hard to choose what to go to.

I was on a panel called “Built to Last: Creating a Series” with Rachel Howzell Hall, Sheila Lowe, Keenan Powell and Faye Snowden. We had a great time talking about our experiences writing a series.

Ellen Byron interviewed Private Eye Nancy Swaim about her experiences. I also learned about Medieval Weaponry from Swordmaster Roberta Brown. And attended a panel with Joe Broido, Phoef Sutton, Gillian Horvath and Carlene O’Neil about Hallmark Mysteries. And, and, and...lots of lots of different things were available on the business side of writing, craft, forensics...

Plus we were treated to workshops and keynote addresses from Guests of Honor Tess Gerritsen and Catriona McPherson. And fed lots and lots of food. I admit that I ate way too much.

But probably the best part was the chance to hang out with fellow writers and talk about writing and the writing business.

The next CCWC will be in 2021. (It takes place every other year.) Consider going if you get the chance. It’s well worth it.

In other news, I now have the cover for Book 5 in my Aurora Anderson series, GHOSTS OF PAINTING PAST. It’ll be out November 19th, pre-orders start the week of August 28th. Thought you might be interested in seeing it. It takes place around Christmas as you can probably tell from the cover.

Here I Go Again...

It seems that several of us TypeMers are starting new projects right now, including me. So I read with great interest Vicki’s post on believing in yourself and Barbara’s post on creating characters.

All the changes for my second book, Paint the Town Dead, have been made. Other than looking over the ARC, it's essentially done. So I'm now moving on to my third book, which I've tentatively titled Tromp l'oeiled to Death.

Starting a new project is both exciting and daunting. I have all of these ideas floating around in my brain, but no plan or outline yet. So I've started writing down as much as I can, including partial scenes, hoping that I'll be able to make sense of it all very soon. Things are ever so slowly coming into focus.

At times like this I feel like I'm not accomplishing much, that I'm going nowhere. I liken it to the design phase of a software project. You've got lots of stuff written on whiteboards and in documents, but since no code has been produced, it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere. You find yourself wandering hallways, hoping the movement will trigger something in your brain. (Or in the case of writing, surfing the web researching some aspect of the book in hopes something will come to mind.)

Just as I did with software design and coding, I have to keep on reminding myself that I need to believe in the process. To believe that I can produce a good and interesting story people other than family members will want to read. And do it in a fairly short time frame. (That last part is what I have trouble with!)

I’m fairly new at this writing game so I’m still refining my process. I come up with a basic premise (for Fatal Brushstroke that was “a woman finds the body of her painting teacher in her garden” and for Paint the Town Dead it was “Rory’s friend collapses in a class at a tole painting convention and dies.”)

From the premise I move on to working on the characters that will inhabit the story since I believe that out of the characters comes the story. Since this is the third book in the series I already have half a dozen I’m going to reuse, so it’s a good start, but I still have a lot of work to do. Once I have the basic characters and understand something about them, I write a short description of the murder and the cover-up from the murderer's point of view and come up with the main turning points in the story. Then I’m pretty much off to the races. This time around I think I'll write a one to two page synopsis of the story, which I think will help me focus my writing better.

I have no idea if this is the best approach, or even if it’s the best approach for me, but you have to start somewhere. So, I’m interested in how everyone else starts a new project. Do you start with creating characters? Or do you just start writing? Any words of wisdom for me?