Random Thoughts on Writing

I (Donis) have been doing my best to write over the past months - though it's hard to concentrate these days. I'd plead that I've had writer's block, but I've thought for years that “Writer’s block” is not really a thing. If you’re stuck, put something down, some reminder, or thought, a place-filler, or just a blank. Recently I read about an author who writes the word “bagel” when he can’t think of anything else. This allows him to keep moving. He can always go back and find the perfect term later. Believe me, even Shakespeare’s first draft looked like the dog’s dinner.  I live by this philosophy, especially lately, since I am not only not bringing my A game when I sit down to write, I’m not even up to my W game. But you must plug on. Later, after you have something to work with, you rewrite, and then you go back and do it again. And again. I think that most authors are never really satisfied with what they’ve created.  As for me, I’ll tinker with a book until I absolutely have to turn it in for the last time. Years after the book is published, I’ll find myself coming up with fresh ideas for a scene and wishing I could go back and work on it some more.

I once read an essay that postulated that a person’s thinking patterns might be formed by the geography of the place he grew up. I don’t know if that is true. However, I have observed that people are happier in some places than others, possibly due to where they were reared. My husband was raised on the wide-open Great Plains, and becomes claustrophobic in heavily wooded country. A friend from the Ozark Mountains once told me that she loves the woods. She feels protected and secure in wooded country, and exposed and vulnerable on a treeless plain. Many a city-raised person is disoriented in the wilderness, and vice-versa for someone who grew up in the country. It’s what you’re familiar with, I suppose. I read a piece in the newspaper several years ago about an unusually long period of sunshine in Iceland, which is normally has cloud cover for some 300 days a year. An interviewee said that the clear sky was nice at first, but after a week, she was beginning to feel nervous and unhappy. I’m sure there is a story idea lurking in there somewhere.

If I’m going to spend two or three days of my life reading a novel, I would prefer to like at least some of the characters. I try not to spend too much time with real-world people I dislike, after all. I once read a well-known book by a Very Famous Author and found the mystery quite interesting and the writing excellent.Very Famous Author really knew how to invoke a setting and construct a plot. The characters were  well drawn, but they were  all so unpleasant that even though I really wanted  to know how the story turned out, I had trouble finishing the book. I finally skimmed through just enough to get the gist and then read the end. I take a lesson from this experience and try to create characters who the readers will enjoy spending time with. Not to say that all the characters should be nice. Where’s the fun in that? I  do enjoy seeing evil people get their comeuppance.

A potpourri of thoughts

by Rick Blechta

As usual, this week again finds my thoughts scattered and with zero focus. I’ve taken to calling it “Covid brain”, and in speaking to friends, I’ve found a lot of us our suffering from this. After reading Tom’s post from yesterday, he’s got it too. 

So I’m going to make lemonade out of the handful of lemons I’ve got, hence the title of my post.

My WIP (when will it be finished and not in progress?) has hit a huge snag. A good part of the storyline was set to take place in Washington, DC, and because of the border closure between Canada and the US, that obviously ain’t going to happen. Yes, I understand I might be able to fly across the border if I had to — but I don’t. 

What to do? Move the setting someplace else? 

I come from New York so I know it well, but to be honest, I don’t think that would cut it. The book is totally about the US which means I’ve got to come up with some workable solution. I can't switch it to Canada, where I can travel anywhere I need to.

At this point I’m leaning in the direction of consulting Dr. Google, write what I need to using that limited information, then finding someone who lives in DC or knows it very well to read the “offending” portions of the book in order to tell me what’s wrong. And there will be a lot wrong.

Which brings me to setting. I’ve given that a lot of thought lately.

I tend to look askance at authors who set their novels in places they’ve never been or have only visited briefly and have the character telling the story who is a native. My feeling is you need to live someplace to really understand it enough to write about it. That’s why when I have to set something in, say, Paris (The Fallen One), I always make my “narrating character” an outsider, someone visiting or working there briefly. Then if I make an egregious error on something, I can be more easily forgiven by a reader who spots it. And I visit the place myself to gain the same knowledge my character would have.

Now I’m faced with a similar situation in my WIP, and as much as I want to, I can’t visit the place I’m writing about. I’ve flown over the US capitol a few times and driven by it as well, but I’ve never set foot in the place. To me, that’s a huge deficit to overcome.

The one hope is that maybe things will get better by the time I’ve completed my first draft (if only!) and I get to visit before I have to submit my novel to a publisher. It may be a vain hope, but what else do I have?

The last “thought” for this week is why does adversity seem so much harder to overcome than it usually does? Perhaps Barbara, being a psychologist could explain it, but I can be brought to a halt, lose heart at the most trivial of things. My “Washington” problem is a good example. I feel as if I’m staring at a blank wall without an ounce of resolve to deal with the issue.

Paging Dr. Fradkin!

Hitting the road

Barbara here. One of the great joys of being a writer is getting the chance to travel, whether it's into the head of a person very different from yourself or to a physical place you've always wanted to see. We writers can go anywhere, at least in our heads.

Each one of my Amanda Doucette novels is set in a different iconic location in Canada. I did this quite deliberately, because Canada is an extraordinarily varied country spanning seasides, forests, deserts, mountains, and northern tundra as well as charming villages and dynamic cities. I wanted the chance to visit it all, as well as the chance to share my discoveries with others. Canada is a modest place, inclined to say sorry and not at all inclined to toot its own horn. We have cultural, historical, and geographical treasures that we are too modest to brag about.

So the Amanda Doucette series began in Newfoundland, continued on in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec and to Georgian Bay in Ontario, an unsung paradise of thirty thousand islands in a bay big enough, but for a technicality, to qualify as the sixth Great Lake. During the writing of each book, I read books on history, culture and current events, consulted sources, and spent time visiting the location and walking in Amanda's shoes. I wanted readers to feel as if they were there, and I wanted each nuance to be as vivid as possible. The bonus – each book has enriched my understanding and love of the places.

Amanda is now heading west into the Alberta badlands for book #4, and I am having a wonderful time learning about Alberta. I am currently working my way through 13 books on the prairie province's history, politics, and people. Going to school in Montreal during the fifties and sixties, I learned almost nothing about the settling of the west, and everything I learned about the history of Quebec and the Atlantic provinces was heavily Anglo- and Euro-Centric. Looking at all this information through twenty-first century eyes, as well as the wisdom of over half a century of my own lived history, has been a gift that goes far beyond the writing of my next crime novel. It enriches me as a person and a citizen, and helps me interpret events in the world. We should never stop learning.

I still have not yet set pen to paper on this book. Nor do I actually know what it's going to be about, but all my stories are rooted in place and history, and this research, along with discussions with people who live there, will eventually yield up the seeds of a dramatic story. My next step will be to travel there in person, so that I can visit the places, fill all my senses, and see for myself the nuances that make the badlands unique. Maybe even hear the stories that the badlands themselves tell. I am planning this research trip for September– two weeks in a rental car visiting Dinosaur Provincial Park, the Royal Tyrell dinosaur museum, horseback trail riding, Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, and reconnecting with my cousins in Lethbridge and my writer friends in Calgary.

By the time I finish the Amanda Doucette series, I hope to have visited most corners of Canada and stood in the shoes of people from all different places and walks of life. If through those journeys I can share a bit of what I've learned with readers, I will be delighted. Imagination and empathy are two priceless qualities that writers bring to a world much in need of both. And travelling opens the way to both.

Making A Real World

Great-grandfather's farm

After I read Vicki’s entry about location research, below, I commented that I’ve researched a lot of places using Google and imagination. But upon reflection, I have to admit that is not really true. I think that it’s incredibly helpful to experience a place before writing about it. My series is set in a place that I know down to my bones, because I was raised there. However, the place I write about and the place I was raised no longer exist, so I actually rely on memory—and use imagination to fill in the gaps.

Where I live now

But it’s true that there is no substitute for actually experiencing a place. I’ve been to Britain several times, and every time I'm reminded that we may speak a common language (kind of), but we are not the same. I get the same impression when I travel to different part of the United States. I moved  to Arizona thirty-four years ago and was quite surprised to find out that it's very different from Oklahoma. I did not recognize one native plant, tree, grass, bug, bird, or lizard. Who would have thought it? Both states are located in the American Southwest. You'd think the cultures and the landscape would be basically the same. But in my experience, keeping in mind that I am not an Arizona native and live in a giant metro area, Arizona is culturally like back door Los Angeles, but more conservative in attitude. Oklahoma, at least when I lived there and knew it best, is easily as conservative as Arizona, but the culture is like nowhere else I've ever been. Put Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Kansas in a blender and mix it well, and you may get an idea. I am quite politically and socially liberal, but I can't deny that I am marked by the values of the place I grew up. And it shows in the characters and themes I write about.

I was born and raised in Tulsa, a rich oil town located in the hilly bend of the Arkansas River. I came up among people in three piece suits, cowboy boots and stetsons. My father owned a construction business and raised quarter horses on the side. My mother ran his office. I rode horses every weekend. The picture at the top is my great grandfather's farm in eastern Oklahoma, where I spent a lot of time when I was a kid. I played in blackjack woods draped with wild grapevines, hot and sweaty and covered in cockleburs and chiggers. I picked up wild pecans off the ground by the bucketsful in the fall. At the time, I'd have rather stayed at home and read a book. I was not a lover of the outdoors. Now I look back on it through a golden haze of nostalgia. In fact, I write about it.

The author creates a universe with her choices and invites a reader in. If the writer is really good, the reader is enveloped in the story and moves through it without being quite aware that he’s in a made-up world. The writing is all-enveloping, but unseen.

I’ve quoted this before, but it is to the point. The very best writing reminds me of one of my favorite Zen sayings: The fish is not aware of the water it swims in.

That’s what we writers are shooting for.

The devil's in the details

Barbara here. Aline's Monday post about setting serves as a springboard to mine. Great minds think alike! I too want to talk about setting, and more specifically about the setting of my Inspector Green novels, which are set in Ottawa, Canada's national capital and my adoptive home.

Write what you know, we writers are advised when we first set pen to paper. Really? What a bore that would be. I’ve led an uneventful life. I grew up in Montreal – not in the exotic, fast-paced downtown but in a nice, safe, leafy suburb – went to university, married, had three kids, worked for a few decades... There were a few heart aches, but not much drama or conflict that is the meat of good stories. Moreover, I live in Ottawa. Not London, or Rome, or even the Virgin Islands. Ottawa is a great city if you want to raise a family but not if you want to plot murders. It has roughly 12 murders a year; Baltimore has 350. In Ottawa, a sink hole is the lead news story for over a week.

Although Ottawa readers love the Ottawa setting, whenever I do events elsewhere, I have to downplay it. Canadians sometimes joke that Ottawa is the place that fun forgot, the city of gray civil servants scurrying home at 5 pm before the sidewalks are rolled up. I didn’t know this when I blundered into the Inspector Green series. I was just finishing eight years of graduate school at the University of Ottawa and I was ready to kill someone, so I bumped off a graduate student. What better place to set it than the place I knew so well – the University of Ottawa.

 Then two amazing things happened.

First, I realized how important setting was to the telling of a story. It’s more than just a static backdrop to the ongoing plot; it’s part of the drama. It’s the autumn leaves crunching underfoot, the sunset in your eyes as you drive down the Queensway, the musty smell and dark shadows in the library stacks where I put my first body. Writing is about drawing the reader into a story, making them feel they are walking in the footsteps of the characters. In a film, we see these details through the camera lens, but in a book, we see them through our own imagination.

I discovered that although I thought I knew Ottawa well and could use my memory for many details, I had to revisit all the places I was describing. When I wrote Do or Die, I prowled the library stacks (again!), I walked through the lobby of the Chateau Laurier and into Wilfred's Restaurant so that I could describe the sound of shoes on the marble floor and the smells of garlic and wine.  I took copious notes and photos. I needed all these details to bring the scene to life for me, even if I only chose to put a few into the actual book. Readers don’t want a whole page of detail; they want a few choice hints so they can imagine it themselves. The sparkle of candles on wine glasses, the soft murmur of conversation.

The second amazing thing that happened was that readers were surprised at the Ottawa I had brought to life. I got emails from readers who commented they didn't know the city was so diverse, or beautiful, or multi-textured. 

  

If you scratch beneath the surface, Ottawa actually has everything you need to create dramatic stories. It has a spectacular physical setting – three major rivers, a canal, and a lake in the centre. It has lots of parks to hide bodies in, ravines and bluffs to toss victims over. It has all the diversity of a big city - biker gangs, immigrants, rich, poor – but it also has farmers, cows and little river villages with secrets as old as time. Ottawa also has diversity in weather and seasons. It’s never predictable. Snowstorms, bodies buried by snow ploughs, floods, sweltering heat, blinding downpours. Even fog! I’ve used them all.

So over ten books I’ve explored just about every nook and cranny of Ottawa, in all its seasons. Mystery writers are a really nice, friendly bunch of people but we have some peculiar quirks. We’re always noticing interesting ways to kill people and interesting places to put bodies. Ottawa is filled with such places, and they have inspired the start of many of my books. The spark for Fifth Son began with a particularly spectacular country church that I drove by all the time on my way to the cottage, and each time, I thought; that needs to be in a book. That tower is a great place to toss a body from. And every time I stood at the edge of Hogs Back Falls and stared into the roiling water, I thought, boy, what would happen if you fell in. Thus Dream Chasers was born.

So in the end, I’ve come full circle back to the advice “write what you know”. Setting does not have to be flashy and world-renowned. Every family, every street and village has the seeds of intrigue and hidden secrets around which to spin a story. Every city, even one that on the surface appears grey and dull, has its nuances of colour and texture if you shine a clear enough light on it. Get up close and personal with the neighbourhoods, the geography, the changes of weather and season. The power is in the details; if they are vivid and specific enough, the story will come to life as the reader walks through it. Our own neighbourhoods, our streets, our schools and workplaces– none of these places are dull. They can all serve as settings for the very human stories we choose to tell. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details.