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.

Ready, set, go!

I've been amused by the recent posts by my fellow bloggers, all along the lines of Happy Holidays, here's what I did with the family, why I didn't do any writing, and so on. I confess that because my last post was due on Christmas Day itself, it didn't get posted at all. I had a house full of family, a seventeen pound turkey to cook, and more family coming to help eat it. I was too busy even to take photos. So here's my first holiday photo of the blog. This is only one table of two. I call it The Aftermath. 

But I was most intrigued by Aline's post about starting her new book, to which I said "That's exactly me!" In fact, I think that so often when I read Aline's posts that I wonder if we aren't secret identical twins with different accents.

I have been researching my next book for almost three months, reading cheerful tomes on domestic violence and trolling through the internet to learn about shelters, police response, therapy groups, etc. As I read, the characters in my drama slowly began to take shape in my imagination and some key plot possibilities emerged. But I kept stalling on actually getting down to write. New Year's Day was my drop-dead deadline. Like Aline, I am mostly a pantser and once I have a couple of opening scenes, I start the journey, knowing that if I planned ahead, I would be seduced by the first intriguing fork in the road and be off in another direction anyway. If anything, trying to follow a plan would only frustrate and bore me. I do think ahead in fits and starts, but I like the surprises my imagination comes up with and I like not knowing how it's all going to work out.

But it is also terrifying to be lost in the wilderness, not knowing where I'm going or whether I'll ever get there. This is the curious paradox that I think pantsers find so addictive. The journey is both thrilling and terrifying. Rather like plunging down a ski hill on the very edge of losing control. And, keeping with that metaphor, there I was on New Years, poised at the top of the mountain with my ski tips pointing over the abyss, gathering my courage. Finally there is nothing for it but to push off. Put pen to paper and start the first scene. Which I did on January 4. It's a brand new Inspector Green novel: I am bringing my favourite detective back after an absence of almost six years. So on January 4 I started feeling my way down the mountain and now have four scenes written, with ideas for the next three that emerged out of the writing of the last one. The story is picking up momentum.

The skiing analogy breaks down somewhat at this point, unless the mountain is very high and the path very circuitous. Because although at the moment I am gliding along and enjoying it, I know at some point the descent will slow, even reverse, and I will grind to a halt, forced to plod along and even climb again with great effort. Stories bog down and become mired in dead ends when one is a pantser. More and more forks crop up, with no clear path forward. The one principle I keep in mind (which is the same in skiing) is: choose the fork that promises momentum. The Goldilocks fork. Not the Black Diamond run that plunges me to the finish line too fast and recklessly out of control. Not the Bunny Hill that lulls me effortlessly down through each safe and predictable turn. But the Intermediate hill that keeps me close to the edge of my skis, gripping my poles and screaming curses into the wind.

I've got a long way to go, but each day I try to put myself back on that mountain, picking up where I left off and feeling my way down through the open spaces and dense woods, the cliffs and the bogs. I've got about eight months to go and 85,000 more words to write, but it's exciting to be starting the journey. 

Old dogs in the digital age

Lots of material for blogs here on Type M this week! I was going to skip over the politics discussion, but decided to put in my two cents' worth first. Here in Canada, we are heading into our own election campaign, mercifully only forty days long instead of the 1 1/2 year marathons that seems to be the norm south of the border. I think if our campaigns lasted 1 1/2 years, I'd have no more hair left; forty days is quite enough! The savagery and the polarization is certainly one of the most depressing elements of campaigning these days, and we Canadians are not immune. The famous Canadian politeness does not extend online. But more infuriating to me are the lies. Not just lies of omission or cherry picking of facts or spin-doctoring, but outright, baldfaced lies that politicians have the temerity to come out with. They must be banking on enough people not knowing enough to recognize the lies. The sad result of this is that many of us don't believe a word politicians say.

Another interesting topic on Type M is the print vs. digital divide in reading, writing, and editing. There has been some surprising research in recent years about the differences - notably that people remember printed books better than ebooks or screen articles, and that college students who take hand-written notes remember and understand the lecture material better than those taking notes on a laptop. In the former case, it may have to do with the fact that the reader has more of a sense of the whole and where they are in that whole when they are reading a print book. They can flip back and forth to refresh their memory or doublecheck information. Reading on a screen feels like being caught in the present tense. It's not nearly so easy to check the context or to see how one part relates to a previous part.

In the case of note-taking, the theory is that because handwriting is slower, the student can't record verbatim, straight from ear to fingertips without passing through brain, but has to analyze the material, paraphrase, condense, and re-organize it, so that the key points are extracted.

I am one of those dinosaurs who writes my first drafts long-hand, in part because I started writing before the computer age and that habit of sitting with pen and paper in hand and drink at my elbow is well established. Writing on a computer was associated with more analytical, professional writing like the reports and articles I prepared for my other work. But I also think that handwriting serves creativity precisely because it slows down the brain, makes us think more carefully and deeply about a scene, listen more attentively to the characters, and so on. It also feels more visceral, as if we're more directly connected to the words we write.

Editing, however, is an interesting hybrid experience for me. I do what I call micro-editing on the screen – editing line by line not only for copy errors but also for clunky language, redundancies, over-used words, ambiguous sentences, and minor inconsistencies from page to page. eg the character is having breakfast one minute and dinner on the next page. A lot of tightening and polishing gets done on-screen. But the big-picture editing, which I only do once I've run through at least the first micro-edit to tidy up the manuscript, has to be done by printing out the entire manuscript, or at least the part I'm working on. I get a better sense of the whole – plot flow, pacing, character consistency, logic, effect – when I have a pile of pages to scan and flip through as needed, whether it is just one chapter or the whole book.

It's also easier to see at a glance what changes I've made, what words I've deleted and what paragraph moved. Track Changes, besides being very distracting and messy looking, replaces the old with the new and it's more difficult to decipher from the side column what the previous text was. And if I've saved multiple versions of a draft, it's much easier to compare them side by side on paper than flipping from screen to screen.

Perhaps the more computer savvy writer has tricks and software techniques to do these things more efficiently online, but I have enough trouble keeping up with the upgrades that the software industry keeps foisting on me. I guess I tend to do things as I always have. Old dogs and all that.

Who's this story for anyway?

This week's post is of necessity very short because I am currently otherwise busy with the birth of a new grandchild and the joys of helping the new family usher him into this world, navigate his first days, and bring him home to their small apartment which has been turned upside down to accommodate crib, pack 'n play, baby bath, and enough clothes and supplies to fill an entire extra apartment.

For these two weeks at least, my mind is very far away from writing. But the posts about imaginary readers intrigued me and I thought I'd put in a few admittedly scattered thoughts. I try not to think of my readers while I'm writing, especially the first draft . I find that makes me doubt and second-guess myself. Writing a first draft is an intensely personal experience between myself and the characters participating in the story. If I am guided by anyone's opinion other than my own, it's my characters, who might argue with me about what they would or would not do. I often ask them how they are most likely to react and what they'ddo next. That, and my own sense of story, is what guides me. The moment I start thinking about what my readers want or what would upset them, I am drawn out of the story and into the judgment box. That's no place for my creative self.

That said, over the years I have heard from quite a few readers, through book clubs, emails, signings, conferences and other exchanges. I know when I have made them mad and I know what they love. I take their thoughts to heart, because without our readers, we writers would be nowhere. If I stray too far away from stories that engage them, I will lose them. And their feedback serves as a check on my storytelling. I may intend to say one thing but if the reader hears something different, then I am not doing my job right. So although I may try to keep my readers out of my head while I am writing a first draft, I suspect they perch on my shoulder only muttering the occasional word until I get to the second and subsequent drafts, when they might have more of a say.

Louise Penny was once asked what kind of people read her books. She replied "Intelligent women with colds." It's a generalization, but I think it captures the essence, and statistics bear this out. Crime fiction readers do tend to be women, although many men also enjoy my books. They tend to be intelligent, well educated, and curious to learn new things and consider issues. They tend to have enough time on their hands to read at some length and in some depth. This also means they are not likely to have screaming toddlers and busy family schedules.

In short, they tend to be very much like me.

And that brings me to the only reader that I do listen to during first draft madness. Myself. I have always written the kind of book that I wanted to read. Above all else, the book has to inspire me and make me feel alive as I write it. I have to enjoy the characters even if I don't like them all. I have to want to spend time with them and find out what's going to happen next. If I am feeling bored at any point in the story, I know it's not working. Slash, burn, and go in search of passion.

I suspect all writers write first for themselves. Why else spend a year in solitary confinement with only the faintest possibility of decent monetary compensation at the end? Once we have written the story we wanted to read, there will be time to consider who else would enjoy it too, and what we night need to tweak to make that better. But chances are, if we are excited about the story, we're already more than halfway there.

A day in a writer's life

It's that time in a writer's life– at least in my writerly life– when I am trying to inhabit two worlds. I have been researching THE ANCIENT DEAD, the fourth book in the Amanda Doucette series, for a few months now, and am at the stage where I have written the first three tentative scenes as well as created a vague outline of a few more to follow. And this morning, I am embarking on a two-week location scouting trip to the badlands and prairies of Alberta, where the book is set.

I've often said there is no substitute for standing in the spot where the characters stand, breathing in the scents, listening to the sounds, and seeing how the sun plays across the land. As well, by talking to locals and visiting museums and towns, you uncover all sorts of tantalizing ideas and details that can take the plot in unpredictable directions. It's one reason why I need to go now, while the story is still in its infancy and essentially unformed. (The other reason is called winter). I am really looking forward to figuring out what this book is going to be about at its core! I have the setting, some conflicts, and a buried body waiting to be discovered, but not the mystery behind it all.

But for the past month I have also been trying to line up fall promotional plans for PRISONERS OF HOPE, the third Amanda Doucette novel, due out in three weeks. I've been on the phone to potential launch and book signing venues and emailing back and forth to my publicist about posters, etc. And today the whole enterprise felt much more real when the UPS driver delivered my box of author copies to the door. Yay! The book is in one piece and they spelled my name right!

Switching gears between creative writing and promotional planning is a challenge. Therefore, as much as possible, I try to split up my day. The mornings, when the brain is hopefully fresher, I devote a few hours to writing. I write longhand, and make a right mess while doing it, but it's the most powerful way I know to call up my muse. Curling up in a chair with a cup of coffee at my side, pen in hand and pad of paper in my lap, seems to connect me to my familiar writer self who's been doing this for over sixty years, long before word processors and computers came on the scene.

I usually try to complete at least one scene every morning, so that I can fully engage in the scene and imagine it from beginning to end. Often by the end of that scene I have a good idea of what scene will come next. But I put the writing on the shelf and leave that for the next day.

Instead I celebrate that accomplishment by taking a break. I eat lunch, walk the dogs, swim, or whatever, before settling down in the afternoon to deal with social media, emails, phone calls, and PR writing. This can often take several hours. Then it's unwind and glass of wine time! Of course, there are often other obligations, family and friends, or commitments, but on a day without outside commitments, that's what I aim for. While I am on my research trip, this schedule will blown apart and I'll be lucky to get any scene writing done. But my mind will be churning and storing things up. All to the good.

Now for a little bit of BSP at the end of this blog - part of my PR activities. Here are the dates of the two launch parties I have set up for PRISONERS OF HOPE:

Ottawa launch: The Clocktower Brew Pub in Westbooro, October 16 at 7 - 9 pm, shared with Vicki Delany, who's launching THE CAT OF THE BASKERVILLES

Toronto launch: Sleuth of Baker Street, November 3 at 2:30-4 pm

Those of you within driving distance of either place, come on down to the celebration, and bring a friend! It's free and fun.