Writing and Insecurity

By Thomas Kies

I’m nearly finished writing the first draft of a new book.  It’s not part of the Geneva Chase series which I’ve loved doing.  This has a male protagonist (kind of nice not writing as a woman for a change), different location (I love Connecticut, but the cost of living is wicked high and it’s time to write a mystery using new scenery), and a different vibe.

My publisher hasn’t committed to the book, and I don’t know if they will. I hope they do.

As a matter of fact, there’s no guarantee that it will ever see the light of day.  It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve written a novel that was never published.  As a matter of fact, before I found an agent (she’s the best) for Random Road, I had written four other books.

Before Random Road, was I feeling insecure?  Hell yes.

I still am. 

As I continue to steam ahead on the new book, there are some days where I think this is the best piece of fiction I’ve ever written.  And then, later that same day, I wonder if it’s the worst piece of crap ever knocked out on a laptop.

Yeah, insecurity.  

I asked my browser if any other writers have suffered from insecurity.  This is what it said:

Yes, many famous writers have suffered from insecurity. For example, Ernest Hemingway was known for his insecurities and his tendency to compare himself to other writers. F. Scott Fitzgerald also struggled with insecurity throughout his life. Virginia Woolf was known to have suffered from depression and anxiety, which often made her feel insecure about her writing.

● "I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances." - John Steinbeck

● "I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent." - Stephen King

● "I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within." - Gustave Flaubert

● "I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering." - Robert Frost

I’m going to get back to writing.  Luckily, at this point, unlike Frost, I know what the end looks like.  When I started, the characters were foreign to me.  The villain or villains unknown.  The story yet to unfold. 

Now the characters are like old friends.  I hope you get to spend time with them as well.

www.thomaskiesauthor.com

RMMWA and Live Broadcasts

A couple of days ago, I received this email:

"Beginning August 8th, the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of American will begin broadcasting our meetings LIVE, making them available to members who are unable to attend  in person. It will allow members online to ask questions through CHAT and to participate in real time." 


I'm just thrilled. I signed up right away. There have been a number of meetings I've signed up for and then couldn't make the trip from Fort Collins to Denver. I simply won't do snow and ice.

I hate paying for meals in advance only to find that I can't make the trip.

The Rocky Mountain Chapter has outstanding programs. We have great speakers on a variety of subjects. Their expertise helps keep my writing as accurate as possible.

For our August RMMWA program, Stephen Pease will present the real duties of the licensed private investigator, myth- and cliché-busting. He’ll cover things like how you become a licensed PI in Colorado, what sorts of things PIs do, along with things they would never do, and how a case works. Future meetings will include information on human trafficking, surveillance, and Sierra Detection.

Chapter meetings are valuable for a number of reasons in addition to the informative programs. It's great to hear what other members are publishing. We pick up valuable tips for selling and promoting books and form lasting friendships with other members.

Coming up in December is our delightful six-word mystery contest. This was inspired by the famous Earnest Hemingway short story challenge.

It is claimed Ernest Hemingway once wrote a six-word short story that could make people cry for a bet. The wager was ten dollars, which Hemingway won with the following:

“For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”

Our challenge is to write a mystery using only six words. The categories are: Hard-boiled, Cozy, Thriller, Police Procedural, or a mystery with Romance & Lust. There is also an all-over winner.

My favorite grand champion one year was: "Eyes so lovely, I kept them."

I will attend as many meetings in person as I can, but it's great to know that I will now have the on-line options.

First Lines

How important is your first sentence?

It’s important enough that Thrillerfest held a contest for best first sentence of a published novel.  I was lucky enough to be one of the winners.  My first sentence is from Random Road.

Last night Hieronymus Bosch met the rich and famous.

My agent once told me that she gets one hundred submissions from writers seeking representation every day.  A hundred submissions!

She also told me that the one thing that made her want to look at the rest of the first chapter of Random Road was the first sentence.  At the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, she was a speaker and asked me to stand up and recite the first sentence of my book to the crowd.

When I was finished, someone seated near me loudly asked if I could recite the last sentence of Random Road.  Slightly embarrassed, I couldn’t.  Frankly, I’d rewritten it so many times.  But I remembered the opening line, and so did my agent.

In a 2013 interview in the Atlantic, Stephen King said, “There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It’s tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don’t think conceptually while I work on a first draft—I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.”

Here are a few examples of some of my favorite first sentences:

I feel compelled to report that at the moment of my death, my entire life did not pass before my eyes in a flash- Sue Grafton, I is for Innocent.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen—George Orwell, 1984.

All of this happened, more or less.—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five.

I sat in the back pew and watched the only woman I would ever love marry another man—Harlan Coben, Six Years.

They shoot the white girl first—Toni Morrison, Paradise.

Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin’s feet were place in a tub of cement—Dennis Lehane, Live by Night.

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish—Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea.

Three other winners from Thrillerfest’s First Sentence Contest:

Gracie Falcon was halfway over Vail Pass white-knuckling her Jeep through a late spring snowstorm when she heard through intermittent static on her car radio that she’d been killed in a plane crash.– C. Harrison

Prouty had a drinker’s face, a graveyard cough, and a heart a hangman would kill for.–Jeffrey B. Burton

San Ruben, California is a long way from Boston, whether you measure it in miles, years, or bodies.–Jack Soren

But not every first sentence is a keeper. Every year, the Bulwer-Lytton Prize, inspired by novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s famous “it was a dark and stormy night” opener, is given to an opening sentence for the “worst of all possible novels.”

Here are some of the best entries of the last decade:

As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand – who would take her away from all this – and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had—Ali Kawashima.

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil—Molly Ringle

As the sun dropped below the horizon, the safari guide confirmed the approaching cape buffaloes were herbivores, which calmed everyone in the group, except for Herb, of course—Ron D. Smith

For more information about the Bulwer-Lytton Prize, go to https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/  Take a look at the 2018 Grand Prize winner.  It's a doozy!

www.thomaskiesauthor.com