The Music of the Sentence

by Sheila Connolly

I love flea markets and farmers markets and junk sales and antiques fairs, because I never know what I’m going to find. That includes Irish markets, where it’s even more likely that I’ll find something unlikely and unexpected. The Skibbereen (West Cork, Ireland) Saturday market is no exception.  This was the second year I’ve been there, and I always come away with something.  Lots of somethings, in fact.

The food products are amazing, but that’s for another blog.  They also sell live poultry there (I don’t have much use for a duck, now, do I?), and there are always a couple of junk stalls.  Oh, and the guy selling hand-carved magic wands.  Yes, I bought one, made of bog oak, which is supposed to be wood a thousand years old, pulled out of a bog.

 

One of the sort-of antique stalls was run by an English couple.  I first spotted an old book on a pile there and was of course drawn to it, and we started chatting.  Turns out the husband has written a mystery about the discovery of a Viking horde on a beach somewhere, so we had something in common.  And yes, I bought the old book I had first seen:  It’s called:

A Grammar of Rhetoric, and Polite Literature; Comprehending the Principles of Language and Style, the Elements of Taste and Criticism: with Rules for the Study of Composition and Eloquence; Illustrated by Appropriate Examples.

 

It was written by one Alexander Jamieson, published in London in 1818. There’s a hand-written inscription which I think says (it’s in Latin) it was given as a prize to an outstanding student named David Sherlock in August 1830 (it doesn’t look as though young David used it much). It’s bound in red leather with gold stamping, and the edges of the pages are gilt.

 

My initial impression, upon opening the book at a random page, was that one would have to have a pretty impressive education simply to read any part of it.  This is not a primer for beginners!

But reading even the index is immensely entertaining (no, I will not claim to have read the book yet). Some chapter headers might come from a modern document on “How to Write,” while others sound absurd.  A few samples:

Under characteristics of style: “The Nervous and the Feeble of the same Import with the Concise and the Diffuse.” Huh? Of course, “An Author may write simply and yet not beautifully.”  On a more reasonable note, “The Foundation of all good Style, is good Sense, accompanied with a lively Imagination.”

There are sections on Historical Writing and Philosophical Writing. There is an entire section devoted to “On the Nature and Structure of Sentences, the General Principles of Perspicuity, and the Harmony of Periods.” Then there’s a chapter on “The Various Species of the Unintelligible,” which begins with “The unintelligible, from want of meaning in the writer, proceeds from vacuity of thought.” The writer seems to be saying, think before you write.  Good idea.

When we arrive at the part about the Harmony of Periods, the writer says,

Those words are most agreeable to the ear which are composed of smooth and liquid sounds, where there is a proper intermixture of vowels and consonants; without too many harsh consonants grating upon each other or too many open vowels in succession, to cause a hiatus or disagreeable aperture of the mouth.

I could happily go on, for the small book is nearly 400 pages long, but I think you get the drift.  Our man Jamieson was a Scotsman, a schoolmaster, a teacher; he went bankrupt and then became an actuary (rhetoric doesn’t pay the bills?).  This little grammar was very successful when published, and there were at least 53 American editions. It would have been used in colleges and was widely quoted (and even used for female education!).

Clearly the methods of teaching writing have changed since 1818, but I’ve always thought that something was lost when we stopped reading the old classics, if only for the sounds of the words. I think it bears thinking about, if we as writers want to reclaim what Jamieson calls “the music of the sentence.”

 

The second book in the County Cork Mystery Series, coming February 2014

 

 

Women Friends

Elizabeth Zelvin

From childhood friends to my blog sisters on Poe’s Deadly Daughters, I have always been rich in women friends. The other night I dreamed about my first playmate, who lived on my block. Her dad was in the pickle business, and it was from her that I first heard the word “deli.” They had the first TV on the block, probably around 1950. I went to her house to watch “Captain Video,” “Mama,” and “Topper.”

My junior high girlfriends, buddies since age eleven (some continuously, others rediscovered) are all celebrating our seventieth birthdays this year and finding sharing them both delightful and ludicrous. I still have friends from high school and college, too. Some of my contemporaries, mostly those who worked at a single career for thirty or forty years, are retired and doing a lot of traveling. Others are still trying new ventures or achieving belated success. Although three of the six of us from junior high still live in Queens, where we grew up, I’m in touch with women all over the world. For decades I’ve sent newsy holiday letters (some sneer at them, but do those folks still have forty and fifty-year-old friendships?) to Australia and Africa, to Tunisia and Israel and Canada, to the UK and France and Germany and the Netherlands, as well as to numerous American states. Not all of them write back, but when they’ve come to New York or I’ve visited, it’s usually as if no time has passed. And thanks to email and Facebook, it’s now gotten a lot easier to keep in touch.

I remember exactly when women’s conversation came out of the kitchen (no, I don’t mean “the closet”). For me, it was in 1967, a few years before the women’s movement woke everybody up about how men always dominated a group and it didn’t have to be that way. My male cousin took me to a party at another guy’s apartment to see the slides (those were photos back then, Virginia) they and two “girls,” their dates, had taken on a trip to the Bahamas in my cousin’s plane. I remember exclaiming with some hilarity that while I hadn’t met a man (why else did one go to parties?), I’d connected with some wonderful women. As it happens, the guy who gave the party later became my first husband. We’re long divorced, though we have grandkids in common and get along okay. And I’m still friends with one of the women I met that night.

I’m still meeting wonderful women in every area of my life, including mystery writing. The relationships that click usually have an online component, whether or not we also get together with them in person (or “have facetime with” them, as my tech-savvy Gen X son put it the other day). I’ve also had my share of losses. One dear friend, a gifted singer and musician, who died of leukemia fifteen years ago, is someone I still miss and think about all the time. I also remember a brilliant young Frenchwoman who died before she was thirty. I’m still close to her daughter, who has just moved from Nairobi to the US, and her brilliant, gorgeous granddaughter (half African, one-fourth Tunisian, and one-fourth French) came to stay with us two summers ago.

When we started Poe’s Deadly Daughters almost seven years ago, I was thrilled to be able to say I have blog sisters, and we have certainly supported each other through the ups and downs of our careers. We’re geographically diverse: me in New York, Sandy in the DC area, Sheila in New England, Julia near Chicago, Jeri in California, and Sharon in Canada. I’ve met Sandy, Sheila, and Jeri at Malice Domestic and other mystery venues over the years. But it’s hard to believe that I’ve never met Sharon and Julia face to face. When it comes to my women friends, it’s not the medium but the strong sense of connection that matters.

Comparing the Best Books lists

By Sandra Parshall

Best Books of 2013 lists are popping up everywhere this month, in print and on the internet, and as usual they’re intriguing in both their similarities and differences. In the crime fiction genre, few books show up on every list, and a lot of choices may leave avid mystery and thriller readers bemused.

A chorus of groans from Facebook members greeted the news that Inferno by Dan Brown topped the Goodreads Choice Awards, with 29,132 votes from avid readers. Number 2 was The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling), a novel many people enjoyed but believe would have sunk out of sight, barely noticed, if the author’s true identity hadn’t been revealed. 

Others on the Goodreads list are mostly bestsellers from familiar authors, although a couple of lesser known writers made the cut. In order, from number 3, they are:  Joyland by Stephen King, How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny, Calculated in Death by J.D. Robb, Night Film by Marisha Pessl, Speaking From Among the Bones by Alan Bradley, Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight, Police by Jo Nesbo, Six Years by Harlan Coben, Unseen by Karin Slaughter, Touch and Go by Karin Slaughter, Convicted by Aleatha Romig, Suspect by Robert Crais, Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger, Threat Vector by Tom Clancy, W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton, Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, Never Go Back by Lee Child, and The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison. (The Child book received only 717 votes and the Harrison book 690.)

Instead of publishing a Best of the Year list, National Public Radio, which carries weight with serious readers, asked staff and reviewers to name the 2013 books they loved most. The results – more than 200 titles in all genres -- appear on a new site called the NPR Book Concierge.  Their top 10 books among mysteries/thrillers include some I haven’t seen widely discussed among fans online and some that might be placed in other genres: The Circle by Dave Eggers, Submergence by J.M. Ledgard, Countdown City by Ben H. Winters, Nexus by Ramez Naam, The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny, Brilliance by Marcus Sakey, Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud, Dream Eyes by Jayne Ann Krentz. Some novels from the Goodreads list appear farther down on the NPR list: Dr. Sleep, Night Film, Speaking From Among the Bones. Little Elvises by Timothy Hallinan, a favorite among DorothyL readers, also appears on the extended NPR list.

Kirkus, the industry review periodical whose judgments are coveted and feared by authors, produced a list of 20 top crime novels that mixes in a few lesser known titles but is made up mostly of bestsellers. Their top 10 are: Lexicon by Max Barry, Breaking Point by C.J. Box, Light of the World by James Lee Burke, Never Go Back by Lee Child, The October List by Jeffery Deaver, Ghosts of Bungo Suido, Midnight by Kevin Egan, The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, The Shadow Tracer by Meg Gardiner, and The Crocodile by Maurizio de Giovanni. Bestsellers by Stephen King, Craig John, John Sandford, and Martin Cruz Smith appear lower on the list. One outstanding small press novel, Hidden Heritage by Charlotte Hinger, is at number 11.

Few American writers found favor with Publishers Weekly. Its list of the top 11 is made up mostly of mysteries and thrillers set in foreign countries and written by non-American authors: Hour of the Red God by Richard Compton, The Crimson Fog by Paul Halter (first published in France in 1988), The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, The Other Child by Charlotte Link, Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews, Gods and Beasts by Denise Mina, Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell, Red Moon by Benjamin Percy, Enigma of China: An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong, and Fear in the Sunlight by Nicola Upson.

Britain’s The Guardian cites these outstanding debut novels: Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller, The Honey Guide by Richard Crompton, City of Blood by M.D. Villier, The Missing File by D.A. Mishani, The Silent Wife by A.S.A Harrison, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.

BookPage’s 10 Best list includes some novels that aren’t showing up else. The complete list: Ghost Man by Roger Hobbs, Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage, The Golden Egg by Donna Leon, Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell, A Delicate Truth by John leCarre, The Abomination by Jonathan Holt, Mystery Girl by David Gordon, How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny, Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith, Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis.

Lesa Holstine of Lesa’s Book Critiques asked Laura Lippman to name a few novels in the genre that found outstanding, and the resulting list includes traditional mysteries as well as suspense: Watching the Dark by Peter Robinson, Proof of Guilt by Charles Todd, The Sound of Broken Glass by Deborah Crombie, Riptide Ultra Glide by Tim Dorsey, The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite, There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron, The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon, The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne.

What’s on your best of the year list? Which books do you believe are worthy of crime fiction awards?

Coherent Stories and Overlapping Identities

Sharon Wildwind

Time is a funny thing.

For most of history being an eye-witness meant something. To be one the chosen few present when a major event happened indelibly marked a life. People said with reverence, “My great-great-grandmother was on Kill Devil Hills when the Wright brothers flew. She shook both Orville’s and Wilbur’s hands.” “My grandfather was a typesetter for the Saturday Evening Post. He set the Rosie the Riveter cover.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I met John Glenn?” Yes, dad, about fifty times.

[Just for clarification, my family claims none of those things. I’d be proud if they could, but there are families who do have events like that as part of their heritages.]

I don’t know if you had this in grammar school, but we read out loud. Even if we’d finished the story, even if we knew that Puff safely returned home, or the family bought a bushel of apples on their Sunday drive, we had to sit through the entire story again, page-by-page. There was no such thing as fast forward, record-now-play-later, or — perhaps thankfully — instant replays. It may have been boring, but at least we heard a coherent narrative.

Pick any disaster in the last decade. How many times have we seen it? In how many formats have we seen it? How many times have we seen it as a straight narrative that made sense versus chopped sound bytes and video clips?

What happens to our ability to develop understanding of and empathy for the plight of typhoon victims in the Philippines when we see their story interspersed with commercials, or unrelated material as we channel surf or answer e-mail in between those sound bytes and video clips? What happens is that our ability to write and hear coherent stories disappears.

We’ve moved from future shock that Alvin Toffler wrote about in the 1970s, to present shock written about by Douglas Rushkoff and others. In future shock, too many changes happen in too short a time. In present shock, everything is happening at the same time, forcing us to live in many identities at the same time.

At the end of World War II, it took, on average, three weeks for soldiers, sailors, and marines to reach the United States from either the European and Pacific battlefields. Often it took additional weeks or months before they were released from the military and allowed to go  home.

I’ve read accounts of how men and women, on their own, without anyone ordering them to do it, gathered in groups and set out the rules for what they would and wouldn’t talk about when they got home. They had time to sort our their military identity and decide how to reform their civilian identity. Not that individuals didn’t have problems reintegrating, but they were at least awarded the chance for a coherent narrative.

Fast forward to Viet Nam. A soldier could be in the jungle on a Thursday, and out of the military, sitting in his parents’ living room, on Monday. A lot of harmful overlap between military and civilian identities contributed to later problems.

Fast forward to drones over battlefields, with operators sitting in Nevada. The transition time from battle to home life is the time it takes to get up out of a battle chair and drive home. The transition time back the next day is from the front door to the battle chair. Rushkoff has a word for this, too. Digiphrenia: a confused mental state from having too many identities running at the same time in parallel.

I have to admit that my writer’s radar immediately latched on to digiphrenia. What a wonderful situation for a character. Instant tension. Instant disorientation. Yeah, I can do a lot with this.

On further reflection, is it possible that, as writers, we need to pay attention to both narrative collapse and digiphrenia in our own work? In all likelyhood, I’d do better as a writer if I reduced or eliminated outside distractions while I’m writing. Do I need to plot and answer e-mails at the same time? Or write dialog while I look for Christmas presents on-line? Likely not.

On the other hand, do I need to separate my real-life identities and character, particularly when I’m writing those darker scenes? You bet I do.

I’ve written before about having taken the hand-made pledge. There are a lot of versions out there, and you can search for handmade pledge if you want to see some examples.

I propose a Coherent Story/Single Identity Pledge

I pledge to involve myself, without distractions, in taking time to write a coherent storyline. When I’m involved in writing, the electronic world and other distractions can wait. I pledge to build on- and off-ramps that separate my real life from my writing, so that I won’t have too many identities running at the same time in parallel.

Quote for the week

Narrative Collapse is what happens when we no longer have time in which to tell a story.

~ Douglas Rushkoff, American writer, columnist, and graphic novelist

Top Ten Things I Want From a Book

Some of the books on my side table.

by Julia Buckley

I'm reading a good book right now which fits many of my criteria for what a good book should be.  In the process, though, I'm realizing that I encounter plenty of books that don't meet those criteria, and which I either push away partially-read or which I suffer through just so that I can say I finished.  So, I asked myself, what do I want from a book?  Specifically from a mystery, since that tends to be the genre that I choose?
The list is diverse and not as predictable as one might think.

For example, I don't always require a meticulous and flawless plot.  If the characters are fun and the dialogue enjoyable, I'll put up with a fair amount of nonsense when it comes to realism and believability.  I will suspend my disbelief, in other words, if I can have fun doing it.

Here are some of the basics I can't do without:

1. A compelling premise.  This seems basic, but just because the blurb on the back is compelling doesn't mean that the writing inside the book is equally compelling.  I don't need someone to die on the first page or even in the first chapter, but I do have to care enough to keep reading.

2. Good writing.  I am continually surprised (despite some GREAT writing by some GREAT writers) when I pick up a book that I am excited to read because of its big debut, its many accolades, and its big sales--and find it unreadable because of poorly-written prose, grammatical errors, or clunky dialogue.  Yes, writing is subjective, but when a book is promised to be amazing with three pages of big-name blurbs, I expect that book to be amazing. And sometimes, it isn't.

3. Humor.  I don't need to be cracking up on every page--in fact, I like quiet humor that sneaks in and makes me chuckle.  But a book is far more fun and memorable to me if the author makes me laugh.

4. Interesting subject matter.  Just because it's fiction doesn't mean I can't learn things about history or science or far-away places.  The best writers are the ones who teach me without ever condescending to me, and whose information is woven seamlessly into the plot.

5. A cool setting.  No particular setting required, as long as you write it well.  I love being taken to Europe and relaxing, with my character, in some small Viennese coffee shop or an Icelandic bar.  I love a mysterious Russian street or a  stately Peruvian museum of antiquities.  But I am also happy to stay right here in the States, as long as my character has a house full of intriguing knick-knacks or a forested back yard with interesting animal inhabitants.

6. Surprises.  I suppose the thing that gets writing noticed by anyone--an agent, an editor, a reader--is when that writing is surprising.  It creates something fresh and new, either with characterization or dialogue or a method of storytelling, and a reader says "Wow! That was refreshingly good."

7. Characters I like.  They don't have to be perfect, but I have to relate to them on some level or I stop caring to read about them.  Characters who are cruel are not compelling if they are flat and have no motivation for their cruelty.

8. Fun.  As I mentioned in my introduction, I want to have fun when I read a book.  Life is short, and I will never get to read all the books I want to read.  So if a book is a misery, I won't stay inside it.  I recently discussed Jess Walter's BEAUTIFUL RUINS with my book group, and it was undoubtedly fun--both the reading and the discussing.  Pick it up to see an example of a writer who enjoys his subject matter and makes the reader enjoy it, too.

9. Pacing. Often when I am reading a novel I start to think "This part is padding because they were trying to reach a certain word limit."  I hate feeling that way when I'm reading, and the best way for an author to avoid that phenomenon is to not be so concerned with word limits, and to be very concerned with balance, pacing, and parallel structure.

10. A satisfying ending.  Lately I've encountered three books that I absolutely loved until the last twenty pages. E
nding is always a tricky thing, and not all authors want their books to end happily.  But an unhappy ending is not the same as an unsatisfying ending--the kind that makes your reader feel betrayed.  In these cases I often write alternate endings in my mind for the poor characters who didn't earn the fates I thought they deserved.

Do any of these resonate with you?  What do you want from a book?

The Different Drummer

by Ellen Larsen

They say you should write what you know. They say you should write what the publishers want. They say publishers want books just like yesterday’s best sellers.

Paranormal is in. Drop the body on the first page. Study the market. Avoid the prologue. Series sell. Stick to your genre to build up your audience. Don’t set a mystery at Oxford, it’s been done. First person is best for mysteries. Paranormal is out.

A girl can go crazy listening to all the voices.

Here’s my secret (not the “secret to success” type of secret, the other kind): I can’t do it. I don’t really understand how other writers follow such advice. I listen to their stories of constructing their novels and I feel like I have landed in Bizarro World. I don’t fit in. I never have.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. I work up an idea using all the recommended criteria, something that is genre-specific, cutting edge, exactly what the publishers and the book stores crave. But the minute I start writing it’s like entering a world of great beauty, with alluring pathways that lead to magical wonders. I feel that I am using the same judgment to make my literary choices that I exercised when I laid out my plans. But when I have finished writing, and come back to my senses, I inevitably find that I have gone totally off the rails of my original perception of what all those publishers actually want. I end up with complex structures, unsympathetic characters, and a mish-mash of genres that are guaranteed to drive any publicist crazy.

When I sat down to write In Retrospect, I thought I was on solid ground. I planned to write a simple whodunit about a woman who felt her identity was as a member of the group. When faced with an impossible choice—whether or not to investigate the murder of an old enemy she would gladly have killed herself—she turns first to her law enforcement colleagues, next to her academic connections, and lastly to her family for guidance . All three fail her, leaving her alone to decide what to do.

Nothing off the beaten trail there, right? Detective arc and personal journey arc, nicely intertwined. All the makings of a solid psychological murder mystery. 

So about that detective arc. Need something good. I’d been toying with the idea of using time travel as a tool for investigation. This would be the perfect time, because I needed a strong academic group for my protag to be rejected by, and a Science Conservatory that trained…attuned…time travelers would be perfect. Better set the story far enough in the future to allow for that.

So where to set the story? My seventeen years in Egypt are a constant source of material and inspiration. The Middle East, then. The social conventions of our time have always depressed me and inhibited me as a writer; I don’t want to write about them or even take them into account. I long ago turned to science fiction, or speculative fiction, as a way to design societies that did not have a built-in set of social barricades and locked doors. So why not blow up the western hemisphere while I’m at it? So then, post-apocalyptic psychological murder mystery.

I always enjoy writing about heroic women, and I’d pretty much known from the start that my protag would be female. And I knew that I wanted her to be not like me. (NB: I’ve always enjoyed writing, but I had no idea how much fun it could be until I discovered the joys of protagonists who are Nothing Like Me.) For plot purposes, I needed my protag to be a small woman, so I established that the only people who were physically capable of time travel are women. Small women, who must undergo years of chemical attunement to survive the rigors of the Continuum.

Thus appeared Merit, born to simple folk, selected in her youth for the great honor of traveling through time; of becoming a leader among her people. Add some original language for time travel. Retrospection. Historical Retrospection. Forensic Retrospection. Word by word, the world is built. Merit Rafi, Select, Forensic Retrospector. A bit arrogant despite, or because of, her humble beginnings, but very idealistic. Quick witted Merit. Generous Merit. Until—what?

Until the day her city state is invaded by Rasaka, a neighboring nation. Invaded and occupied. The Conservatory destroyed. The Retrospection program shattered. Then we get Merit, militia member, and then, when her beloved General Zane surrenders to the Rasakans, we get Merit the resistance operative, standing by her group till the end, when they are captured and sentenced to death. Until—the Rasakans discover who she is. And how useful she might be to them. If they can break her will. And so she alone lives when all her comrades die. Just in time to investigate the murder of—General Zane.

Which is how you end up writing a time-traveling, post-apocalyptic, psychological murder mystery—with female sleuth. Not exactly a well-known sub-genre on amazon.com.

Of course Five Star, the intrepid mystery publisher that actually bought the book, just calls it a dystopian mystery. I love you, Five Star!

When she isn't writing fiction, Ellen is helping others shape their work as a freelance editor and as editor of The Poisoned Pencil, a children's/YA mystery imprint of Poisoned Pen Press. Learn more about Ellen's writing at http://www.ellenlarson.com/.

Ireland

by Sheila Connolly (aka Sile ni Conghaile)

I write a mystery series set in Ireland.  Sometimes I think it’s presumptuous of me to pretend to know enough about somewhere else to write convincingly about it.  That’s why I travel to Ireland as often as I can (well, that’s not the only reason).  I’ve been there twice this year, once to Dublin alone (at both ends of a trip to Italy), and then over the past two weeks.

There is, I think, a temptation to portray Ireland as cute and quaint—all those old guys in tweed hats sitting around dim pubs over an endless pint of Guinness swapping tales for hours on end; all that endlessly green scenery punctuated with cows and sheep and the occasional ruined castle. The thing is, it’s kind of true, so it’s a challenge to write about it without lapsing into caricature.

I’m not sure why I feel I need to try to create an accurate picture of the place.  Most of my readers will never know if I’ve nailed the small stuff, but (I think I’ve said it before) most writers feel an obligation to get their facts right.  You’d think this would refer mainly to police procedures or what happens to a decomposing body or how a particular pistol works, but to my mind it goes beyond that. I find myself trying to work out tiny details, like what the trash bins look like, or how the weather is reported (re the latter, a forecast that we would call overcast and partly cloudy is a “dull day” in Ireland), and the fact that the Irish use “Please” more often in public signs.

And there are other things about Ireland that we in this country don’t always think about.  I’ll admit I’ve always lived in a suburb of one or another large city, so when I go to Ireland the quiet is almost a physical thing, because it’s so different than what I’m used to.  We’ve rented a rural cottage for a couple of years now, and there you can hear a car coming for several minutes before you actually see it (although the road we were on served only two houses, and I saw two motor vehicles, one tractor, and a bicyclist in the time we were there).  You can hear a dog barking or a cow lowing for miles.  Airplanes?  I think I noticed one in two weeks.

 

It’s the same with the light—or the absence of it.  In this country we are so much surrounded by light, all the time.  There are streetlights every hundred or so feet on the street where we live at home.  Why?  It’s a fairly rural, quiet community.  When did it become mandatory to illuminate everything in an unearthly orange glow?  Inside our houses we have at least tens of blinking or glowing lights—on our phones, our televisions, our radios, our surge protectors, our computers, our servers, our routers, our microwaves…the list goes on.  On our hilltop in Ireland, in the middle of the night you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.  What you could see was not only stars, but the Milky Way arching overhead.  I think I’ve seen it only three times in my life.

[Note: I was thinking of inserting a black image here, to give you an idea of just how dark it was.] 

Tell me it’s not a different lifestyle when you’re not constantly besieged by visual and aural stimuli.  When all you have to deal with is the shifting forces of nature.  When you are reminded of how bright the moon really is, and how very dark it is when the moon isn’t shining.

I know, I’m jetlagged as I write this.  Humans were not meant to traverse thousands of miles in a day.  It messes not only with our bodies, but also with our heads.  What time is it?  What day is this?

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good thing, to be reminded of the things we cannot have, like true silence and darkness.  If I threw over everything, sold all my worldly possessions, and bought that small cottage in Ireland, would I come to hate it?  It is too quiet, too dull?  And could I live without the Internet? I’m still thinking about it.

 

 

Coming February 2014

A Few of My Favorite Things, Part II

Elizabeth Zelvin

For Maria von Trapp, it was warm woolen mittens and girls in white dresses and doorbells. None of those do it for me. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with every computer I’ve owned, as well as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. I’m even a Luddite when it comes to some postmodern devices. But I’m unambivalently in love with my iPhone and my iPad.

Now, I’m not talking about other people’s iPhones. Everyone who’s read my posts knows I have it in for cellphonistas and how they blat their private business in public, especially on public transportation, in crowds, or standing in line with people who can’t get away. But my iPhone—that’s another story.

I do try not to conduct my social life on city streets or even on my deck, where neighbors can hear me, in the country. To tell the truth, trying to hear the other party in my ear in my neighborhood, Manhattan’s Upper West Side, while walking, crossing streets, and trying to ignore the usual soundtrack of sirens, jackhammers, megabass booming from cars stuck waiting for the light to change—well, I don’t know how people do it. For me, it’s like trying to eat ice cream and chew bubble gum at the same time. Can’t do it.

On the other hand, here’s how I might use my iPhone on a typical day:
Check my calendar for appointments, including therapy clients and mystery events. If my plans change, I can make the change immediately. If I have to make another appointment, I can do it on the spot.
Get my reminders. If it’s time to refill a prescription, send a birthday card, or request reversion of rights to a story, I don’t even have to remember to check a list or even unlock: the text appears on the screen with a little ping to get my attention.
Time my exercise. I do stretches and use my walking poles every day, and the timer feature lets me know when fifteen or forty-five minutes have passed. The timer’s also great for preheating the oven and not burning or overcooking the food once it’s in there. Oh, and if I need a catnap in the afternoon, I can time that too.
Take photos and even video if I see something worth recording. In New York City, where anything can happen (my husband once saw a guy, stark naked, riding down Park Avenue on a white horse), it’s great to be able to capture the unplanned moment.
Record things I want to remember, using either the Notes feature to write text or the voice recorder to say or even sing the creative material that tends to pop up when I’m outdoors doing something else or in the car.
Text my husband or a friend I’m meeting.
Check my email and my Facebook page.
If it gets dark, turn on the flashlight app.
Show anyone I can persuade to look the latest music video of my granddaughters performing. (I admit I get a bit Ancient Mariner with this one.)
Look up information to prove a point or enrich a conversation.
Make a restaurant reservation.
Buy a movie ticket in advance.
Check a map if I’m going somewhere unfamiliar by foot.

And here’s how I’m most likely to use my iPad:
Take a much better picture or video. I don’t use my digital camera at all any more.
Make another music video starring my granddaughters.
Check and answer my email.
Send a photo to Facebook and write a post to go with it.
Watch a TV series that I missed or one I’d like to see again. I can spend my evenings with Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis in Oxford, Monk in San Francisco, Or Chief Inspector Barnaby in an English village.
Watch a movie.
Check my rankings on Amazon.
Buy a book or e-book.

A word about texting, which I came to late but find extremely useful: I think the reason it’s so popular is that it allows people to communicate both synchronously, like chat (I text you, you text me back, I text you back…) and asynchronously, like email (I’m driving, and I hear the ping that means I’ve got a text. I read it when I get where I’m going and respond to it when I have time.) It’s less intrusive than a phone call (my husband’s in a meeting with his boss, but I can ask him to bring home a quart of milk or a ream of paper while I’m thinking of it—trust me, I’ll forget later). And I know he’ll see the message, whereas he might or might not check his email. That is, unless he’s left his iPhone home—but that’s another story.

The Saga of Dennis

by Jane Tesh
Author of the Grace Street Mysteries

I walk every day in my neighborhood and always take a plastic bag or two to pick up recyclables. I also find things, and one of these was a little dog still wearing his harness with leash attached. 

I tried my best to catch him, but he was quick as a rabbit. On Petfinder on the Internet, I discovered the missing Yorkie was Dennis, and he’d escaped from his owner several streets over from mine. An excellent name, as this little menace managed to elude me, his owner, the neighbors, and Surry Animal Rescue workers for months.  I even borrowed a cage from the rescue folks and baited it with pizza. The next morning, I could see something in the cage, but my moment of triumph was short lived when I saw I had captured an extremely annoyed possum.
 
More weeks passed. The weather became colder. Dennis remained wild and free. Occasionally, I would see him basking in the pale winter sun on a front porch, or sprawled in the church parking lot, completely unconcerned that everyone in the neighborhood was trying to catch him, that it was freezing cold, and that he still wore a leash that could possibly hang him up in a tree.

Then one day, a neighbor greeted me with, “We got him!” Her daughter was playing with her dog in the backyard, and when Dennis came over to play, she managed to grab the leash. Dennis was returned to his owner. 

Happy ending.

But there’s more to this story. 
At the time, a young relative of mine was struggling with alcohol addiction, so much so, she had to go to a special institution. No visitors. No phone calls. But she could get letters, so I wrote as often as I could, sending silly pictures and jokes, and of course, reports and updates about Dennis, Yorkie of the Yukon.

Later she told me that the Saga of Dennis meant a lot to her.  If a little Yorkie could survive three of the coldest months on record in a harness and leash and not get hung up in a tree, or snagged on a rock, not get run over, or attacked by a larger animal, not starve, or freeze to death—if Dennis could overcome all those obstacles and find his way home, maybe she could overcome her problems, too.

As of this September, she is four years sober.

Thanks, Dennis.

Learn more about Jane and her mysteries at http://www.janetesh.com.

The B Word

Sharon Wildwind

A lot of writers, including me, would be so happy if we didn’t have to deal with the B word.

Business.

Since Calgary is in the middle of another B word today — blizzard — all my writing and nesting genes have activated. Long ago, in a land far, far away, before I turned pro at writing, the most ideal day in the world was a snowy winter day, when I didn’t have to go to work and could write all day.

Ah, for the good old days.

At one end of the love/hate business scale are people like jewelry and textile designer, Megan Auman. Her mother was an artist; her father ran a small business. As a child she played business, and had a real one by age ten, selling confetti to other fourth graders. She literally grew up learning business models.

At the hate end of that scale is the unvarnished truth that not everyone can run a successful business. If a person can’t find a sales approach that fits her personality, and can’t afford to hire someone to do the business for her, might she ask herself if business is really for her?

In the great, grey, mucky middle are those of us who, most days, can tolerate running a business, but we don’t like it, or don’t think we do it well, or both.

Here are three things ideas for writers that might make business more enjoyable and profitable.

Know what our products costs

It’s easy to track supplies (ink cartridges, blank CDs, paper, etc.) and services (conventions, shipping, web design, etc.) of being a writer. It’s harder to track the most precious commodity of all — time.

How long does it take to turn out a finished project? A short story started in July and finished it in October took four months, right? Except … How many days in those four months did we actually work on it? How many hours? How do we count the time spent plotting while washing dishes or waiting at stoplights?

How many words — written, deleted, edited, and revised — went into our final word count? I didn’t formally participate in NatNovWriMo last month, but I tracked how many words I wrote following my usual writing schedule. To make the count a little cleaner, I decided to start and finish one short story in November. There would be other things I worked on, but that story was my main writing activity.

Because my writing program has a Target feature that I can reset, part of the word count was super-easy to track. My total word count for the month was 32,933 words. Of that I racked up 30,131 words on the short story, whose finished length was 11,400 words. In other words I wrote about 2.6 words for every word that ended up in the story.

What’s impossible to track is all those words I proof-read — often several times — found them acceptable and left them alone.

Why does this matter? Because one of the foundations of good business planning is to know what workload we’re capable of handling. Chances are there is a gap between what we think we can do — Sure, I can knock out this novel in six months — and what we’re capable of doing. We need to know how big that gap is.

Put our money where our business is

Occasionally, we need to pay people to teach us about business. At the very least, we need to have a library card, and raid the library frequently for helpful books. Surprisingly enough, the best books are about things other than business.

In the past year, I’ve gotten more helpful business advice from books about the art and science of making things, labyrinths, sacred geometry, acting, unleashing creativity, meditation, facing and conquering fear, wabi-sabi, and elements of Japanese design than I did from books related to business plans, marketing, and social media.

We are inundated by free advice from family, friends, peers, agents, editors, gurus, and people who want to sell us something even if it doesn’t meet out needs. We are also in a tiny, oh-so-specialized business. Almost without fail, when I spy a book titled something like, Basic Business for Small Businesses — a made-up title, but similar to what’s out there — the small in small business refers to 50-, 20-, or 10-person businesses. Wow, if I had nine other people working for me, life would be a whole different ballgame.

Writers need to learn the business side of writing from other successful writers, and that means plunking down those dollars to go to conventions or seminars, or sign-up for on-line business classes taught by successful writers, whom we admire and respect.

Develop our business vision — we’re talking brand here — and find customers who buy into that vision.

I’ll let Megan Auman explain that, because there’s no way I could do any better.

We’re not looking for customers who want to buy our product; we’re looking for people who need our world vision.

~Megan Auman; designer, educator, entrepreneur

Talk about a whole different ballgame. That makes business not about dollars and cents, but about, almost incidentally, collecting those dollars and cents by reaching out to people. It makes it about connections, about hope, about fun, about making life better all around, on both sides of the word processor. That kind of business I'd enjoy a lot.