Now or Later

Barbara's post on Wednesday reminded me again that I shall never a pantser be. Every time another writer describes the process of plunging in and powering through a first draft, I am stunned. Well, not as much as I used to be. But I am still struck by how different our processes are when it comes to writing a book. 

I think of myself as a hybrid, falling between pantsers and plotters in my approach. But the truth is, even though I don't put every scene down on paper before beginning, I do have a mental outline. That outline in my head evolves and changes as I get to know my characters. I need to know my characters pretty well before I can begin to write. I need to know what motivates them. I may be wrong, but I need to believe I know why they are about to do what I expect them to do. Of course, sometimes as I learn more, they do something I didn't expect. In fact, that often happens. But I set out with the sense that I know what is going to happen and why.

Instead of plunging in, I try out scenes in my head. I have gotten better at this over the years. But it is still a lengthy process. I have been trying to get past the first couple of scenes in my 1939 thriller for months. I thought the opening scene would be at Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. While I was at a writers retreat in Vermont last summer, I dashed off that first scene to share during our evening reading. I thought I would be able to move on from there. I had introduced my protagonist. I had introduced his foe. We were ready to be off and running. But here I am, months later, writing and rewriting that scene.

I've mentioned before that I need to warm up before I can begin to write. That first fifty pages that I write over and over. But this has been something different. Even though I thought I was beginning the book in the right place, it felt wrong. I tried going back to the train station and showing my protagonist, a sleeping car porter, rushing to get to Marian Anderson's concert. Stopping to help a woman find her grandchild in the crowded station, trying to get a taxi, arriving late and finding himself in the back of the crowd. Seeing his antagonist. . .

I thought I had it when I wrote that scene. It took me two tries and two failures to launch to realize that opening was wrong, too.

Then a few days ago it came to me. A scene involving my villain that was directly related to the title of the book and that neither he nor I saw coming. What happened scared us both silly. If my villain is on his own "hero's journey," he is now committed to his path. And that elevates the encounter with my protagonist at Lincoln Memorial -- an encounter that I can write from my protagonist's point of view with no words spoken between them. 

I think it's going to work. It feels right. But I still haven't put it down on paper because what happens in my new first chapter has given me information that I didn't have before about my villain.

A pantser would plunge forward. I'm deliberating. Hybrids and plotters are more prone to edit as we go along. To edit before we even start to write. To edit as we are writing. That doesn't suck the life out of the story for me. But it does mean that the first draft does take forever to finish.

On the other hand, when I write "the end,"there are revisions left to do but no major rewrites. My revision process begins with the chapter summaries I wrote as I was doing my preliminary work. I compare what I expected to happen in my book to what actually happened. I often do an outline of the first draft so I can look for gaps and gaffes. After a read-through I'm ready to send the first draft to my beta readers. I need to send it away so that I can take a break and let the manuscript set before I plunge into revisions. . . assuming I have the time to do that. The downside of taking so long to get started is that one has less time if a deadline is looming.

But I can't do it any other way. I need to ponder and back track and stare at the wall for days and weeks and months before I can start. I need to edit as I go. I think it has much to do with personality. Spontaneity is not my middle name. But I do enjoy planning.

It seems to come down to now or later. Crawl along, cleaning up as you go and tidy up later. Or, plunge in, get a first draft and then do a major clean-up. No getting around it. However we do it, writing a decent book requires writing and revising. Now or later.

Why Writers Need Help

I, Donis, am currently fiddling and tweaking endlessly on my twenty-ninth draft. My books are only finished when they are finally in print and I can no longer get my hands on them. Like Barbara (see her excellent entry, below), I am also a micro self-editor. I want my manuscripts to be as good as I can make them before anyone, even my spouse, gets a look at them. The only problem with this, I find, is that after about the fifteenth draft, I completely lose any perspective I ever had and really have no idea if what I am writing is good or not. Did I make it better when I changed the word understood to comprehended? Is Character A any more convincing as a blond than he was as a redhead? Should the dog really have buried the spoon? Or should it have been the three-year-old who buried the dish. Maybe the three-year-old should have buried the dog and the dish run away with the spoon.

This is why presses have professional editors. There is no writer who does not benefit from judicious editing. Not Steven King, not Gillian Flynn, not Earnest Hemingway, not William Shakespeare. Once upon a time I saw a television interview with a Very Famous Author, several of whose books have been made into movies. This woman is big, I tell you. So big that at this point in her career, she has complete editorial control over her books. I know this because she told the interviewer, “I never let anybody edit my books.”

At the time I had just read her most recent book; a thousand-page tome that rambled around like the Mississippi River and was just as muddy. “Madam,” I said to the television, “you may wish to rethink that position.”

Practically every time I submit a manuscript, my editor points out some flaw in the story that seems so obvious to me that I slap myself on the forehead and slink away to stew in my own humiliation for a few hours. Why hadn’t I seen that gaping omission? In fact I probably created it myself when I removed an entire scene while I was working on draft number twenty.

I have never written a book that came out as well on paper as I envisioned it in my head. But once the book is published, if I put it aside for a year or two before I look at it again, I see it with new eyes. Considering how much I suffered when I wrote the dang thing, I’m amazed at how well it turned out.

Editing yourself, Part One

Barbara here. It's Wednesday morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the grass is nearing the six inch mark, and the weeds are happily choking out every semblance of a real flower in my gardens. And I've got a book to work on. So I hope this is going to be a short post.

As usual, my Type M blogmates have provided the inspiration for today's thoughts, which are along the lines of NOW THAT I'VE WRITTEN THE SUCKER, HOW DO I MAKE MY BOOK BETTER?  From Vicki's tale about the man who accosted her at a book signing with his self-published book under his arm to Aline's story about the joys of rejection letters to John's listing of Chandler's ten commandments for the detective novel and Marco's experience on the editorial side of the table, these posts all address the hard work involved in transforming an incoherent, soggy first draft into the best book it can be.

Some authors, especially those at the beginning of their (often short) careers, think that first draft is the best it can be. Others, often mid-career authors, fiddle and tweak endlessly with the twenty-ninth draft, always finding one more thing they can improve. I know many authors, myself included, who edit their already published novels on the fly during public readings. Oh damn, that's a useless word, or That doesn't make sense like that! Most of the time, a book can be made even better with a little more tightening, a little more enrichment, a little more focus ...

It's a long road from the first draft to the final brilliant product, there is no roadmap, and there is no triumphant THE END sign at your destination. Usually it's a deadline. At the moment I am standing at the beginning of that journey, staring out across the field, and contemplating the long slog ahead. Being a pantser, I have written this novel without a clear plan or outline, exploring where it would go next and wondering whether it would ever come together to a proper end. Now it has, sort of, but I have about 90,000 words of plot holes, missing, inconsistent or irrelevant characters, characters who have morphed from good guy to bad guy, ragged timelines (Wait, it is still Tuesday? or my favourite OMG, it's Sunday, they won't be open/working.), and settings that are missing in action for entire scenes.

The first task is to fix all that, the best I can, by myself. Before another soul sees it. Critiquing groups, beta readers, editors, and agents can't see this mess; they wouldn't be able to see the gem at the centre of it all, let alone polish it to perfection, until I have done the best I can to fix it up. How, I ask? In this week's blog I will talk about this initial macro-self-editing process, and in my next post two weeks from now, I will talk about finer editing, "on screen" vs. "hard copy" editing, and the value of fresh eyes in the form of other readers.

Each writer has their own technique for rewrites, each with its merits, so I will just describe mine. I am from the pre-computer era, so much of my process is old-fashioned. I write my first draft longhand, producing a scribbled, scratched out jumble full of arrows and "insert here" notes all around the edges of the pages. When I can't remember where I was or have reached a stalemate in the story, I transcribe this material onto the computer in Word. I know there are writing software programs out there, but it took me long enough to figure out Word after being forced to relinquish the much more writer-friendly but now defunct WordPerfect, and I think all the whistles and prompts and sidebars of fancier software programs would crowd my brain. I don't like structure or rules; I just want to free-flow.

It's during this transcription process that the first rewrites occur. I add, subtract, enrich, and clarify the text on the fly. Plus, I open an additional Word file called "Notes on ..." and if the fix is too complicated or I can't think how to fix it, I note my ideas in this file, along with other plot or character ideas that I think of as I go along. In this fashion I chug through the first draft, forging ahead in longhand and then transcribing it and adding notes to my burgeoning file, so that by the time I reach the end of the book, the computer version is not too far behind and I have pages of notes waiting for me to address in future rewrites.

Once I reach the end, I finally know what the story is about, who did the crime(s) and how the story is resolved. So a lot of the huge plot holes and character problems are self-evident. Some of my concerns and potential solutions in my "Notes on ..." file are now irrelevant, but I read through them all, pick out the gems, refine them, and brainstorm new ideas on how to fix the book. The whole of the book needs to be in my head, along with the potential solutions, so that I can juggle and adjust it as a whole. One cannot do this initial macro-editing piecemeal; the book has to be worked on as a whole. This is a huge brain exercise that I'm hoping will go some ways to staving off Alzheimers. Plots and subplots and characters oh my!

Once I have this pile of notes, I start to read the novel on screen, incorporating as many of these adjustments, insertions and deletions as I can, as well as fixing the obvious typos and minor inconsistencies that jump out. Often at this point, to help my poor brain out, I write an outline with a word or two describing each scene, to help me see the flow. This often leads to further adjustments as the plot holes and problems leap out at me.

Once I have done this initial massaging to fix the major plot holes and character problems, I print the whole thing and begin a more intensive rewrite on hard copy. I'm still looking at the overall picture, adjusting characters and pacing, elaborating and clarifying, but the smaller details often jump out as I go along. I may go through several print versions as they become too messy to focus on.

At a certain point in these reprints, I will tackle the timeline, to ensure consistencies in time of day and day of week, setting, weather, etc. I will label the beginning of each scene with those details, and fix whatever problems I uncover. Sometimes this leads to interesting new twists, for example if I discover one day is forty hours long, so the action has to be split into two days, or has to take place in the dark, etc.

Besides plot holes and problems in character and timeline, tying up loose ends is another crucial part of the rewrites. I keep a special little note in my file of the things that need to be resolved or explained in the denouement. As much as possible, I try to integrate these into the story as it unfolds, so I don't end up with thirty pages of explanation at the end of the book.

In reality, there is no clear line between macro and micro-editing, but the key thing is to fix the bigger problems before working on the finer details. In my next blog, I will tackle the latter, and also the uses and abuses of beta readers. Meanwhile, I'd like to hear from other writers. what is your process, and do you have a writing or editing software program that really helps?

Why books are better than e-books in two cartoons

by Rick Blechta

There’s this:

And this:

I rest my case.

Criticism

WHAT THE EDITOR SAID

good idea well followed through we enjoyed
a great deal we read with pleasure and interest
there was much to take note of the bustle and
jar the excursion and homeward turn some
belters of poems got hold of my ears all well-
crafted precise rhyming we particularly liked
numbers three four and seven but

I heard this poem at a reading given by Hamish White and it made me laugh out loud.  Hamish is a well-known and very accomplished Scottish poet (who also reviews crime fiction) and he has  kindly given me permission to share it with you.

Do you recognise this too - the 'but...'?  I think it's what's known as the enthusiastic rejection: when you know that if they meant what they said in the first paragraph there's no way they wouldn't be publishing the book.  I think it's intended to be kind, but in the days when all I seemed to get were rejection letters ( wish I'd kept them to paper the downstairs loo) I used to skip the first paragraph and look for the one beginning with that 'but..'   It spared me the pain of hopes raised only to be dashed.

I wasn't very good at interpretation, though.  Just about the first story I sent to a magazine, while I was still at university, came back with a letter that pointed out what was wrong with it, and I was crushed.  I went wailing to my friends, 'They didn't want it!'  and it took me a long time to get up the courage to write another one.  If only one of my kindly and sympathetic friends had told me I was lucky because not being sent a form letter was real encouragement, and that I'd better learn, mark and inwardly digest every precious comment, I'd have started my professional career a lot sooner.

The difficulty when you're starting out is getting criticism from a reliable source.  With the best will in the world, your friends probably can't provide it; their responses are inevitably tailored by the relationship with you.  If they are too impressed, it doesn't help you, if they are too brutal it doesn't help the friendship.  After a very bitter experience, I decided to make it a rule not to critique other writers' work.

It was a steep learning curve, but I came round to understanding the value of brutal criticism.  It still smarts, particularly when it's justified, but I'm good about taking it now - as long as it's from my agent or my editor.  Between them, agents and editors have improved my writing beyond recognition and I'm grateful.

To this day, though, when my agent calls with comments and begins by telling me tactfully how much she loves what I'm doing, I don't listen.  I'm on the edge of my seat, waiting for the 'but...'  I'm always quite disconcerted if it doesn't come.

The other sort of criticism is the kind that comes in the form of reviews in newspapers or on Amazon and the like.  Of course the fun ones come from the highly intelligent, sensitive and discriminating readers who give you five stars and say, 'Even better than the last one.' You purr, but you don't learn from those.

At the other end of the spectrum are the ones who give you one star, and say they hated it from page one - clearly total dimwits.  Authors should be able to ban these people from ever reading another of their books.  Have you thought about that, Amazon, huh?

But there are the ones who come in the middle, who generally liked the book but thought there were one or two things that were wrong with it, and those reviews are invaluable.  There was the one, for instance, who pointed out a mannerism my lead character had that she found annoying; she was right, and I dropped it next time.  Someone else pointed out a theme that wasn't fully developed, and I took that one on board too.

The cruellest critic of all, though, is me.  I can always see something that wasn't quite what it should be, something that next time will have to be better.  It's uncomfortable, but I think if I ever wrote a book that was in my eyes perfect, I'd retire.

Hamish White's book 'Hannah, Are You Listening' is published by Happenstance.

A Second Hat to Wear

This past year I've had the opportunity to serve as editor on two short-fiction anthologies. In Blood Business, a noir crime/paranormal anthology from Hex Publishers, I am the assistant editor alongside the editor/publisher Josh Viola. For the 2016 RMFW Anthology, Found, to be published by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, I am the head cheese--the vato in charge of everything.

In both cases, serving as editor has been an instructive experience. For one, I'm on the other side of the editorial desk and it's enlightening to review manuscripts as they come to me. Hex invited writers with a track record in the genre and for the RMFW anthology, it was an open submission for members only. I got to see manuscripts arrive in various stages of preparation. Some read like first drafts and others were already quite polished, both in story-telling and craft.

Since the manuscripts that arrived for Blood Business came from established writers, I had my eyes opened a little more as to how challenging it is to write a good story. Mostly because we writers are always too close to our work. In our mind, we've tied together loose ends and the narrative flows in one logical current. Tightening the story shows the value of a good editor, and I hope I've been so. In my content editing, I had to be careful that I helped the writer hone the story and that I not rewrite it. Plus, many of the submitting writers have significant authorial credentials and now I'm in the lofty position of judging their work and suggesting changes, a humbling role. That concern is weighed against the publisher's desire to release a great book so Josh and I had to call them as we saw them.

My experience with the RMFW anthology has been more encompassing because I honcho the anthology from submissions through selection, editing, copyediting, cover and interior design, formatting for publication, publication as an ebook and a trade paperback, and marketing. Since we accepted open submissions, the editorial process heavily involved the R-word: rejection. We received 89 entries and I had to whittle that number down to fifteen. What helped--or hurt if you were on the submitting end--was that RMFW published strict formatting rules that I followed to the letter. That knocked 35 submissions out of the running, which was disappointing because that included stories from friends that I was looking forward to reading. The remaining 54 stories were doled out in a blind process to eleven volunteer readers, and we assigned a score to each: 0-pass; 1-maybe; 2-accept. Nine stories received a double 2 score. That meant we had to review the remaining to decide on enough stories to fill the anthology. Although I knew how subjective the process was going to be, I was still surprised how our opinions broke on many of the entries. In sending out the rejection notices, even then I had second doubts about which were the best and wished I could have included more, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

Found will be available this September, and Blood Business will hit the streets in 2017. Buy lots of copies of each and make this editor happy.

Maine Chance

My grandson graduated from Colby College last Sunday. It has an excellent reputation for academics and was easily the most peaceful campus I've visited.

All the visiting relations stayed in Belfast the night before. My daughter, Michele, and son-in-law, Harry and his mother, June Crockett were treated to a great tour of the town by Murray and Margot Carpenter.

Belfast was fascinating and the town was one little hilly street after another. That surprised me and in a very short time all the muscles in my legs rebelled. By the bay the terrain was relatively flat and I was intrigued with the commercial aspects of shipping and ship-building. Besides, standing still and asking questions is a sly way to distract attention from a pained expression. These were serious hills. In town, yet!

I didn't know a thing about Maine. I've never been a huge supporter of the "write what you know" idea, but when it comes to setting, I think it's essential. No amount of Googling would have substituted for the couple of days in Belfast.

Streets in Kansas are wide and broad and in Maine they were narrow and winding. One could not zip right along.

From Maine we went to Manteo, NC where my granddaughter will be married Sunday. The family has gone to NC a number of times and I'm a little more familiar with that state.

But still! The chances of getting nearly everything wrong are sky high when writing about an unfamiliar setting. You'll have the flamingos going "eek" instead of "awk" and the wrong kind of flowers blooming at the wrong time and the wrong kind of grocery store chains.

However, there is a way of working around some of this if the protagonist is not writing from the viewpoint of a native. Write as an outsider. I did this with a couple of short stories that had a trucking background.

The outsider viewpoint is very useful for inserting background information. For instance, in my mystery series, Lottie Albright has moved to Western Kansas from Eastern Kansas and she often compares the two halves of the state

There is nothing wrong with using any setting you choose if you are willing to do the work. Visits, historical societies, and leg work can take you a long ways. As for me, I still enjoy writing about my native state.

WHO NEEDS RULES?

“There are three rules for writing a novel," W. Somerset Maugham once quipped. “Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” Anyone who's set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) knows this to be true. However, that's never stopped members of the literati from offering advice in the form of "rules" to writers of crime fiction.

In 1841, with the publication of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe launched the detective fiction genre and established what is known as "Poe's Five Rules of Detective Fiction":

1. There must be a crime, preferably murder, because it fascinates readers more than any other crime and there appears to be an unlimited number of ways in which people can die.

2. There must be a detective, someone with superior inductive and deductive reasoning, who is capable of solving the crime that baffles the official police system.

3. The police must be seen as either incompetent or as incapable of solving a certain type of complex crime.

4. The reader must be given all the information or "clues" to be able to solve the crime if the "clues" are properly interpreted.

5. The detective must explain who the criminal is and the motive, means, and opportunity by the conclusion of the story.

It's interesting to consider works of crime-fiction, past and present -- both literary and cinematic presentations -- and discover most honor Poe's list, give or take a rule or two. When we think of literary adages that have withstood the test of time, the final lines of Raymond Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder" stands out: "...down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man." You know the passage. You've read it before. You've probably even recited it to someone. I would argue, though, that, given the state of the contemporary crime-fiction novel where sleuths are more diverse and complex than ever, Poe's rules are more relevant than Chandler's musings.

Following Poe, in 1928, S.S. Van Dine offered his "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" in the American Magazine. His advice includes, "There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better" (rule 7) and compared the genre to "a sporting event." I can't imagine what Poe would have thought of Van Dine's flippant portrayal of the genre. Several decades later, as part of the New York Times "Writers on Writing" series in 2001, Elmore Leonard wrote "Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle," his own list of ten rules that any writer is smart to follow. Where Van Dine is didactic and antiquated, Leonard is helpful and offers gems for contemplation.

However, for the contemporary writer of crime fiction (and our modern-day readers), Raymond Chandler's "Ten Commandments For the Detective Novel" remain helpful, interesting, and like all of Chandler's work, sparse enough to offer writers room to maneuver within his list and readers leeway to argue for or against the merits of any contemporary favorite.

1. It must be credibly motivated, both as to the original situation and the dénouement.
2. It must be technically sound as to the methods of murder and detection.
3. It must be realistic in character, setting and atmosphere. It must be about real people in a real world.
4. It must have a sound story value apart from the mystery element: i.e., the investigation itself must be an adventure worth reading.
5. It must have enough essential simplicity to be explained easily when the time comes.
6. It must baffle a reasonably intelligent reader.
7. The solution must seem inevitable once revealed.
8. It must not try to do everything at once. If it is a puzzle story operating in a rather cool, reasonable atmosphere, it cannot also be a violent adventure or a passionate romance.
9. It must punish the criminal in one way or another, not necessarily by operation of the law....If the detective fails to resolve the consequences of the crime, the story is an unresolved chord and leaves irritation behind it.
10. It must be honest with the reader.

Like everything Chandler wrote, this list is direct, thoughtful, and provides excellent fodder, most of it pertaining to plot and authorial credibility. Which rules still hold up? Take the last novel you read and see. I'd argue most rules will apply. It's an interesting list to view as an author. Admittedly, I have sinned against some of Chandler's commandments in my own works, but I like to think of Robert B. Parker's Spenser series, which, novel after novel, seems to uphold these "commandments" with the dedication of Mother Teresa.

In the end, what are we to make of lists and rules? Some argue rules only hold a genre back, imposing unnecessary (and/or antiquated) limitations to what the genre can achieve. Parker, after all, insisted he didn't write genre fiction and listed The Great Gatsby as the greatest crime novel. I say that where excellent literary criticism has the power to make a text more accessible for a larger reader base, our genre's lists and rules challenge us (as readers and writers) to examine works more closely while asking our best authors to at once write within these boundaries -- and to also stretch them to new limits.

*Originally appeared in The Strand, May 5, 2016

Brain On Vacation

Apparently, my brain has gone on vacation. It’s pretty much been that way since I turned in my book to my editor. I can think of nothing to talk about today. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

I’m sure my brain will return to its usual state once I receive the comments from my editor, but for now it’s happy watching TV and catching up on reading.

Here are a couple books I found particularly interesting, both historical mysteries.

From the Charred Remains by Susanna Calkins. This is the second book in the Lucy Campion series, set right after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The main character is a former maid in a magistrate’s household who has now become an apprentice to a printer.

Silent Remains by Christine Trent. This the second book in the Lady of Ashes series. I admit that what attracted them to me are the covers. The main character, Violet, is a female undertaker in Victorian England. Queen Victoria asks Violet to perform undertaking services for a peer who died after returning from Egypt. She also asks Violet to look into the death and to make sure the body stays unburied until the queen wishes services to be performed. Of course, no one refuses the queen!



 See you in a couple weeks after my brain has recovered.

How NOT to Approach an Author for Advice

By Vicki Delany

It happened to me again recently.  Ask any professional author who does public appearances, and they’ll tell you it happens to them all the time.

I was at a public event, in a spot reserved for me to give me the opportunity to introduce my books to readers and possibly persuade a few to actually buy and read them.  I had travelled some distance from my home to be there.

A person arrived: “I’ve written a mystery book.”

That can only mean one thing.  They are here to ask me to spend fifteen or twenty minutes of my valuable time, potentially fifteen or twenty minutes when that one eager reader passes by not wanting to interrupt me, telling them how to get this book of theirs published. They will, of course, not compensate me in any way for this advice.

Here’s a tip to every single person who has ever approached an author at an event when they are WORKING. (Yes, talking to the public is work) PAY THEM FOR THEIR TIME.

All you have to do is buy a book.  And not only should that not be a sacrifice but if you want my advice, wouldn’t you want to see what my product is?

In addition s/he is carrying a cheaply produced trade paperback book.  That can also only mean one thing. They want me to read it. They probably want me to buy it, but they might offer to give it to me for free, as long as I promise to pass it on to my publishers.

In this case, s/he said they would buy one of my books as long as I bought the one they were carrying (cost of $30 as opposed to my mass markets which are ten).  We could then exchange reviews on Amazon.   

I was pretty blunt about that: I would never promise to review a book I hadn’t read.

This person then wanted to know all about my publisher.  H/she paid $3000 for 100 copies of this book.  Who was my publisher? Penguin Random House. How much did I pay them to publish my book?  Uh, I paid nothing .Things have changed, h/she told me. Publishers these days expect authors to self-publish one book before they’ll consider them.

Now, I’ve heard that one before. I suspect some vanity publishers or self-publishing ventures are spreading this rumor. If anything, it’s the opposite. Unless your self-published book has been a huge hit (think Fifty Shades of Gray)  all you’ve done is destroy your marketability as a first novel author, and give yourself such low sales numbers that no one will look at you.

Sorry, that’s the way it is.

This poor schmuck had self-published the first in a series and was looking for a traditional publisher to pick up the next.  Never, never gonna happen.

Finally h/she left, book still under arm, and probably very unhappy with me.

Tough, I’m sorta losing patience, here. Not only with people who think my time and my professional advice, after 23 published books, isn’t worth forking out $10 to read what I produce, but who think they can make a success as a mystery writer with no research into the industry, no classes to learn the craft and the business, and no need to seek advice from the people you supposedly want to emulate (before taking that first, fatal step). 

I don't think there's anything wrong with self-publishing. But DON'T think it’s a natural step to a traditional publisher and DO go into it knowing exactly what you can expect. 

Oh, and buddy. If you want to sell books, ask yourself who’s going to buy them. Because obviously you are not.

The Mysteries of the Human Mind

Yesterday morning – at 7:30 am – I woke up humming. As my feet touched the floor, I burst into song. This was weird for several reasons: (a) I am not a morning person. Even after a good night's sleep, I am not inclined to greet the sun with song – especially when I'm rising because the alarm clock has gone off and I need to move along or be late; (b) the song I was humming, then singing, was a cheerful little ditty that I remembered from the 70s or 80s, but couldn't remember the name of the group that had sung it; (c) I could only remember the first line and a half of the song and I kept singing that over and over. That song was on an endless loop through my head as I fed the cat and took a shower and dashed out the door to attend an academic workshop.

In an Alfred Hitchcock movie, Shadow of a Doubt, a character is humming a waltz and observes how funny it is that sometimes you can have a tune in your head and then you hear someone else humming the same tune. She wondered if songs might leap from head to head. I wondered if I walked into the workshop I was about to attend, still humming, if the other attendees would one by one become infected until we were all singing a catchy pop song instead of discussing the serious business of course design. Maybe someone else would know all the lyrics, and begin to conduct our chorus. Or, maybe the lyrics would appear on the screen, replacing the speaker's slides.

The question was how I had been infected. I hadn't been dreaming anything that I could remember when I woke. But I had put the television on its timer as I was going to bed to provide myself with background noise as I fell asleep (yes, I know electronics do not belong in the bedroom). The show I had fallen asleep to was "The King of Queens" and Doug was singing at a karaoke club. Maybe he had been singing that song. Or, maybe the fact that he was performing had reminded me of songs from that era and the name "Rosemary" had bubbled up from my subconscious because as I was closing the refrigerator door I had noticed that I still had a package of dried rosemary and wondered if there was a chicken recipe that I could try. And then I had gone off to bed and fallen asleep as someone was singing an old song. . .

The phenomenon of having a song stuck in your head has been the subject of scientific study. After reading the explanation, I am relieved that I am not a chronic sufferer.
Music in head

But I am prone to the "tip of the tongue" phenomenon. We all know that one. The name or the title or the word that is right there, but out of reach. I put it down to my brain being on overload with a jumble of important information and useless facts. Here's some research on TOT
TOT

Or have you ever experienced deja vu when you walked into a place that you know you've never been, or in the middle of a conversation that you know you've never had?
Deja vu all over again

When it comes to mysteries, the human mind still challenges investigators. Speaking of which, it's too bad many readers are irritated when writers use a dream sequence to show what is going on in a character's head or to allow him or her to make a vital connection that helps to solve the crime. It happens in real life. How many times have you solved a problem that you fell asleep chasing around in your head? I have to say I like problem solving while I sleep a lot better than waking up with "earworm".

Am I Done? Finishing a Novel at Last.

I have finally finished my ninth Alafair Tucker mystery. Well, "finished" may be a bit premature. The manuscript is with my first reader, now. (Also known as Beloved Spouse). As fellow Type M-er  Charlotte Hinger pointed out so truly, most authors have no idea if what they have just produced is any good or not. In that respect, I am very much like most authors. The new book took me a long time to write. I am not a fast writer, but this book was particularly time-consuming, mainly because I changed the beginning at least five times. I ended up at one point with three beginnings in one manuscript, and as any reader will tell you, it's a much more satisfying read if a story only begins once.

I wrote one version of the story with an ending so grim that I feared readers would be suicidal after they read it and never pick up another book of mine. Believe me, it was a very clever plot twist, but sometimes you just have to kill your darlings before your editor kills you. I have to admit that even if I do have the ability to write dark...and I do mean inky black...this traditional mystery series just does not call for that sort of book. So, I ended up rewriting the entire second half of the novel so that everything turns out all right. More or less.

So this is the conundrum faced by any author of a long series. What would happen if you went off the rails for one installment? Suppose a long-standing and popular character dies? Suppose a character who has been a good guy for eight books suddenly does something unforgivable? Suppose a spouse who has been faithful for a literary decade decides to cheat on his/her spouse? Suppose a formerly innocent and naive character starts cursing like a sailor? Will your readers forgive you if you shake up their expectations too much? Or is it a good thing to shake up expectations? It seems to work for Game of Thrones. Somehow I think if I want to write a novel that is wildly different in mood and tone from all my previous books in this series, I'd be better served to write a stand-alone or start an entirely new series.

Any thoughts on the subject, Dear Readers and Writers?

However...by taking out much of the shock and horror of the situation, did I water the tale down too much? Is it now a pale imitation of its former gut-wrenching self? Or is it now an infinitely more satisfying resolution. Beloved Spouse will give me the first clue. Do I have something or not?

Games writers play

Barbara here. And unlike Rick, I am not writing about setting a mystery in a school, although there are college-aged students in my current work in progress, THE TRICKSTER'S LULLABY, and some of the action does in fact take place at the college. But I'm not here to write about that.

I am currently nearing the completion of this WIP, and over the past few months, I have devoted a couple of blogs to my writing process, which I have described using various game analogies. In fact, authors are fond of comparing their writing to one sport or another. We're coming down the home stretch, we've knocked it out of the park, we've struck out, we've got too many balls up in the air, and so on. It's actually surprising how many expressions in general have a sports or game origin. Sports are ready metaphors for struggle, loss, and triumph, and lend themselves easily to describing life's travails.

I am a "modified fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" writer. I used to be a full member of the club but have discovered, since writing more layered plots with multiple points of view and colliding story lines, that I have to have some idea what's coming next. I still don't know where the overall story is going or how it will end, but I try to plan a few scenes ahead so they will fit together. One might call this "the-stop-and-go-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" approach.

When I first start writing a book, I liken the process to tossing balls up into the air, to get ideas and story lines activated and evolving. It can be a random and rather chaotic process, in that it's difficult to predict where balls will fly and where and when they will land. When I am in the saggy, unwieldy middle of the book, the plotting process seems more like a chess game. Plot points, clues, and character secrets evolve step by step. Every move follows from the move that came before and affects what move will happen next. I find myself asking questions like "What would this character do next?", "What would logically happen next?", or "What would be the most unexpected thing to happen?"

The final climax is usually the most difficult part of the process for me. I know I have to end the book somehow, tie all the loose ends together, and solve the mystery in a fresh, compelling, unexpected scene. By this point I have many balls up in the air, many dangling threads to be knitted together, and a great many questions to answer. I always struggle with this task, and yesterday a new analogy came to me. Writing the climax is like clearing a logjam. Living in Ottawa, I've learned a lot about the logging industry that used to be the main source of jobs and income in the region a hundred years ago. Logs were cut in the forests, floated down the river, and funnelled through onto barges or into chutes at the mills. Like any free-floating body, logs tended to have a mind of their own, and often got jammed up together trying to get through narrow sections. Skilled drivers would walk across the logs in the water, prod them apart and guide them into line until all the logs had cleared the narrows one at a time.

At the end of the writing process, all the questions should be answered, the big ideas and small ones fitted into their proper place, and the story has surged to its conclusion. Sometimes I feel like that driver, balancing on the pack of logs and struggling to contain and keep track of all the competing plot points, separating them out and deciding which should go when. Hoping than none are forgotten and that characters all clear the jam.

I'm delighted that as of today, I have a very roughly cleared logjam. Unlike the driver in the logging industry, however, I can go back and replay the game, nudging the logs into an even better and tighter pattern in rewrites. Who knows, maybe the rewrite process will inspire me with yet another game or sport analogy. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, which does your process resemble most? Tossing balls, playing chess, or driving logs?

Setting a crime novel in a school

by Rick Blechta

You know there's a lot of synchronicity among the posting crew here on Type M. Many times in the past, I've sat down to write my weekly offering only to find that someone in the past week (or coming week since I have access to all the posts) is planning to write on exactly or at least nearly the same topic as I.

Now if this is something that's “trending” as we now tend to say for current news topics, it's understandable that someone else might wish to write on said topic. But when it's something out of the mainstream or even on something rather arcane, then it gets a little creepy.

Such is the case with my post today. I had planned on writing about mysteries set in a school, because that topic came up at a panel I moderated two weekends ago in Brantford, Ontario.

Lo and behold, John wrote about it last week, then Aline wrote about nearly the same thing in her post yesterday! Sort of creepy isn't it? As a matter of fact, I just had a security expert in to sweep my office and computer for hidden listening devices and cameras.

Anyway, on the panel, the topic of setting a crime fiction novel in a school came up. One panelist (a former school teacher) was totally against doing something like this, even though she put forward a terrific plot idea for the murder which would drive the story. To her it somehow seemed wrong, I guess because this sort of thing would take place on what was to her sacred ground.

Another panelist (a retired teacher and school principal) stated that she would have no problems doing something like that.

For my part, I told the story of how in my earliest novels (when I was still teaching), I would often imagine some particularly troublesome student projected, say, thirty years into the future and then use the resulting character as the victim in a particularly gruesome death.

I found it very therapeutic. As a matter of fact, my second novel, The Lark Ascending, was reviewed on CBC in part as having “a body count of positively Shakespearean proportions”. For the record, the novel was written during a year in which I had a large number of particularly odious students.

Coincidence? I think not!

Not Writing What You Know

I was interested to read John's post, Honest Writing. Like him, my background is in schools. In fact, until my husband retired I had spent all my life in schools, apart from four years off for good behaviour when I was at University.

In fact, I am contemplating applying for a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of school prize-givings attended. My father was a headmaster so when I was at school myself I went to my own, and his. Then I taught, and went to my own. When I married, my husband was a teacher so again I went to my own, and his. I had children – one prize-giving apiece – plus my husband's (I was, at least, a stay-at-home mom by that time which spared me a fourth every summer); then he became headmaster in a three-stage school, each part of which had its own prize-giving, and there were still the children's too. Once the children left school, there were fewer though we were still frequently invited to other schools' prize-givings, sometimes as guests, sometimes to give speeches. Even today, we still often go back for the end of term at my husband's old school. Anyone want to challenge me for the title?

So I can certainly say I'm familiar with school life!  But unlike John, I've never been tempted to set a book in a school. I'm not sure why, because as John said, all the right ingredients are there.

 I very seldom  choose to read a book with a school background, usually because of my previous experience of books where the writer isn't doing John's 'honest writing'; they're inventing what they think a school would be like and I just feel irritated (I often cringe when a policeman tells me he's read one of my books.) 

Perhaps I just feel it would all be too close to home, that I know too much about schools and I know too many teachers. How could I create a fictional school that wasn't too like the schools I have lived in? And I couldn't bring myself to fictionalise real people I had known for the same reasons as I discussed in a previous post about not using someone's life experience, but it would be very tempting. I might even be  drawn into using them unconsciously and then find myself being sued for libel.

Indeed, I'm such a coward about this that I invented a whole police force so that I wouldn't inadvertently create a character in a real force, a police sergeant, say, who was deeply unpleasant, had a wart on his nose and was called Wilson, only to find that thee was a sergeant in that very force who answered the description.

For me, I think, writing what I know means, yes, writing about something I'm familiar with, but at one remove. I need a bit of distance for perspective.

How do the rest of you feel?

Guest Post: Nancy Cole Silverman

Please welcome fellow Sisters in Crime LA member and Henery Press author Nancy Cole Silverman. Take it away Nancy... 

Exercising the Muse 

by Nancy Cole Silverman

Last Christmas, my step-daughter got me a coffee mug that says, Please do not annoy the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you. It got a lot of laughs around the kitchen table. But, turnabout is fair play. Right? So, that night, while I was cooking dinner, I put my copy of Deadly Doses, a writer’s guide to poisons, on the counter next to my cookbook. Needless to say, I had lots of leftovers. Spice cake, anyone?

Two years ago, our houseguest, Gracie, arrived during the holidays.

Gracie at the piano

Gracie is a life-sized, soft sculpture doll who resembles my husband’s deceased mother. Don’t ask! Instead, let me share how Gracie came to be. We decided during a holiday celebration that the house seemed a little empty and since we’d be traveling, thought it might be a good idea if the place looked more lived in. You know, on the chance, someone might peer through the windows to see if anyone were home. Gracie was a perfect answer. She’s usually in the living room and when guests visit, they frequently do a double take, thinking she’s a real person. And just to keep things interesting, I move her around a lot. I’ve propped her up in the shower, complete with a shower cap, put her in the guest bed, and left her stretched atop the piano like a lounge singer for parties. She’s a sure starter for conversations and of course, my husband never turns out the lights without say, “Good night, Gracie.”

My point in sharing all this with you is that I believe it’s important to exercise our muse. David Ogilvy, a driving force of American advertising, had a fun way of looking at it. He used to encourage his writers to embrace their peculiarities when they were young, so that when they achieved old age, nobody would accuse them of being crazy. Instead, it could be said, they had always been that way.

So you see, my whimsical sense of humor is nothing more than exercise. And while I don’t write whimsical mysteries, I do like a little humor with my homicides. I also like my characters flawed, my scenes hard and fast, and my plots highly twisted. In short, I like to write cozies with a bite.

When I sat down to write the first of the Carol Childs’ Mysteries,

I looked for any number of twists to surprise my readers. For twenty-five years, I worked in newstalk radio in Los Angeles. Sometimes, the stories we reported on were only half as interesting as the stories that happened inside the station, behind the mic. Gallows humor was a constant and the personalities that hosted the shows, presented the news and ran the station were a menagerie of odd. They never looked like what they sound.

Some of what I write is true. Some not so true. Can you spot the difference?

A) A top Hollywood agent is murdered coming home from an awards show and leaves her twin nieces her entire estate; albeit unequally. One inherits a million dollars. The other, nada.

B) A big city developer and a member of the police commission likes young girls and runs a sex trafficking ring in Hollywood.

C) A Beverly Hills jewelry store is robbed by a group of international jewel thieves before an awards show and the jewels are replaced–or maybe not–with paste.

If you’re looking for me to say which of the above is true, I will only say this; A. Was the inspiration for book one of the Carol Childs Mysteries; Shadow of Doubt. B. Is a tall tale I manufactured after reading about a number of lost girls in Hollywood. It became the inspiration for Beyond a Doubt. And C? Well, I’ll leave that for you to decide. Without a Doubt comes out May 24th.

Stay tuned.

Nancy Cole Silverman

Nancy Cole Silverman credits her twenty-five years in radio for helping her to develop an ear for storytelling. In 2001 Silverman retired from news and copywriting to write fiction fulltime. In 2014, Silverman signed with Henery Press for her new mystery series, The Carol Childs’ Mysteries. The first of the series, Shadow of Doubt, debuted in December 2014 and the second, Beyond a Doubt, debuted July 2015. Coming soon, in 2016, is the third in the series, Without A Doubt. Silverman also has written a number of short stories, many of them influenced by her experiences growing up in the Arizona desert. For more information visit www.nancycolesilverman.com

Luther and the Devil

There is myth that when Martin Luther was translating the Bible, Satan came and tried to stop him from completing his work. The story goes that Luther threw his inkwell at the monster and it disappeared.

 

Although my minor mystery is not very important in the scheme of things, I'm a couple of days from click and send and that's when my demons come. One would think sending a book to an editor is the most triumphant stage in writing a book. A moment to be savored.

 

But no. For me, it's the time when odd impulses start tugging at my brain. In the old days it would have been to set fire to the manuscript. Now it's to hit Control-Alt-Delete. For some reason the same story that seemed just fine a month ago seems fantastic and amateurish at this point.

 

The most frustrating part of writing is the realization that a book can be improved into infinity. However, there is a point when we are in danger of editing the life out of a book. Words begin to look inept. Plots seem improbable. Characters seem unappealing.

 

Self-consciousness is a writer's worst enemy. The most important challenge we have is to banish everyone from the writing room. That includes demons. I, you, we, are the only ones who belong there.

 

The moment we stop to think what will my relations, my friends, my teachers, my priest, my high school principle, the boy who delivers my paper think of this? Is the book shallow? Self-indulgent? Pretentious? Amateurish? Dull?

 

It's important to follow Luther's example and bring out the inkwell in whatever form. Whatever it takes to click and send.

 

 Just do it and send the demons right on back to hell.

Honest Writing

I read Aline's, Frankie's, and Donis's recent posts with great interest and recalled Ernest Hemingway's famous line from A Moveable Feast: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." My three Type M colleagues touched on what, to me, amounts to honest writing – telling the story inside you, the one you have to tell. This is something I've been considering a lot recently.

The opportunity to explore a new character has piqued my interest. I've published nine novels (No. 9, Destiny's Pawn, comes out in June). Eight of those required tremendous research (five were set on the PGA Tour; and the last three featuring a US Border Patrol agent). Research can be fun. I like talking to people, learning new things, and reading or watching just about anything to do with the criminal justice system. But research is also time consuming and nerve racking (you must, after all, get it right).

I've had a character in my head and an idea for a book (and series) for several years. I started a version of the book a few years ago, then sold my Peyton Cote series, and wrote that instead for the past four years. All the while, this idea for an amateur sleuth novel set in a locale I know very well, has stayed with me. Then something happened about three weeks ago that stalled the book I was working on, and this novel's opening line appeared. I wrote it. And kept going. Now, I'm thirty pages in, and the book is writing itself.

One reason for the ease with which this project is proceeding is because I've set the book at a New England boarding school. For me, having received financial aid to attended a boarding school and now living and working at one, I am surely following the adage of "write what you know." Additionally, these are places where privilege, wealth, and power can collide -- always a potent concoction for plots. Most importantly, those same elements that combine to create interesting plots also offer potential for great empathy, which every story needs if it is to have a heart.

So where does this book go? Who knows? But I'm eager to see where it leads. More importantly, I'm motivated to finish it.

Malice Go Round

At the recent Malice Domestic convention, I participated in the Malice Go Round, aka Speed Dating With Authors. It’s quite an experience, whether you’re presenting or listening.

Imagine 20 tables of 10. Eight of the chairs at each table are filled with listeners. The other two are for authors who are pitching their latest book(s). All of the listeners stay put while the pairs of authors move around from table to table. At each table, each author has 2 minutes to pass out postcards, bookmarks, etc. and talk about their book(s). Every 4 minutes the authors move on to the next table. There’s a 21st table where the authors get a four-minute break. Approximately an hour and 45 minutes later all the pitches have been done and everyone is exhausted.

For those listening, it’s a great way to learn about books and authors you haven’t heard of before. On the pitching side, it’s a great way to make others aware of your work.

I teamed up with fellow Henery Press author, Christina Freeburn, who writes the Faith Hunter Scrap This mystery series. Here we are looking chipper as we wait to begin pitching.

Christina’s giveaway was a stamped frame with a postcard of her latest book while my giveaway was a set of postcards of the two books in my Aurora Anderson Mystery series.

We put both our items in Ziploc bags so they’d be faster to give out. Here are our packets of giveaways.

Here’s the ballroom as the authors gather and get ready. Tip: If you’re pitching get there early and snag a table as close to #10 as you can get. That way your break will be halfway through your round.

And here’s the ballroom when the Go Round is in full swing.

Type Mer Vicki Delany and Cathy Ace were right behind me so I kept on hearing “We’re the Criminous Canucks...” every time we moved to a new table. I have to admit I wanted to hear the rest of their pitch. I learned later it continued “We kill people, but we do it politely.” My pitch wasn’t quite as interesting, but I think I did okay for the first time. It was definitely an experience I’m glad I had. So that’s my experience at Malice Go Round.

Oh, and by the way, I sent my third book to my publisher on Monday. Yay!

If strangers talked to everybody like they talk to writers

by Rick Blechta

My post topic this week (well, last week, actually, but as you know that never happened) was not going to be on this topic, but an upcoming post by Vicki that’s also gotten rescheduled made me decide to break this one out because it does dovetail nicely with what you’ll be reading from her in a couple of weeks. This post today is primarily directed at writers, but it should prove amusing to anyone who enjoys observing the foibles of human beings.

First, you need to read this: If Strangers Talked to Everybody Like They Talk to Writers. I think Elizabeth McCracken and Lincoln Michel hit the nail squarely on the head, don’t you?

Everything said about the sorts of questions and comments we writers receive from the public is true and accurate. For some reason, when the general public meets a writer, even in the most casual of circumstances, all their social filters seem to shut down. Those of us who are ink-stained wretches have experienced the comments contained in the article I invited you to read. It really is a very odd, disconcerting occurrence, even after many years in the game. I’m always left wondering what I should say. Usually my social filters stay up and I don’t shoot back with a cutting comment or walk away in a huff – but I’m always tempted to do so.

My personal favourite is “Oh! So you're a writer. Would I have read anything of yours?”

How the hell should I know? Unless you suspect me of breaking into your house in the dead of night for the purpose of giving your library a once-over, or being an accomplished mind reader, there is no way of answering such a stupid question. And it’s not as if I’ve gotten this question from unintelligent people. On the contrary, many of them are people who are well-educated and otherwise pretty smart and accomplished. Think lawyers and doctors here, folks.

Regardless, everyone seems ready to dispense helpful hints to those of us who write. From plot ideas (“I'll share my plot idea with you for a 50/50 split of the profits!”) to financial pointers (“You really can’t expect to make your living from something like this, can you? You’ll definitely need to keep a day job going.”), we hear it all at some point or another.

Being a musician as well, I have a lot of friends in the arts. While they do occasionally get asked similar sorts of questions, it’s not a constant thing. Every time I’m invited to a party, for instance, I ask myself how many slightly embarrassing, more than frank, questions I’ll be subjected to.

Why is that? Is there some sort of open season on writers about which I’m not aware?