Tough times and tough questions lead (hopefully) to good books

Things in the US aren’t going swimmingly. I’ve sat through two Presidential “debates” and shaken my head in disbelief. (Are we still calling them debates? I’ve witnessed a lot of insulting, not a lot of debating.) A close friend in Nova Scotia asks via Facebook if these are the best two candidates we can put up, given that the US has 320 million citizens.

It’s a good question. And right now in the US, there are many other questions that need discussion.

More unarmed black men have been shot recently. I teach a course titled Crime Literature in which we discuss everything from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Camus’ The Stranger, to police procedure, to the death penalty, to my school’s long-standing unsolved murder. The recent and well-publicized Tulsa, OK., shooting led to this writing prompt: 

INTRO 

Crime Literature offers readers (and students and teachers) the opportunity to roll up our proverbial sleeves and examine, as your anthology editors Deane Kelley and Lois Marchino write, “the best and worst of society.” Your term paper calls on you to simply (or not so) discuss the symbiotic relationship between society and crime. And there are times, like now, when themes discussed in class (police training, race in the criminal justice system, socio-economics in the CJS, justice in the CJS, systemic racism and its impact on the CJS, the challenges facing members of the CJS) meet American society. Many of your authors, Sara Paretsky among them, tackle large issues like these head on. 

Now it’s your turn.

ASSIGNMENT

Please read the following CNN article titled “Tulsa police shooting investigated by Justice Department.” Then write a 750-word response in which you examine how the incident occurred, what went wrong, and where the US criminal justice system goes from here.

This paper, an obvious departure from our daily analysis of Paretsky’s Blacklist, admittedly mixes politics with crime fiction. But, as I say repeatedly in and out of class, that’s what crime fiction offers -- an exploration of themes transcending the genre that Poe established when an orangutan climbed in a window back in 1841. So while there is much ado about much in the US right now, current events provide fodder for water cooler discussion and for writing (not to mention some hysterical Saturday Night Live skits, thanks to Alec Baldwin).

Questions abound in the US right now, questions worthy of contemplation, questions I’m hoping will find their way into our genre and our books: How and why are unarmed black men being shot? (Police officers I know certainly don’t wish to draw their firearms, let alone shoot anyone. In fact, the lone officer I know who has shot someone, returning gunfire, never worked again, of his own accord, due to the emotional anguish upon taking a life). So how is it happening? Why are officers receiving so little de-escalation training in comparison to other types of training? What role does systemic racism play in some of these situations?

Serious times lead to serious questions, so while this isn’t a great time to read newspapers in the US (unless you’re Alec Baldwin imitating Trump on SNL), perhaps we can look forward to some excellent crime novels in the coming years.

Three Starts

I'm writing something new, something I hope will launch a series. I've spent a lot of time pre-writing. I have an outline I like (you know me and outlines: it's a starting point and a safety net). I have characters I would enjoy growing over years, a husband-wife team.

What I'm toying with is the point of view, usually something I never second-guess. I've written a present-tense, first-person opening, and I've written a third-person, multiple-POV opening — each running close to 40 pages — and now I want to try a first-person, past-tense voice.

I grew up reading Robert B. Parker, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, and others writing in that vein. As a reader, I enjoy the walk-behind-the-character-and-view-the-world-through-the-speaker's-eyes vantagepoint. It offers an intimate relationship with the speaker and just maybe with the writer. I'm reading Philip Roth's Exit Ghost right now and pause every few pages to reread a passage. The plot isn't pulling me along; however, the narrator's voice and Roth's turn-of-phrase is providing any and all narrative tension.

Also, it's difficult to separate plot from character when we're dealing with first-person protagonists. The plot is limited by the knowledge and capabilities of your speaker, and when you feature the first-person voice, you must allow readers an in-depth knowledge of your character's limitations; you must play fair with readers, far more so than when writing in the third-person voice.

You've got to show your hand often. I enjoy this type of writing — exploring the depths (and shallows) of my characters. I like that it's akin to acting — stepping into voice and playing the part for a few hours a day. Third-person doesn't provide me the same type of experience.

So I have two partials sitting on my desk and will write the same book from a third vantage point now, the first-person past-tense. It's all a unique and fresh writing experience.

Outlines and Themes

And so it goes.

Fall is upon us, kids are moving back to my boarding school, and I'm running department meetings and preparing for 46 kids to populate my dorm. Just dropped my oldest daughter at Kenyon College (why does a father's little girl feel to study and play lacrosse 10 hours from home?). In short, life is going 100 miles an hour, and I'm trying to keep pace.

And amid it all, the best part of my day continues to happen either predawn or just before midnight – when I can steal an hour or two to write.

I'm working from an outline this year, a first, for me. Several times in the past, I've written a five- or six-page synopsis. This time, knowing how busy I will be, knowing, too, I want to give my agent something she can sink her teeth into as we discuss the work-in-progress, I spent roughly a month on a 7,000-word, detailed outline – plenty of particulars on the roadmap for me to know where I'm going, but still enough room to explore and to be surprised. I attended the keynote at Sleuthfest a few years back when Jeffrey Deaver said he spends 8 months on an outline and 3 months to write a book. I'm not nearly there, but I'm sure seeing the merits, and I'm not driving to edge of my headlights, which is how I usually work. So far, so good. I'm enjoying it and love having the safety net: It allows me to write for an hour and a half before work, then not waste time when I steal 30 minutes here and there throughout my day.

I'm also enjoying the subject matter. My work life and my writing life are intersecting in this book – it's set at a New England boarding school. I just finished and am now rereading (something I don't often do) Blacklist, by Sara Paretsky.

It's not a new book (2004), but it remains relevant and important. Issues including race and money in the criminal justice system and something touching very close to McCarthyism post 9/11 are explored. These topics are rich, and Paretsky cultivates them very well – as she so often has and continues to do. She is, simply put, a tour de force. Yet it's a thematic work. No question. And in that way, Paretsky has an agenda and is providing questions for me to ponder, all the while spinning a great yarn.

Like all writers, my reading life feeds my writing life in ways I both know and don't know. Paretsky has me considering the adage I have heard so many times: "Theme is a critic's word, not a writer's." I'm sure I'll revisit this statement in an upcoming post, but I'd love to launch the thread here and see what others have to say about it. Should a writer be contemplating theme when at the keyboard?