A Yawn-Worthy Hero

 I, too, have experienced what Barbara wrote about on Wednesday -- those moments of wondering "Why am I doing this?" with all that is going in the world. Shouldn't I spend all of my time writing about real-life events?

I have come to the conclusion that crime fiction writers make an important contribution. Aside from entertaining our readers and offering them an opportunity to escape from grim realities, we provide them with an opportunity -- a "safe space" -- in which to ponder the nature of "crime" and "justice". 

But for all my soul-searching, I've still been struggling with my historical thriller. Who cares about 1939? Over the past two years -- in the midst of the pandemic -- I haven't made much progress in completing my ever evasive first draft. The book that I should be able to write -- the book that might be my eighth published novel -- is harder to write than either of those two unpublished novels in my desk drawer. I have cycled through a range of emotions, from enthusiasm and excitement while doing the  research to not caring and being ready to jettison the whole idea and move on to my next Lizzie Stuart mystery. 

Writing this book feels like climbing a mountain. Even getting to the soggy middle feels like strolling it onto American Ninja Warriors and trying to leap from platform to platform on that first obstacle. 

Committing (once again) to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has made it no easier. My 50,000 word + goal for the month of November isn't going to happen. I am not going to morph into "Super Writer" and spend the next five days glued to my desk knocking out thousands of words a day.

But this month has not been wasted. I have confronted what I didn't want to admit. My protagonist bores me.  

I was excited when I had the idea of having a sleeping car porter as my "hero". In 1939, an educated African American man who is working as a sleeping car porter is true to life. My protagonist, Jacob Baldwin, is the graduate of a small college in the South. He is working to save enough money to attend law school. He believes in the American ideal of truth and justice. He is a striver.

When first seen, he is attending Marian Anderson's Easter Sunday performance at the Lincoln Memorial.  He spots Cullen Talbot, the white Southern plantation owner for whom his family once sharecropped in the crowd. He sets out to find out what Cullen up to. But Jacob as I have been writing feels like a character who is going through the motions. He has not come to life. 

The "hero" that is too good to be true is recognizable to most writers and many readers. Jacob is too noble. I've Googled online lists of character flaws and flipped through the books about creating characters that I own. But I already know what I need to do. 

What I have been saving as backstory needs to open the book. I have an ugly, shattering scene that I need to write about something that Jacob experienced when he was ten years old. Jacob is a black man in 1930s America. For all his idealism, he is filled with suppressed rage. The impact of what follows will be much greater if readers know this and can watch him unravel. 

As Cullen taunts him, playing his own game, Jacob will find it increasingly difficult to hold onto his distance from the fray. He will be forced to make some decisions that will challenge what he claims to believe. He may fail as a role model, but his motivation will be stronger. 

He has my attention now. He can carry the weight I'm placing on my shoulder. However, the book ends, he won't bore me. And I may finally get through my first draft.

Writing struggles

 Rick's post of yesterday reflects what a lot of us writers feel, as we struggle to block out the outside world and enter the world of our imagination long enough to craft decent stories. I too am behind on my latest WIP and find it much more of a slog than previous books  "The world is inside our heads". I think that's a better description than "I'm getting too old for this". 

But because I am a professional and I have a deadline to meet, I am soldiering on. By sequestering myself at the cottage these last two weeks with few outside distractions beyond those that lurk on my internet feed, I managed to get some good writing done, but I am at that stage in the book - the stage every writer knows well - when I don't like the story and think it's crap. Not a happy place, but I just have to keep ploughing ahead, looking for ways to make it more exciting, and the characters more vivid, interesting, and likeable. The latter because I think having at least a few characters I like being with and find interesting is essential to really engaging with a book. It's the same when I read a book. If I don't like or care about anyone, especially if everyone is annoying, I will toss the book aside.

I have an essential research trip to British Columbia coming up next week, and I'm hoping that being on site will be both inspiring and energizing. I often get great plot ideas from walking in my characters' shoes. Meanwhile, I have lots of preparations to do, so this is a short (and late) post. 

But I can't sign off without a quick cheer for one of the experiences that truly lifts the lonely, frustrated writer's mood - the arrival of author copies from the publisher. So look what arrived today!

This latest Inspector Green novel is due on the shelves in late October 2021, although it may show up earlier. But it's up on Net Galley for review and available for pre-order at your favourite bookstore as well as online. Order soon and often to help a poor writer survive! And stay tuned for other events. Sadly, Covid may squash all my hopes of real in-person book launches this fall, but I will wait a couple of weeks before deciding.

Is anyone else so done with Zoom?

The best-laid plans

I acknowledge that I write this post from a position of extreme privilege. I live in Canada, which has universal public health care and a supportive government that is managing the pandemic reasonably well. I live in my own home and have a pension (hard-earned) that keeps the terror of destitution at bay. I have not yet lost friends or loved ones to Covid. I miss the company and hugs of friends and family, but as a writer, I am used to solitude and can conjure up playmates inside my own head. 

Many people, my own children included, have had their lives completely thrown off course by this pandemic. By comparison, I have absolutely no right to complain. But in the interests of documenting the pandemic's frustrations, big and small, here I go.

The first frustration surrounds the release of my upcoming book, THE ANCIENT DEAD, meant to come out in October 2020, in time for holiday signings, readings, and gift-buying. Covid crushed that plan and the publisher pushed the release to the dead zone of January 2021, with no possibility of in-person appearances and launches. Sales and publicity out the window. I gamely switched gears to think virtual. How do I hold a virtual launch? How do people attend and buy books? How do I greet and thank everyone who tunes in? I love my book launches, and the thought of staring at myself on the Zoom screen while disembodied attendees watch is profoundly unsatisfying. But I will figure it out. And I will figure out the Zoom book clubs and readings that I hope will follow in the months afterwards.

The second frustration is more serious, although still petty measured against the struggles of the world. I am just beginning to research the fifth Amanda Doucette book. I know nothing about it beyond the setting, which is British Columbia. The series has been moving across the country, and it is now British Columbia's turn. It was initially to have been set on a small cruise boat going through the inside passage, but after watching the cruise ship disasters of the past few months, I gave up that idea. Instead, I thought maybe Haida Gwai, a fascinating area I have always wanted to visit. Then access to the area was closed, with no guarantee when and how it would be opened up. So I started researching other possibilities on Vancouver Island and the mainland. Now, however, there is a real possibility that borders between regions and provinces may be closed and/or 14-day quarantines imposed on travellers. That would make the research trip untenable. I have no place to quarantine in BC and can't afford the extra time and cost of accommodation and dog care.

With one exception, I have never written a book without visiting the area. So much rich detail is missed when I can't walk the paths my characters walk, see the sights and hear the sounds, talk to local people and get a sense of the real place. I cannot imagine writing about the stunning and unique place that is wild BC while relying only on books, the internet, and friends. The book would be a pale imitation of what it could be. 

To meet this book's deadline, I need to do the trip in the spring of 2021, or at the latest by early September. But who knows where we'll be by then? Will there be a successful vaccine in general use? Will everything be in lockdown again? Will I be able to visit the places I want to, and find restaurants and accommodations there? I probably won't know these answers for months, and so am unable to plan ahead. This book may turn out to be a last-minute, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants scramble.

Not the way I want to write it at all. But... Covid doesn't care.

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!

The Tale of the Printer

So much good news from my blogmates lately! (well, except for Rick, who has to go back to the drawing board on his WIP. I sympathize. I've been there.) Congratulations to Barbara for finishing the first draft of her new novel, to Aline on the occasion of her Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary, and to Charlotte, whose historical novel, The Healer's Daughter, won a Kansas Notable Book Award, is a finalist for the Will Rogers Medallion, and a finalist for the High Plains Books Award!

As for me, I'm slogging through, like so many writers. I've started a new novel and am trying to muster up the discipline to write a certain number of pages every day, when in reality I'm so distracted by the disturbing state of the world that it's a wonder I manage to get out of bed in the mornings. Added to the fact that I live in the festering germ swamp that is Arizona, things keep going oddly wrong in my little world, which doesn't help my state of mind. I had all kinds of trouble with my internet connection in May and June. We had repair people out twice in a matter of weeks. But as it turns out it wasn't us – in the alley behind out house, someone had run into the provider's tower with his car and caused some kind of short. That's what they told us, anyway. Whatever it was, we seem to be doing all right now, connection-wise. I have read, however, that since the pandemic began and the number of people working from home has skyrocketed, home internet connections have been problematic for everyone.

Then yesterday my printer gave up the ghost. I did everything I could think of, but the message on the printer screen says “Your printer needs repair. Please unplug.” I hunted through the online jungle to find out who is selling the same Canon PIXMA printer that I could buy online and perhaps pick up curbside. No luck at any venue. That type of printer is no longer made. Figures. I bought $75 worth of ink cartridges for it last week. So today we put on our hazmat suits and went to Best Buy to actually look at printers, and guess what? The local Best Buy stores are basically sold out of printers since, as the salesman told me, everyone is working at home and they can't keep them in stock. (aside – the young man, though properly masked, kept unconsciously stepping closer to me, invading my 6-foot safety space, and I kept backing up like he was coming at me with a knife.)

So here are my printer choices: I can order a new printer of unknown quality (plus ink) online, or I can haul my old printer in for repair, which might be faster, but will probably cost more than buying a new printer. I could also go to more electronics stores, but I think I've had as much human contact as I care to for a while. My husband and I talked it over, and decided to drop the old printer off with the Geek Squad and pay the price to get it fixed. In the meantime, there will be no printing here at the Casey household for the foreseeable future.

In defence of molecules

My goodness, Wednesday has crept up on me! Days blur together in this new "date-less" regime, so I was happily perusing the internet this morning, checking email, social media, news headlines, and various other intriguing links that popped up along the way, when I suddenly realized it was Wednesday. Blog post day! What possibly gems of insight do I have to share today?

Like Aline, I have been plodding along on my first draft at a snail'a pace, in fits and starts as I feel my way forward. Like her, there have been exhilarating moments when the story just poured out and it was exciting to see what would happen next, and other moments when I would ask myself the usual writer questions. Why in earth am I writing this dreck? Where is it going?

The pandemic has sapped a lot of creative energy. First of all, the formless anxiety we feel from the constant news of suffering, dying, and outrageous reactions, along with the disruptions to our routines and social supports, makes concentration very difficult. Secondly – and I felt this very acutely at the beginning – our stories, even though about murder and mayhem, seemed silly and trivial in the face of global real-life tragedy. And as if the pandemic weren't a big enough crisis, the death of George Floyd has triggered anti-Black protests across much of the world and brought the struggles and despair of Blacks and other people of colour into sharp public consciousness. All of which has made my own story seem even more trivial and irrelevant.

Yet fiction is about people, and crime fiction in particular shines a spotlight on people in pain. People who are desperate, frightened, enraged, or horrified. It doesn't usually paint on a big picture, global canvas, but rather it drills down into the unique and individual lives of those make up that canvas. Put together, molecule by molecule, fiction can tell the story of that global canvas.

So I will write on, delving deep into the story of my unique band of characters and hoping that I contribute in some small way to the bigger picture. And also hoping that when my next Wednesday comes along, I will have something more coherent to say.

Real World Tension

In my creative writing class that I was teaching for our local college, cut short by the pandemic, I stressed the value of ratcheting up tension as your book progresses.

Well, welcome to the real world, where the tension is rising nearly every day.

On Friday, the governor of Michigan shut down the Capitol in Lansing in fear of armed protesters. For the past week, lawmakers have been debating how to safely enable lawmakers to work and vote in session while the state’s laws allow people to bring firearms into the capitol building. The debate grew in intensity as some lawmakers read about threats to the governor’s life on social media, which were published in the Detroit Metro Times.

There’s a tense video on YouTube filmed by a female customer in a Trader Joe’s, arguing with a young worker who was trying to enforce company policy by asked the woman to wear a face mask. The discussion grew heated, the young man called the police, who never showed up, and the woman finally left. When she did, the other customers in the store applauded.

A Target employee in California ended up with a broken arm as she helped escort two customers who also refused to wear masks.

In Pennsylvania, a female convenience store clerk refused to sell a man who refused to wear a mask a pack of cigars. He punched three times in the face.

In Texas, a man was told he couldn’t ride a public bus if he didn’t put on a face mask. He shot another passenger who ended up in the hospital and the gunman was arrested.

Then in Flint, Michigan, a security guard outside a dollar story insisted that a customer wear a face mask. The guard was shot and killed.

On a much lesser note, but still ugly, I was in line at our Food Lion, wearing a mask. As the lady behind the counter checked me out and I place my groceries in my cart, I turned to put my credit card in the machine to pay. I saw a man and woman standing right next to me, neither of whom were wearing masks. I politely asked the man to please step back. In a loud belligerent voice, he said, “Where do you want me to go? The back of the store?”

Wanting to defuse the situation, I didn’t tell him where I really wanted him to go.

The poor clerk smiled sadly and told me, “Have a nice day, honey.

I’m working from home and in my spare time, I’m working on edits for my fourth mystery, Shadow Hill. But it’s difficult not to fall down an internet rabbit hole when an alert pops up on my phone letting me know when some new kernel of news has arrived. Usually it’s bad news.

It’s not productive. At some point I just switch it all off and lose myself in my work. It’s a little like a movie or a book where the tension has nearly peaked.

So my advice is that when the world serves you more tension than you think you can handle, turn it off, go for a walk or open your work in progress and lose yourself in that.

Stay safe and stay healthy.

Pandemic hurdles

Recent posts (including my own) have noted that the pandemic has changed our work as writers in many ways. For many of us, our concentration and focus are shot. We find ourselves easily distracted and sidetracked by Facebook and email alerts, news bulletins hovering just behind our manuscript, and a general feeling of restless malaise that drives us to the fridge or the window several times an hour.

We also wrestle with whether to include the pandemic and its aftermath in our work in progress, which will likely come out in 18 - 24 months. It is difficult to pretend the huge upheaval we are living through did not exist. But it's also difficult to know what the world will look like by then, so we are trying to imagine and write about a world that is still out of sight. In addition, will the concerns and struggles of our characters – indeed the central drama of the book – seem irrelevant and perhaps even trivial in the brave new world our future readers will be living in? Right now, as I write my novel, it certainly feels like that.

Or is it possible that reading a story that contains no reference to the pandemic, that transports us back to that flawed but normal world we used to know, will be a welcome relief? Who knows?

So I am proceeded at a snail's pace through my first draft, writing in fits and starts as I feel my way forward and avoid the mental distractions and sloth we have all been experiencing. As if that isn't difficult enough, I've encountered yet another problem with writing in the pandemic age. I am a realistic writer. I research as thoroughly as I can the locations and details I am writing about. The Internet is an extremely useful tool but it is no substitute for real-life location scouting and interviews with experts, etc. I am used to visiting locations, talking to locals, and walking though all the steps my characters take. I am used to going to the source to verify police, coroner, and scene of the crime procedures.

Researching my Alberta book, THE ANCIENT DEAD

I can't do much of that now. I wanted to visit the Ottawa courthouse not only to get the lay of the land but also to attend a trial and watch how the lawyer and police worked, what they wore, etc. None of that can happen now. I wanted to visit Ontario Provincial Police detachments in nearby rural communities and talk to the local staff on the ground about how they would respond to certain situations, how resources would be deployed, how they would liaise with the specialist teams, etc. I can phone, but a cold call in the middle of a pandemic will likely not garner much cooperation. First responders are probably busy and focussed on other (more important) things.

I wanted to stroll through the small villages, poke around for potential burial sites, and talk to people, but that too is now a challenge. In the old days, my questions would have roused curiosity and a good laugh, but now... Who knows what kind of feelings I might be treading on?

Rural village in my latest book

I managed to do some of the research before the writing began, but more questions always come up as the story evolves. So all I can do not is rely on Mr. Google and my imagination, make the stuff up, and hope I can fact-check before the final manuscript has to be submitted.

My final plan will be to apologize in the acknowledgements and blame the pandemic for all the things I got wrong. This too is an evolving story.

Writings from the pandemic

I am almost two thirds of the way through the first draft of my upcoming Inspector Green novel. The contract for this book was signed somewhere back in the mists of time. Possibly 2018. Pre-pandemic timelines are blurry. I started researching the topic in October 2019, began writing in January 2020, and by the time the pandemic really hit this country, I had written about half.

The book is due for release in November 2021 and my deadline to submit the final manuscript is October 2020. In normal times, that deadline is very manageable. The whole summer stretches ahead of me, with lots of time to sit on my dock at the cottage and get inspired. But these are not normal times. The first challenge was getting my creative brain to work. For weeks, I've been mesmerized by news headlines, Facebook links, and that addictive Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker. Every morning I've tuned in to our Prime Minister delivering his daily update to the nation, followed by endless media commentary. At times it has felt as if I was standing on a small sliver of sand slowly being washed away by the ocean. My fictional world, whenever I tried to enter it, felt irrelevant and even meaningless despite the compelling human drama I was writing about. Mine was make-believe, while all around me gallant struggles were being fought and real lives lost.

I have begun to settle down and after weeks of forcing myself to stare at my draft, I've begun to inch forward again. Only to confront another problem; how to handle the pandemic. My books are set in real time and often against the backdrop of current events. When readers pick up my book in late 2021 or beyond, should they be reading about characters going about their lives in a world that is the same as pre-2020? It would feel jarring, and indeed, as I try to write about their daily activities, it feels jarring as well. Lots of hugging and handshakes, lots of gathering together in the squad room for briefings, no masks or worries about social distancing.

But by the time the book is available, eighteen months from now, I think the main pandemic will be over. There will be some return to normal activities. So thankfully I don't have to describe police trying to investigate in the midst of a lockdown. But what kind of world will we live in? What will be the changes to our behaviour and our feelings that will linger long after the virus is over? My characters will have all lived through the pandemic, and the effects and memories will still be very vivid. I don't expect us to "get over" the collective world trauma soon, and many parts of the economy such as travel, entertainment, and sports will still be decimated.

If I write a realistic story set in roughly the time the readers will be reading it - i.e. late 2021 - I can't ignore those realities. But at the moment I can only guess what the world will look like and how profoundly our lives will be changed. I've asked writers and readers what they would want to see in a novel like mine. Interestingly the opinions seem split between those who want me to ignore the pandemic (or set the book in 2019) because they don't want to read about it, and those who think it's important to have it as a backdrop, but judiciously sketched. No one wants to read a whole book about the pandemic (which is understandable at this point, nor do I want to write one).

I have concluded that, because that's the kind of story I write, I have to include the aftermath and fallout from the pandemic, but it will be in subtle touches. For one thing, I don't plan to change the overall plot of the story, and for another I have no idea what the world is going to look like. Will we all be wearing masks, or at least the paranoid among us? Will we have adopted the Namaste greeting or fist bump in larger numbers? Will we shy away from hugging acquaintances? Will half of us be broke and in danger of losing our homes? Will we value our relationships and our planet more than we used to?

These are all possible outcomes. And some of them may find their way into my book as I proceed with the draft. I can keep changing details as the pandemic situation evolves, and by the time the book is in final edits almost a year from now, I hope we have a clearer picture of our new reality. So in subsequent drafts and rewrites, I will be chasing a moving target and adjusting my subtle touches to whatever new realities I can imagine just out of sight. An interesting challenge that at least makes me feel my work is less irrelevant and meaningless.

I think every writer and reader is going to approach this differently (historical and fantasy writers are exempt from the question). I'd love to hear your opinions on how this world-altering experience is changing our approach to reading and writing.

Washing floors, anyone?

I know I promised to reveal my four secrets to a successful story on this blog, one secret at a time, but that was a  month ago. As everyone has noted, that was another life. We have entered a period of surreal, suspended animation. As my daughter calls it, it's as if the world has stopped. And in many ways it has. All our daily routines and activities have changed, replaced by constant email, text, and phone conversations and non-stop news. A trip to the grocery story is now a huge excursion, and as Aline said, the highlight may be that daily walk. In my case several walks since I have two dogs, but now the walks are around the same few neighbourhood blocks. Gone are the parks and trails I used to take them on, because in their wisdom the National Capital Commission that runs them all has shut them down to avoid crowding. So now there is no quiet, serene place to avoid the crowds.

Life is not normal, and people are distracted and discombobulated. As writers, we are all struggling to find focus, to find our characters in the desert of our imagination, and to sink into that oblivion that we call the creative zone. I have all the time in the world, I tell myself, and surely this is not so different from my usual hermit life. So I've been pushing myself and berating myself for my meagre output and for my desire to wash the floors (yes, wash the floors!) just to put off picking up the pen.

And then I found this article on Facebook. It's very human and full of understanding, hope, and sound advice. The author wrote it for her fellow academics but it applies equally to us writers. To anyone whose work comes from within their own head. Judging from her story, I assume she has lived through war and terror, and has now found safe haven in Canada, and so she knows a thing or two about disrupted lives. Canada has never had a war on its own soil (discounting the war of 1812, which was very localized and very long ago), and so people born in Canada have no experience facing the kind of trauma and turmoil that much of the world has lived through. We have much we can learn from the refugees who have chosen our country, in terms of resilience and wisdom.

So I decided now is not the time to blog about the third secret to a successful story. Someday – I have no idea when – I will return to it, but it's not what we need right now.

This is what we need.