My library reminiscences

by Rick Blechta

I hope you’ve enjoyed Sybil’s and now Aline’s memories about libraries as much as I have. Judging by the number of people who’ve read them, it seems there’s a real interest — so here goes mine!

I grew up in a small(ish) town in Westchester County, which is just north of the Bronx in New York City. Mamaroneck is right on the Long Island Sound and has a very large pleasure boat harbour. In days past, it was locally nicknamed Clam Town because of the large tidal mud flats. As the 20th Century went on, that mud became more polluted, and when I was growing up, a put-down we often used was, “You smell like low tide.” But I digress…

The Mamaroneck Library adult reading room as it is today.

Mamaroneck has a lovely library, carefully added on to over the years, but it retains its original reading room which has large murals depicting local history all around it. The children’s library was in the basement, and I spent a lot of time there, not just selecting adventure books to sign out, but doing research for school.

It was run by a short, slender, but very imposing woman named Miss Bauman. All us kids were terrified of her because she ruled the room with (as we viewed it) an iron fist. If you took a book off the shelf, you’d better darn well sign it out or put it back in the correct spot. No leaving of books on her tables! Near silence was the word of the day, too. Only low whispering was allowed.

When I had the temerity of a ten-year-old to question why the adults left books on their tables upstairs, she snapped, “I don’t care what they do upstairs. You children need to be taught how to be tidy!” (Or words to that effect.)

What we didn’t realize at the time is that she was teaching us any number of useful things: how to use a card catalogue, how the Dewey Decimal System worked, why it was important to put things back where they belong so that they can be found easily again because they’re where they’re supposed to be. I could go on. I only realized later that she was patience personified when she was showing us “library things” and only became short when we didn’t follow her (sensible) rules.

Miss Bauman in 1971.

I’ve talked to a number of other friends who I remember from those library days. Our memories are the same: a velvet hand in an iron glove. But Miss Bauman is remembered fondly by us all  — especially me.

You see, a dozen years later, she became my brother’s de facto mother-in-law. Miriam (as I now knew her, although I couldn’t always break the “Miss Bauman” habit) brought up two of her nieces, one of whom my brother wed. She and I would often laugh about things that had happened in that basement room. Her memory of me was as “someone I always had to shush.”

I still love libraries. When I was on the road as a musician in my 20s, I would search out the library in whatever town we were playing in for the week and spend my days there, either reading books I found or something I’d brought from home. It was a lot more pleasant than sitting in a hotel room watching TV or sitting in the hotel bar drinking all day (or worse).

We have a beautiful and grand law library here in Toronto (in Osgoode Hall) and it’s generally empty. It’s also open to the public (when it’s not filled with lawyers studying for bar exams), something that’s not generally known. I wrote a large portion of my about-to-be-released novella, Rundown, there. In fact, Osgoode Hall is even in the book.

So thank you, Miss Bauman, for showing me the ropes and making me a life-long library aficionado.

________________

Completely off topic but still very interesting: Miriam Bauman started off in the ’30s as a teacher/librarian in one of the local grade schools. She often told the story of taking her class out onto the field to watch the Hindenburg float majestically overhead on May 6, 1937, only a few hours before her fateful crash in New Jersey.

Interesting sidebar #2: My very good childhood friend (also my brother’s best man), Len Tallevi is now the president of the Mamaroneck Library’s Board of Trustees.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to lawyer Henry Gluch for introducing me to the Osgoode Hall Law Library.

Happy Library Memories

I read Sybil's affectionate post about the library she had gone to as a child murmuring 'Yes! Yes!' to myself. Libraries played a hugely important part in my young life and have gone on doing so ever since.

My parents were great readers and the house was full of books, so my parents hadn't really bothered to take me to the library. I only discovered it when I was walking home with a friend who was carrying some books and she explained what she was doing.

I was frankly incredulous. 'You mean – you just go and they give you books? You don't have to pay or anything? I went in with her and met dear Mr Doig, the librarian. He explained you had to have a card signed by your mum to get permission but then yes, indeed, you could just take them.

I almost snatched the card from him, ran all the way home, extracted the signature from my amused mother, and ran all the way back. His eyes twinkled when he saw this hot and breathless child and he was a good friend to me afterwards. For instance, you were only allowed to take out three books a day but if it was a Saturday, or the holidays, he let me take out another three if I'd finished the first ones by lunchtime.

Indeed, so much did I appreciate it that I decided I might like to be a librarian. I think I had the idea that this just meant you got to read all the best books first and I hadn't understood the sheer sweat of organising the ticket system in those days before electronic registration. Then there were the wretched readers who would keep putting books back in the wrong place... No, I decided after work experience, being a librarian was not for me.

I did get a liberal education, though. In those days there was censorship and what were termed 'blue' books were not put on the open shelves. (Here I'm not talking about Fifty Shades stuff, you understand; I remember Peyton Place was one of them). They were, however, kept in the office where we had our coffee breaks, and sometimes some of us returned quite late...

Then the day came when someone actually asked to see the 'blue' books. A frisson went around the library desk and the Chief Librarian was summoned - a snippety little lady with steel-rimmed spectacles. She gave the man a look of disgust, said, 'Follow me,' led him to the room, and gestured to the shelf without looking at it. 'There you are.'

There was a puzzled silence before the man said, 'I don't see them. You know, the Blue Books – the government reports.' Somewhat red-faced, she made a quick recovery. 'Oh! I'm so sorry, they must have been moved. We'll look in the reference library.' She was awfully nice to him after that.

So even though the job wasn't for me, I still love libraries and visit a lot of them to give talks. They're absolutely the nicest audiences – not surprising, really, because they are the real book-lovers.

Guest Post: Ellen Byron

Please welcome Ellen Byron, fellow member of Sisters in Crime/LA, to Type M. Her first book, Plantation Shudders, was nominated for gobs of awards. Her second book, Body on the Bayou, just came out. Here she tells us what led her down a murderous path. Take it away, Ellen...

WANTING TO MURDER SOMEONE LEADS TO WRITING 

ABOUT MURDERING SOMEONE

by Ellen Byron

I’ve worked with a lot of strong personalities in my television writing career. Actors, directors, executives, other writers. Most have been hilarious and wonderful. Three drove me to fantasies of murder.

The first was a fellow writer on a popular sitcom that will remain nameless. He was arrogant, yet threatened by other writers’ talent – especially women writers, because he also happened to be sexist. He talked about his co-workers behind their backs, and in a business where perception is everything, his badmouthing cost people jobs. I wanted to KILL him. Being a relatively sane person, that was out of the question. So instead, I took a mystery writing class so I could kill him off on paper.

I signed up for a UCLA Writers’ Extension class taught by the inimitable Jerrilyn Farmer, and decided to write a mystery that took place during a sitcom production season. (Hmm, wonder where I got that idea?) The victim was the writer I despised, of course. I wrote a chapter, read it in class, and awaited acclaim. Instead, I got a tepid response. Then the other students shared their work. I was the only professional writer in the class – and my work was the least interesting. I wanted to hear a second chapter of everyone’s book but my own.

I didn’t try writing a mystery again for twelve years.

And that’s where the other two awful co-workers come in.

I returned to TV and worked on a variety of sitcoms with great writing staffs. Then I landed on a show where two of the guys at the top were, in different ways, the unpleasant equal of Despised Writer #1. Both were dismissive, cold, superior, and judgmental. If I told you my fantasies of their demise, you’d consider having me committed. There was only one way to rid myself of the vitriol I felt toward them…try writing another mystery.

This time I created a completely different world from television. My protagonist was a school psychologist at L.A.’s ritziest private school. And I didn’t make my bosses the murder victims. I made them repugnant suspects. That manuscript didn’t sell, but it did win a William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for unpublished authors and eventually landed me a book agent.

My third mystery, Plantation Shudders, is a one-eighty from both previous mystery attempts. It’s a cozy set in a charming fictional Louisiana village, and even comes with recipes. But vestiges of the Hollywood writers I wanted to kill can be found in the quirky Southern characters who inhabit my Cajun Country Mystery series. Despised Writers #1, 2, and 3 would never recognize themselves, but I got great pleasure from poisoning them with my pen.

I’ve expanded my murderous literary reach to rid friends of people who’ve wronged them. Need a personal enemy killed or arrested? Let me fire up my computer. While many of my life experiences have found their way into my plays and screenplays, writing mysteries fulfills me in a different and devious way. It’s reassuring to know that if I ever experience a horrible co-worker or boss again, or if anyone I care about has someone evil in the life, I am quite capable of murder. At least on the page.

Ellen's debut novel, Plantation Shudders, made the USA Today Bestsellers list, and was nominated for Agatha, Lefty, and Daphne awards. The second book in her Cajun Country Mystery Series, Body on the Bayou, offers “everything a cozy reader could want,” according to Publishers Weekly.

Ellen’s TV credits include Wings, Just Shoot Me, and many network pilots; she’s written over 200 national magazine articles; her published plays include the award-winning Graceland. http://www.ellenbyron.com/

A Cold Start

Fractured Families will be published in March and now I'm thinking about my next book. I have not decided on a title.

My mysteries begin with an image. Getting back to Kansas to do the research will be difficult to arrange because it's a long drive. The trip must be arranged before the snow flies. I want to visit one of the "Eight Wonders of Kansas"--the salt museum in Hutchinson. The tour takes vistors 650 feet underground.

There are only two other underground salt museums in the world and they are in Poland and Austria. The underground storage vaults in the Kansas Salt Museum contain millions of priceless documents from all over the world. The original negatives for Gone With the Wind and Ben Hur are stored there along with a vast number of other films.

A great deal of valuable art was stored there during World War II. It's one of the largest bedded salt deposits in the world and is still mined today. Over 500,000 ton of rock salt is removed this year.

Last week I gave a presentation to the Graham County historical society and wanted to continue to Eastern Kansas but had other obligations back here in Colorado. I can find out a lot about the Salt Mine from internet research, but it's no substitute for descending into the shaft and experiencing the icy terror of being hundreds of feet under the ground. Imagine being one of the early miners.

Today it houses an active business that offers impeccable security for data and treasures. Needless to say it offers a level of protection most of us do not need.

I'm going to start my book anyway. After all, it's the story not the background that should be center front. Whatever I write requires rewriting, but the urge to go East is becoming stronger each week. Maybe my Muse is trying to tell me something.

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.

Libraries And Events

I’ve loved libraries ever since I was a little kid. I couldn’t wait for my parents to drive me there so I could look through the stacks of books and pick out the next ones to read. That’s one thing I missed when we lived on a farm in Oregon for a year. That was most of 2nd and part of 3rd grade. There were no public libraries in a reasonable distance and it didn’t take me long to get through all the books in the small “library” of the two-room schoolhouse I attended.

I still love libraries. So it's quite a kick for me to do an event at one. I recently visited the Wiseburn Library in Hawthorne, CA where fellow SinC/LA member Sarah M. Chen and I had a great time discussing the differences between writing light and dark mysteries with a great group of attendees who asked all kinds of interesting questions. You may remember I wrote a post on briefly visiting the “dark side” awhile back in preparation for this event.

Here I am at my table before the event.

Me and Sarah M. Chen

Here we are discussing light and dark mysteries

The more I learn about the modern library, the more I realize they’re great places to connect with readers. The Orange County Library system here in Southern California not only features branch events but also puts together a literary event every year called Literary Orange. This day long celebration usually features 2 keynote speakers and around 15 author panels with 35-40 authors. And every June the city of El Segundo holds an author fair at the city’s library featuring Southern California authors. I’m sure there’s a lot more going on around here and probably a lot in your area too.

So, Type M readers, do you have favorite events that your local library puts on?

The value of learning as much as you can about your occupation (in this case, writing)

by Rick Blechta

Like all published authors, I have been buttonholed many times at parties, meetings, book signings and even once at a funeral (!) by people who’ve written a novel (or a book of some sort) and want to know what to do next. The inevitable question is: How do I find a publisher? Sometimes they ask if I have an agent, and if so, would I help them get their manuscript in to him?

Now, I don’t mind helping people, but after the fiftieth such request, it gets a little old.

First of all, I’m not going to contact my publisher or agent and recommend your work unless I’ve read it and found it good enough. By recommending someone, I’m putting my reputation on the line, too. Second, doing that takes a lot of time and I have little enough of that to spare. Look, I just met you and now you want me to grant you a very large favour just because you asked and are a nice person?

But besides the effrontery of such a request, there is something else that bothers me even more. These people want to become a published author but they don’t know anything about the business and haven’t bothered to educate themselves? If I were blunt enough to say that, my guess is they would get quite angry — but that doesn’t make it any less true.

I’ve been around for quite awhile now, and I’ve worked hard to learn a lot of things about the book publishing game, and it’s a good assumption by the neophyte that I could supply them with a lot of useful information. But what they don’t realize is that their request that I help them shows me that they aren’t really prepared to be an author. What I’m going to tell them from what I’ve worked hard to find out is also easily found on many websites, blogs and in numerous books.

The really shocking thing, though, is that these people are also telling me that they’re going into a very complicated business with zero knowledge of what’s involved, and what’s expected of them (a lot) besides good writing. It’s much akin to someone who’s received a compass as a present. That person then decides they’re going to become a great explorer and immediately leaves for the Amazon jungle, packing only their new compass (with little idea how to use it). How successful do you think they’re going to be?

Becoming a published author and then attaining enough success to keep going is a very tough accomplishment. The first order of things on the path to authorial success is to learn as much as you can about the job description. That requires hours of research and reading. Even if I were to pass you on to my agent, you need to know how things work and what the expectations are. Until you know that, you’re just a babe in the jungle.

Don’t get me wrong. Someone who has produced a novel — no matter how good or bad it is — has achieved a major accomplishment. When I tell them that they’re barely halfway there, I am greeted by blank expressions or downright unhappiness. (“What? I’m not even close to my goal?”) It’s sad to disillusion nice people, but I would be doing them no favours by telling them what they want to hear. A writer who doesn’t know the ropes is a writer who is going to risk falling on their face at best, and at worst, they’re going to be taken advantage of — sometimes in a huge way. I know of more than one author who signed away the rights to their series character in order to get their book published. How stupid is that? The publisher said, “No deal unless we get this.” Any sane person would have walked.

Most authors, me included, are more than willing to point the budding author in the right direction (First on my list is How to Get Happily Published* by Judith Applebaum), but please don’t expect us to grab your hand and take you where you want to go — especially if you’re just meeting us for the first time!

*And I purposely didn’t give a link for finding this book online.

Growing as a Writer

I've been thinking about the question my colleagues have been discussing about what is required to become a competent writer -- innate talent, hard work, acquiring craft-related skills? As I was thinking about that I read Donis's post yesterday about the challenges of a long-running series.

My Lizzie Stuart series is only up to the fifth book. In fact, after the fifth book was published back in 2011, I wrote two Hannah McCabe books. In July 2014, a Lizzie Stuart short story (inspired by some research I was doing) was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. But the short story did not move the characters forward. They have been in limbo for five years.

And now it's a few months later in series times, and I'm at work on Lizzie Stuart mystery Number 6. I'm writing this book because I have a story that I really want to tell. I'm also writing it because I hear from readers who they love the series and when am I going to do another book? Was that the last? What writer can resist when readers care about her or his characters and are waiting to find out what's happening in their lives?

Donis raised the issue of the character-arc. If the characters' lives are changing over the course of the series, how does one make each book in a series a stand-alone? I have always struggled with that. I can truthfully tell a potential reader that she can pick up any book in my Lizzie Stuart series and read a murder mystery that is complete in itself. No, one need not read the first Hannah McCabe novel before reading the second. But if a reader says that she likes to read a series in order because of the evolving relationships, I don't try to talk her out of that approach. As a reader, I have often picked up a book mid-series and then gone back to "catch-up" before moving on. I like relationships and back stories. That's one of the reasons I read any book, including a mystery.

But even though I struggle with the character arc dilemma, I have gotten better at dealing with it. I can now slip in back story here and there, without having Lizzie stop to say, "Two years ago when I was in Cornwall, I was involved in a murder case and that's when . . ." I'm a bit more subtle these days.

That brings me to the discussion we've been having about innate talent vs. hard work to acquire craft. I know I started out with imagination. From the time I was a small child, I told myself bedtime stories with recurring characters. When I was older, I started to write those stories down. But the process of becoming a functioning writer required that I discipline my imagination and hone any innate talent I may have possessed.

Aside from the basics of grammar and story structure, I had to learn the discipline of getting out of my comfortable chair (where I was thinking about my book) and going to my desk to get it down on paper. I had to learn the discipline of revising and revising and revising. I had to learn the discipline -- and develop a thick enough skin -- to sit quietly and listen and then ask lots of questions when someone I had asked to critique what I had written gave me an honest opinion. I had to learn the discipline not to rush the story, to let it evolve, and take wrong turns, to wait for all the pieces to fall into place.

I think that may be the difference between talented amateurs and professional writers. Having talent and imagination means nothing until one learns discipline. It's hard and frustrating, especially when working hard doesn't mean that one rises to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. But, on the other hand, discipline is good for the soul. And writing may be the one area in my life where I manage to consistently do what I should do.

Writing a Long Series

My ninth Alafair Tucker mystery (The Return of the Raven Mocker) is coming out in January of 2017. That's four months from now. And yet I’m already working on book ten. When I first began writing the Alafair Tucker Mystery series, I had a story arc in mind that was going to carry through ten books. This is a wonderful idea, but as anyone who has ever written a long series knows, after a couple of books all your plans for a story arc have been knocked into a cocked hat.

This photo has nothing to do with anything, but it's new and I like it

The reason this happened, at least to me, is that I seem to be writing about real people who have their own ideas about how things should be gone about, and once I put them into a situation, they react to it in ways I had never anticipated.

So much for a ten book arc. I think there will end up being twelve or thirteen books. I want to get all Alafair's kids out of the house and settled. Besides, I really want readers to be able to pick up any book in the series and have a satisfying experience without having to know anything about what went before. This poses the million dollar question for the author of a long series: How do you keep it fresh? How do you make every story stand alone, yet in its place as well? How do you keep from repeating yourself, or losing your spark?

I’ve had quite a journey with my protagonist over the last decade. Alafair is a farm wife with a very large family who lives in rural Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th century. She is a woman who knows her world and has made her place in it. Each of the books features a different one of Alafair’s newly-grown children, with whom Alafair either works to solve a crime, or works to save from him or herself. Since each child has his or her own distinct personality and interests, this gives me a great deal of latitude to explore all kinds of things that people were into in the early 20th Century.

For each book I must come up with a compelling reason for a farm wife and mother of ten to get involved in a murder investigation. I also have to figure out a convincing way for her to either solve the murder or at least contribute to the solution, which as you might guess, isn’t that easy. I have found over the course of nine books in the same series that I have begun to depart from the usual mystery novel format. The murders take place later and later in the story with each book I write. The later books are constructed more like thrillers than puzzles. In book seven, Hell With the Lid Blown Off, I told the reader who was going to die in the first sentence, but didn’t actually kill him for a hundred pages. In book eight, All Men Fear Me, we kind of knew who was doing at least some of the killing. But the question became why, and was there more than one killer. In book nine, Raven Mocker, I immediately start out with the information that we have the wrong guy.

I want to mix it up from book to book. I want to keep the readers on their toes. And I want to keep myself amused as well!

In the learning of an art, just how far will talent get you?

by Rick Blechta

Continuing on my topic two Tuesdays ago (How much do you need to know to successfully write a novel?), and building on what some of the other folks here on Type M have contributed in posts and comments since, I’d like to consider what the title of this week’s post suggests: if you have a talent for writing and storytelling, what else do you need to realize your ability?

Aline spoke about “nature and nurture” yesterday, and that’s a concept very important to this conversation. Take it from me as both a writer and a musician: you can have all the ability in the world (nature), but you must also study and work hard (nurture) to have any chance for success.

For those who may argue that there are any number of musicians or writers who were completely self-taught, “And doesn’t that blow a huge whole in your argument?” I would answer, “Sure they were self-taught, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have to study their craft diligently and work hard to get to any sort of level of excellence.”

As an example, no one says to themselves, “I think I can be a great guitarist!” then picks up an instrument, walks onto a stage and the world falls at their feet exclaiming on the sheer brilliance of their playing. Believe me, you have to spend many, many hours, slaving hard to master any instrument. Whether being guided by a teacher or picking things up on your own, you have to train muscles and memory to excel as a musician.

It’s much the same with writing. Whether you take creative writing lessons, work with a “master writer” or editor or simply take careful note of what other writers (good ones) do to tell their stories, time must be put in, analysis of the results made, and then multiple revisions undertaken to polish the prose so that the story not only comes out the way the author wants it to, but that it’s also intelligible to readers. That takes (learnable) skill and dedication.

So the bottom line here is, for any art form, the artist must be willing to put in the many hours needed to learn their craft. Can many of the fine points be taught to someone who has little or no natural talent? Sure. When I was teaching instrumental music in schools, I had whole classes filled with kids who had little natural ability to excel on an instrument. But if they would work hard, all of them could learn to play at an acceptable — and dare I say pleasant — level.

It works the same with writing.

Anyone who’s willing to learn the ins and outs of grammar, syntax, sentence construction, etc. can be taught to write workmanlike and understandable prose if they apply themselves. In other words, most people, given enough tutelage (taught by others or self-taught) can become competent in their field

But in the above two examples, can everyone become great musicians and writers? No. The innate talent also has to be present.

To answer this week’s question, if you have talent, you can be brought to a level that will allow you to realize that talent (and there are certainly different levels of talent), but anyone undertaking this must be willing to put in the hard hours studying whatever art form you undertake to learn. To my mind this means that there must be both nature and nurture to realize the potential that you carry within you.

Nature and nurture

I've come to this topic late having missed my post last week - sorry, sorry, an invasion of grandchildren put it right out of my head. But Rick's question about talent v tutelage, and the response from the others, really interests me.

If you've had a good agent or a good editor, you know that their comments and suggestions can improve your book. I've been grateful for that many times in the past, and some of what they have said has changed my writing afterwards. I've gone to lectures where a speaker has said something that has made a difference: I am still grateful many, many years later to Diane Doubtfire (yes, that was genuinely her name) who taught me that changing POV within a scene, unless very carefully managed, makes readers feel as if they are watching a tennis match from the sidelines, turning their heads first one way then the other.

The University of East Anglia with its celebrated creative writing department has alumni like Kasuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan and Rose Tremain. We can't know how successful they'd have been anyway, but it certainly didn't do them any harm.

I'm not sure I believe, though, that the magic could have been worked on someone without innate talent – that funny, sixth sense we all have that tells us when something we're writing sings and soars and when it's just trudging along in its sturdy shoes.

Like Barbara, I had no family background in creative writing (though I have fond hopes for one of the aforementioned grandchildren following in my footsteps!) and like her I began to read and write very early. I wasn't one of those children who tells stories to their siblings, though I always knew I was a writer. For me it was a very private occupation, a story I told myself as I wrote and saying it out loud would break the spell.

I had to write. And while I don't altogether go along with John Milton that it is 'that one talent which is death to hide' (DI Fleming isn't quite in the same category as Paradise Lost, after all ) I would feel guilty if I didn't use it.

But to be honest, if someone has no inner drive to tell a story, and no ear for the use of language, I don't believe that any training, however good, can make that person a writer. In the old Scots saying, which I guess probably has an American equivalent, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's lug. (ear).

Psychopaths and Sociopaths

I did a lot of strange research for my up-coming mystery, Fractured Families, which will be published March 2017. This is the first book to feature a serial killer.

My mysteries have varied from one type to another. That is probably not a good idea. It wasn't planned. It's just the way the stories have worked out. Deadly Descent is more of a traditional mystery with a healthy dollop of suspense. Lethal Lineage is a locked room mystery. It was the pits to write and more than a little scary from a construction viewpoint. Locked room mysteries are fiendishly difficult to write and the readers are a savage lot. They pounce on any inconsistency.

Hidden Heritage contained a secret. Back to a more traditional mystery again, with a strong mix of history. It dealt with water rights which will soon be the most lethal worldwide fight in this century.

The impetus to write each book has involved a powerful image. In the case of Deadly Descent it was a line from my favorite book of poetry, The Spoon River Anthology. A woman was standing in the crowd murmuring, "my son, my son," while a politician was giving a speech. With Lethal Lineage it was a female priest dropping the chalice during communion. The image in Hidden Heritage was that of a man drowning in a livestock truckline's washout pit.

For the new one, Fractured Families. . . well, let's just say a totally soulless serial killer was essential.

The words psychopaths and sociopaths are used interchangeably. Usually. Mostly. My editor asked for the proper word for describing my villain and I chose psychopath rather than sociopath because of the work done by some psychiatrists who describe psychopaths as being the more organized and intelligent of the two. And scarily enough quite a number of them had loving families.

In fact, most psychopaths and sociopaths are not killers. But they can sure play thunder in the workplace and in people's lives. One of most fascinating books was Snakes In Suits which described the chaos caused in the workplace by evil calculating persons who don't hesitate to ruin others' career and cause havoc.

I'm a rather peaceful soul by nature. I hope the image for my next book is something less scary.

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?

One Writer's Obsession

by Sybil Johnson

A discussion has been ongoing here on Type M about crafting a novel. I don’t have anything to add so I’m going to talk about one of my current obsessions instead: The Great British Bake Off. Or the Great British Baking Show as it’s called when it airs here in the U.S. I don’t really know why they changed the title for the U.S. market. I know what a “bake off” is. I suspect a lot of other Americans do too. Book titles are often changed when they cross the pond, so I guess this is another example of that.

I love, love, love this show. Can’t get enough of it. It’s great fun to see people engage in friendly competition, bonding over baking, creating tasty treats with all-purpose flour, cake flour, bread flour... But, wait! What’s this? They don’t mention any of those in the show. Apparently, in Britain it’s strong flour, plain flour, soft flour...

Since I’m a naturally curious person, I looked these things up. It seems here in the U.S. we talk about flour based on what it’s usually used for, baking cakes or bread or for general purpose baking, while in Britain they talk about how much protein or gluten is in a flour. In the following, what it’s called in the U.S. is on the right of the equal sign, what it’s called in Britain is on the left. Here’s what I learned:

cake or pastry flour = soft flour
all-purpose flour = plain flour
bread flour = strong flour or hard flour
self-rising flour = self-raising flour
whole-wheat flour = wholemeal flour

These are rough equivalents. I did see a discussion online where someone from the U.K. noted that the plain flour there which is available to the home baker is not exactly equivalent to our all-purpose flour. If these are wrong, feel free to correct me.

And then there’s sugar. They kept on referring to caster sugar and icing sugar. I figured caster sugar is what I call granulated sugar or just sugar. The web tells me that’s not totally correct. Apparently, caster sugar is superfine, finer than granulated. Icing sugar is powdered sugar.

And then there’s the kinds of things they bake, many of which I’ve either never heard of or only having a passing acquaintance with. I now know what Victoria sponge, spotted dick, plum pudding all are. Though it’s strange for me to see puddings that are sliced.

I’m also still a bit confused about terminology. Maybe some of you readers can help me out here. First, there’s biscuit. Based on what I’ve seen on the show, I get the feeling that what we call cookies and crackers here in the U.S. are both referred to as biscuits in the U.K. Is that correct? And what about puddings? Is that a general term for desserts in the U.K.? Inquiring minds what to know.

I like baking myself though I’m not nearly at the level of these contestants. My favorite thing to do is play around with cheesecake recipes. I also enjoy checking out new recipes and techniques on websites. One of the contestants from season 1 of GBBO, Ruth Clemens, has a web page called The Pink Whisk. Great fun to wander around in.

Well, that’s enough about my GBBO obsession. What about you all? What are current obsessions?

Last Minute Opportunity!

My wife and I have decided to get the hell out of Dodge (as the saying goes) and take a few days off. It’s all very sudden and all very exciting.

And I’m going to be writing up a storm. Well, actually, there are no storms planned for this part of the book, but there you go. I may murder a character or two, though.

Not wanting to leave my weekly obligation to Type M to a sticky fate, I’ve decided to leave you all the following cartoon a friend sent me several months ago.

See you next week, refreshed and reinvigorated!

The Hungry Writer

By Vicki Delany

It looks as though the current topic on our blog is about the craft of writing novels.

I’m such a rebel I’m going to talk about tomatoes.

Because it’s tomato season and because I can.

I live in the country since retiring from my job as a systems analyst at a major bank some years ago, and I’ve become a real locovore. I love to eat as locally as I can, and this time of year, I’m pretty much on a ten mile diet.  The farmer’s gate stands are bursting with potatoes (Loooove fingerlings) squash, bok choy, Swiss chard, apples, onions, garlic. And on and on I go.  I make sauces and soups and muffins to pop into the freezer for the winter.

But of all the wonderful produce, one stands out.

Tomatoes.

I love tomatoes, but I truly believe a tomato has to be freshly picked to be worth eating. In the winter and spring I might buy a tomato or two from the supermarket but only if they are going to be put into a stew or soup. They’re just not good enough to eat raw or lightly cooked.

I believe in the pleasure of anticipation. I’ll wait ten months in order to really enjoy a fresh, warm, local tomato. I believe we’ve lost a lot when we’ve given up the pleasure of anticipation. In the world today we want what we want when we want it and that when is usually now. But you can’t grow a tomato in November in the north and you can’t pick it fresh from the vine in January. You have to wait.

And wait I will do.  

I have the great fortune of living in Prince Edward County, Ontario, one of the best agricultural areas in Canada. All I have to do is walk up the road to a farm gate stand or stop in at another one on the way into town and I can buy tomatoes they grew themselves. One of the best places for tomatoes in Prince Edward County, Ontario is Vicki’s Veggies (not me, another Vicki). www.vickisveggies.comwww.vickisveggies.com

On the upcoming Labour Day Weekend, Vicki’s Veggies will be having it’s annual heirloom tomato tasting event.  They lay out over one hundred different tomatoes for you to sample, to buy, and to place orders for next years seedlings. If you’re a tomato lover, it’s the place to be!

Talent—Innate or Learned?

In his Tuesday entry, below, Rick pondered the question of how much one actually needs to know in order to successfully write a novel. He concludes that howsoever much one studies the craft, a basic talent for storytelling has to be present in order to begin a novel.

I, Donis, find this a fascinating concept. I do believe that one can learn the basic precepts of writing and with practice become very competent at it, even successful. But it does seem to me that some people just have it—the natural ability to craft a tale that rises above the rest. A few years ago, I wrote an entry about talent on this site that addressed this very concept, which I reproduce below with a few modifications:

Do you believe in predestination? Are we born to write, to act, to paint, to be mommies or accountants? Or is it Karma? Is this our reward, our fulfillment? Perhaps our punishment. In his wonderful little book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield says that basically every human being is born with God-given, unique talents, and if you don’t use them, then you are a wastrel and an ingrate. (I paraphrase.)

Therefore, if you are driven to write (paint/parent/account), you must write, or fly in the very face of God.

How’s that for motivation?

Like most authors I know, I began writing when I was a child. In fact, I can’t remember when I didn’t write little stories. The earliest piece I remember clearly was called “The Black Cat”. The protagonist was a little girl who turned into a cat every night. I don’t remember what she did. I don’t think she used her powers to save kittens from storm drains, or any other catly heroics. I only remember her drinking cream from a saucer on the floor. Apparently she didn’t retain her human moral values when she transformed.

I loved to make up stories mostly because I loved to read stories. When I was a girl, the world in fiction was as real to me as my actual life, if not more so. Before I could read, I adored being read to - and here’s the key – I was read to, continually. I was given picture books when I was more interested in chewing on them than looking at them. I therefore learned to read very early, and consequently began writing very early. Bless you, Mama and Daddy. You gave me a gift that influenced and enriched my entire life.

Now, being an avid reader doesn’t necessarily make one want to be a writer, but I think it is a prerequisite. I do think a healthy self-regard is extremely helpful. Listen, learn, be guided, and practice, and never think you can’t improve, but never let anybody write your book for you, either. There is something each of us has to say or do that nobody else in the long history of this wide world can say or do, and if you don’t give it a try, you deprive the rest of us of your singular talent.

Born to be

Barbara here. Rick has invited us all to put in our two cents on the question of talent and storytelling. Canada abolished its one cent coin a few years ago, so here's my plug nickels's worth. I have no idea whether the talent for storytelling is born into us or not, bit I do believe that most of us, if not all, are born with a creative urge and the path through which it is expressed. This path may be guided by early exposure, as in musicians or artists who follow in their parents' footsteps, but sometimes it has nothing to do with the culture and interests of our families.

I was born into a family of musicians and painters. They did other things with their lives, but my grandfather, as a surgeon in France during World War I, painted scenes of rural France as an outlet and counterpoint to the horrific demands of his job. His talent for painting predated the war; I have a painting of his hanging in my house, done when he was 16 years old. My mother was a high school science teacher but inherited that painter's passion, and many of the other walls in my house hold paintings done by her, inspired by the sight of a child playing or a spectacular play of light on mountains or sea.

I, however have never had the slightest urge to pick up a sketchpad or capture a scene on canvas. I have absolutely zero talent for drawing, painting, or otherwise interpreting the world in visual form. But from the age of six, when I first learned how to spell, I have been inventing stories. Story ideas spin in my head all the time. The question is not where do I get my ideas (for they are in the line at the coffee shop and in the sidebars of the newspaper), but how do I know whether an idea has the legs for a 300-page novel, or whether it deserves to be a scene or a subplot in a larger story. Experience and practice have taught me that.

Writing, particularly fiction writing, occupied no part of my family tree. I am the first in my whole extended family to be obsessed with creating stories. However, some of the prerequisites to good storytelling were present in my family home. My parents were avid readers and our home was filled with books. Filled. Every kind of book from biography to history to great literature and poetry. I had free rein of the shelves and picked up books at random, reading William Faulkner and Alexander Solzhenitzyn at whim From them I learned the secrets of great drama and absorbed, without lectures or lessons, the techniques of story arc, characterization, and imagery.

I wrote all through my childhood and throughout adulthood, mostly dreadful sap that fortunately did not see the light of day but that helped me to learn my craft. My late husband, however, was a painter. He saw the world not in terms of story bites like me but in terms of images and framed scenes to be captured on canvas. Not in terms of characters and conflicts but in terms of colour, shapes. shadows, and contrasting light. Yet our children, with their DNA packed on both sides with a painter's genes and on one side with a storyteller's, followed neither path. Like me, they show no talent or inclination for visual art. One has some interest in writing song lyrics and another in writing scripts, so some of that has past on through the DNA. But their creativity has found its primary outlet in other forms -- in music and acting.

It is a strange, human beast, this creative urge. Who knows where it comes from, but I believe we all have it. Perhaps we are all born with our own primary outlet, whether it's writing, art, acting, music, dance, crafts, woodworking, photography, or even software design. It may be the random re-alligning of the DNA but it comes from the core of who who are. The rest -- the talent, training, and practice it takes to do it well -- are secondary, because if it's not your passion, you won't put yourself at the artist's easel or the writer's desk long enough to get anything done.

How much do you need to know to successfully write a novel?

by Rick Blechta

This past week, I had a very interesting (and stimulating) conversation with a young person about novel writing. Basically, it revolved around creating characters and how they seem to take on a life of their own. (I’ve blogged about this several times, as have others, right here on Type M.)

This conversation led me down another path over the next few days eventually leading me to question how much one actually needs to know in order to successfully write a novel. I have an idea this post is only going to serve to start the conversations since the topic is a big one — and will probably draw in others as it goes along.

So what is the most important thing/skill/idea to possess before you start down what will be a long and grueling path?

After a lot of cogitation, I tend to think it’s that you have to understand what a novel is and isn’t.

As others have said in the past, a novel tells a story, but the plot can’t be static (this happened then that happened, then this third thing happened). During the course of the story, something has to change. Usually, it’s one or more of the characters, although it can be a situation. It has to arrive at its conclusion with at least some sort of finality. Otherwise it’s not satisfying to the reader.

Over the years, I have read mss where it's clear the writer didn’t understand this very important fact. Bad grammar, sketchy character writing, dialogue, description can all be taught, slaved over and improved because, while requiring a certain amount of talent to excel at, these items are all mechanical sorts of things. I’ve a writer has a bit of flair and the will to work to improve, improvement will happen. If the writer didn’t understand this basic tenet of fiction writing, then more than likely, the ms will have to be completely rewritten — or scrapped altogether.

But if that basic storytelling flair isn’t present, I’m not sure how much any kind of tutelage will make someone a novelist.

Then there’s the idea for the story. It requires an initial interesting idea. What exactly is that? I can’t really tell you. It’s just something I seem to know when I begin writing a novel. This idea is interesting while the other thirty I considered while I was searching for the basic kernel of the next novel weren’t interesting. So far (eleven novels in), I haven't been wrong.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that a basic talent has to be present in order to begin. Certain abilities that can’t be taught have to be present, or the writer is not going to be all that successful. The rest can be worked on — if the writer is willing.

More on this topic next week. Please feel free to weigh in!

Surprise!

Last week when I was in Barnes and Noble at Goodland there was a table set up with a whole display of my new non-fiction academic book, surrounded by all of my mysteries. Not only was I delighted, I was so surprised.

This boondoggle occurred with no effort on my part. It was a gift. Out of the blue. Generating publicity is such an elusive part of publishing that it's easy to forget that sometimes good things simply happen.

The full title of the Nicodemus book is Nicodemus: Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas. It's about 19th century African American Politicians and their contribution to the settlement of the West. Specifically, it's about the philosophies of three men in Nicodemus, who affected local, state, and national politics.

Not much connection to my mysteries. I can come up with one. Sort of. The Lottie Albright mysteries are set in Western Kansas and all have some sort of history worked in somewhere. But still. Who would have thought that B & N would have a display linking the two genres.

Through the years I have become very open to the delights of appearances and events. Even the ones that are disastrous have comical aspects. I started to go into some of the specifics then erased the copy. Because I'm well aware of the effort involved for booksellers and organizations to put signings together and would hate for followers of this blog to think I'm making fun of their time and efforts.

I'm deeply grateful for all the breaks I've had and very conscious that writers far more talented than I have not been so lucky. I'm very much aware of how far I have to go in learning the craft and polishing what little skill I have.

There's never a time when I attend a conference that I don't go home sobered by the knowledge that the writers at the top of the bestseller lists are the most disciplined hard-working people I know. Without exception.