Tempus Fugit

 Time passes so quickly that it alarms me sometimes. How did I get anything done at all in my real life when I worked for other people? The truth is that I didn't, or at least I was only able to do whatever was absolutely necessary to live.

Now my work is writing, and work at it I do, and yet it still feels to me that I'm always short of time. Days bleed into one another, and weeks, and months, and a year passes without my quite being aware of how it happened. It seems that I'm constantly busy, and yet I feel like I make little progress.

Yet when I remember the monumental events in my past that changed my life forever, or set me on a new path, I realize that most of them happened quickly, sometimes in an instant. I think of that when I'm frustrated, when it comes to me that I have less and less time in front of me to fool around with and wonder if it's just going to be like this for the rest of my life.

In the words of that immortal philosopher, Yogi Berra, "it ain't over till it's over."

With that in mind, I keep plugging along on the new book, and I finally see an end to the first draft, at least. I need a few more good weeks of writing. The end of this month is shaping up to be very busy, so I'm working hard to get as much done as I can before things get crazy. 

As for the new book, it's interesting to see how it's shaping up. I may have mentioned before that no matter what you plan to write, things show up in books that never occurred to you when you started out. This book is the beginning of what I hope is an entirely new series, a contemporary mystery with a story element set in the 1990s. My protagonist, a young Dutchwoman names Miep, is dealing with a lot of demons that I didn't realize were there until I started writing her.  Funny. You dig deep for your characters, and bring up a lot of stuff that was way down inside yourself.

P.S. I have no title for the new book yet. If anybody has any great ideas, I'm all ears.

My Take on Character

All right, I (Donis) am so far behind in both work and daily life that it isn't funny, but I have to weigh in on the character question, the subject my blogmates have written so skillfully about over the past few days. I’ve read many books with clever plots that delighted me at the time, but no matter how skillfully a plot is constructed, months later I don’t remember the story nearly as well as I remember the characters. And if I liked the characters, I want to keep company with them again.

Reviewers and the literati elite seem to go all breathless over dark and tortured characters in hopeless situations. This isn’t a new phenomenon. This kind of book can be a brilliant art form, as it is with noir novels, when it’s full of dark humor and a thoughtful, perhaps cynical, exploration of human nature. I find that even though I still love a good dark novel, I can’t take a steady diet of self-destruction and hopelessness any more. As the English say, I think I’ve had enough of both in my real life to be going on with. If I’m going to spend many hours of my life with these characters, I damn well want to like them.

So I’ll happily while away the time reading about Bertie Wooster’s pointless night out, because it’s a lot more fun than sitting in a hospital waiting room pondering unhappy possibilities.

Speaking of which, until a couple of years ago I had never read anything by New Zealander Ngaio Marsh, but during one of my husband's many hospitalizations, I picked her up because one of his nurses was also a Kiwi, and she and I spent quite a while discussing mystery novels. The one book I have read is called A Man Lay Dead. It’s a typical 1930s style English country-house mystery, full of upper class ladies and dandies and stalwart servants. The plot is convoluted beyond belief, involving an antique dagger, a gong, a game of Murder, a single calf-skin glove, a bannister, and a mysterious Russian secret society. And Marsh’s writing style is adverb-y to the max.

The sleuth, however, is a humorous, upper-class, Oxford man. None of the other characters can figure out why someone with his background and breeding has deigned to become a common detective. Turns out he’s so brilliant that he simply has to have puzzles to occupy his feverish mind. Sort of a Sherlock Holmes with a sense of humor.

He entertained me. However, though I finished reading the book before I went to sleep one night, by morning I had already forgotten why the murderer did it. One of my favorite examples of the importance of character versus plot is Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. The plot is so complicated that Chandler himself couldn’t quite figure it out. But the characters, setting, and dialog are so compelling that nobody cares.

Speaking of Words...

I, Donis, have found it very interesting to read my blogmates recent thoughts on inspiration, the reality of murder and crime solving, outlining (or not), technique, and conveying sense of place.

All of these deep thoughts have made me consider the psychology of my own writing. So much of my technique is unconscious. How do I convey a sense of place, the personalities and motivations of my characters? How does one describe a smell, a color, an emotion? It helps to have a spectacular vocabulary, I’m sure, but it doesn’t seem to be the number of words a writer uses, but which words. Genius is the ability to choose the right words and arrange them in just the right order to convey the perfect nuance of feeling and senses.

What, you may ask, is she babbling about now? I’m actually talking about Ernest Hemingway.I was never a big fan of Hemingway’s manly themes, but I have a great appreciation for the genius of his style. He is terse in the extreme, but somehow he is able to create real honest-to-God people coping with situations that most of us will never face.His characters are so human that in the end, the reader feels she might really know what it’s like to be an anti-Fascist freedom fighter or an elderly Cuban fisherman.How does he do it when he is so sparing with words?

Whether or not we authors convey crime-solving techniques with absolute accuracy or not, mystery is a fabulous form for exploring character. In fact, mystery is all about motivation. Why do people do what they do? What is going on in a character’s head when he is driven to kill someone? Why is the sleuth trying to figure out who did the deed? What is driving him? Do I think about these things when I write a mystery? Yes, I do, especially when I’m creating the character of the murderer. But then after I have written about her for a while, she separates from me, in a way, and begins to react unconsciously to the situations I put her in, like a real person would do.

I know this phenomenon occurs with all authors, but it does make you feel a bit like you’re possessed. I wonder what Dr. Freud would have to say about it?

Setting and Social Issues

Yesterday in her post, Donis wrote, "Setting is important to characterization." I've been thinking about that because of a brief conversation that I had with a colleague a couple of days ago. She was talking with a group of other people and as she saw me walking by, she paused to tell me she had finished reading all five of my Lizzie Stuart novels and the two Hannah McCabe novels set in Albany. I was pleased when she said she'd enjoyed all the books -- and surprised when she said the fifth book in the Lizzie Stuart's series, Forty Acres in a Soggy Grave, had been her favorite.

If I had been asked, I would have suspected that the fourth book, You Should Have Died on Monday, would be the one most readers liked best. That book had an interesting cover, introduced Lizzie's mother, the femme fatale, moved from Chicago to New Orleans. That book got great reviews. The fifth book came out with little fanfare. I was worried that I might have offended folks on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. In the book, I'd use the real name of the location because it would have been obvious and because it was crucial to the book -- a barrier island, wildlife, farms, migrant labor, agribusiness, pollution, land-use issues.

I knew after my first visit that I wanted to set a book there. I loved Eastern Shore. I went back again as I was writing and spent another week at a bed and breakfast to make sure I was highlighting what made the peninsula unique. But the plot of my mystery was inspired by a  newspaper headline that I'd discovered from 2004, the year (in the recent past of my series) that the book was set. Starting there was probably not the best way to highlight the beauty of the setting.

In retrospect, after the book was published, I feared that I had gone too dark. Yesterday, I flipped through the book again, reading the last few chapters. I'll need to read it all in a couple of months when my editor at Speaking Volumes prepares the manuscript for the reissue. But I was curious about whether I had short-changed this literary child of mine. I think I did. It received fewer Amazon reviews than the other books in the series, but the reviewers generally liked the book. What they liked was the characterizations and the relationships.

This time around, I'm going to send Forty Acres out into the world with a hug and pave its way. I couldn't have written any other story. Setting and characters came together, and the clash was disconcerting, but important to the series. The ending was satisfying for me, and for the readers who understood it was the completion of a series arc that had begun four books earlier. Now, as I move on to the next book, the characters are in a different place in their lives.

Next stop, Santa Fe -- and that setting, too, is crucial.

The New Mystery

The other day I had a lengthy wait in the post office line. Most of my fellow detainees were gazing at their cell phones.

Lines used to be a great place to people-watch. I could tell a lot by the expression on the face of a person forced to be idle and moderately civilized as we edged up in the queue. The varying postures are still revealing. Posture always has been.

There was little to be learned watching the new techies. Writers who guessed about the details of someone's life before cell phones was doing just that. Guessing. That's all. But it was fun.

One of the best books on characterization was Maren Elwood's Characters Make Your Story. It was published in 1941. She has an excellent chapter "Look at His Face." Faces in repose reveal a great deal. Is a person pleasant? Self-confident? Harried? If so, how does one present this on a page. If they give a critical glance at a crying child are they worried? Judging the mother for not having better control? Their faces told it all.

Not any more! In fact, I was tempted to sneak around and gaze over the shoulders of these unmoving statues. Were they playing solitaire? Reading email? Have they downloaded one of the Type M'ers novels? Most of the faces were expressionless.

Our job just got harder.

Knowing your mosquitoes and other things

Sybil's and Aline's posts about colourful phrases and expressions that reflect the culture that created them got me thinking. We writers often venture very far into alien territory as far as culture goes. If we only wrote about our own backyards, we might soon run out of things to say. It's the rare author that can write original and compelling stories about the same small corner of the universe. Most of us lead fairly safe, mundane lives, notwithstanding the subtle, secret intrigues that seethe beneath the surface of the most ordinary neighbourhoods. First novels often mine our own experiences and are set in our familiar world, but by the time we get to novel number ten, we are casting our net far wider. How many stories are set during war, revolution, or other catastrophe? How many deal with turmoil and pain far beyond what we ourselves have lived? Crime writers in particular can only rely on personal experience so much (one hopes).

Yet writing about locales and people other than our own presents a challenge, unless one is content with cardboard characters, cliched settings, and a formulaic plot where anybody can be plugged in with equal plausibility. As an outsider, a writer could spend years before truly capturing the essence of a people and a place, but few of us have that luxury. Yet when we try to write from the point of view of someone with an entirely different life experience from us, we risk being superficial at best or fraudulent at worst. This is true when a man tries to write a woman't point of view, a middle-aged writer tries to capture a teenager's view, or a white person tries to write as an indigenous person. In extreme cases, this is labelled "appropriation of voice" and can be offensive.

As sensitive souls, we writers all have our lines in the sand. How far we venture outside our comfort zone depends on our skill, the type of story we are telling and how real and profound the characters have to be. Some of us are bolder than others, willing to put on the cloak of a serial killer or a Hitler, whereas others are reluctant to stretch our imagination and empathy beyond the narrow confines of our past. In addition, some of us restrict our reach out of respect for the authenticity of others' suffering.

Yet this challenge of stepping into another's shoes and getting it right confronts us when we write about anyone other than ourselves. How does a Canadian get inside the head of an American? A New Yorker inside the head of a Vancouverite? How does a Montreal-born Ottawa girl like me write about Newfoundland, as I did in my upcoming book FIRE IN THE STARS, and create real characters who don't sound as if they've stepped out of an episode of Republic of Doyle?

One solution is to stick as close as possible to what you do know or can find out. If you have Newfoundland friends or family, pick their brains and summon their presence while you are writing. Imagine their voices and reactions.  Shamelessly base your characters on them; steal their anecdotes and life story. Read books about Newfoundland, hunt down stories on the internet, check the Dictionary of Newfoundlandese. And once you've written the book, ask your friendly Newfoundlander to read it for realism. Luckily Newfoundlanders will give it to you straight.

Another solution is to visit the place you are writing about. The amount of detail and authenticity you will acquire cannot be matched by your imagination or all the books in the world. The smell of the place, the daily sounds and sights, the way every clerk and cashier calls you "m' dear" or "darlin'". The more time you spend in the place, not doing the touristy things but wandering and listening, the more you can capture its flavour. And the essence of the people. You will still be an outsider, but your characters may do a passable imitation of the real thing.

Dialect and sayings are especially tricky. They reflect not just the geographical origin but the age, class, and sex of the speaker. Thanks to their long history of isolation, Newfoundlanders have a wealth of colourful sayings and words, many of which reflect the hard-scrabble, no-nonsense, fishing life they led. But a outport old-timer is much more likely to use phrases like "Long may yer big jib draw" and "Was ya born on a raff?" than a young "townie" from St. Johns. Aside from the risk of getting it wrong, putting too much dialect or strange words into your book makes it tough going for the reader, and if they have to work too hard, they will lose the enchantment of the story. No writer wants that! As with many things, a little dialect goes a long way.

True dat! Old trout.

A Two-Handed Clasp

She's very famous. Wins about every award out there. People line up to buy her books. She's every bookstore's favorite because at a signing she works the room and greets every person there.

When she shakes hands with her adoring fans, she uses a two-handed clasp.

And just what does she mean by that? Warmth? Comradery? Is she conveying caring? There's no doubt in my mind she genuinely is happy to see each person she greets and her very personal handshake expresses gratitude.

But as to us lessor lights, I think a two-handed clasp can convey a different message especially in ordinary situations. To me a two-handed clasp by someone I'm meeting for the first time in a non-writerly setting conveys insincerity. I'm immediately wary. I back away from overly familiar people.

Body language is a minefield for mystery writers. Never mind delving into countries outside the United States. That's too exhausting to think about.

Even tip-toeing through the nuances in the good 'ol USA can be tricky because there are also regional customs that can trip us up.

He said, she said, can be dreadfully boring. Dialogue broken up by description of what characters are doing provides context and also projects an imagine. When someone other than our protagonist is speaking in a scene, what is our protagonist doing? Are her hands at rest? Does she listen intently? Does she squirm in the chair. Drum her fingers? Twist her hair? We convey a lot without saying a word.

One of the clearest and most annoying signals of insincerity to me in "mixing" situations is for someone to look me intently in the eyes as through they are listening and then look over my shoulder at someone else. Several times. It's time to move on.

There are a jillion books out there on reading body language. I'm thinking hard about improving character tags and spiffing up personalities. TV is a great resource. I try to pay attention to the facial expressions of the best actors. Trying to describe the set of jaw, the lines of their faces, their eyes, is wonderful practice.

I don't think we have study all this very hard. We know how we feel about body language. Our interpretation is usually accurate without having to think about it.

It's describing it that's the pits.