Posts
by Sheila Connolly
By now I should be v...e...r...y m...e...l...l...o...w. After all, I've just come back from a wonderful vacation, touring the ruined homes of my Irish forefathers (and mothers), wallowing in views of field and sea, talking to various sheep (who delight in strolling across the lane in front of your rental car) and cattle. Jet lag? Piffle--we're too hung up on time anyway.
That was the way I opened the draft blog post I neatly scripted before I left. Uh, small problem: the mellow part didn't quite happen because I managed to trip over a step that I didn't see and broke my ankle in two places (all sympathy gratefully accepted, as well as instructions on how to use those bleeping crutches). So I spent three days learning the intimate details of Irish health care. To be fair, the hospital staff was delightful and supportive, the place was scrupulously clean. The problem was: too few hospitals (the one I was in serves a substantial portion of the southwest part of the country), and too few beds in those. The largest bottleneck was waiting for a bed--any bed, anywhere--to open up so we could move forward with treatment.
But this was a working vacation, not a sightseeing jaunt, and nothing was wasted. As I may have mentioned, I'll be writing a new Irish-based series, whose first book will appear in 2012. My reason for making this trip was to listen to people--both how they talk, and what they say. I hadn't been here for over ten years--time for the Celtic Tiger to be born and die. Over here (yes, I'm still here, for the next 36 hours or so), it's as though they took all the financial issues that have beset the US and compressed them into a much shorter time period, except the Irish banks wer in much worse shape.
So sitting in waiting rooms (note: at least on a weekday, the emergency room was notably free of gore, violence and barfing), or parked on a gurney in the hallway, or in the six-person ward I finally ended up in, I could listen, and I could talk to people. I met a nice couple who live in a Gaelteacht, where Irish is the predominant language; I listened to a lovely grandmother talk about her football favorites. Once I broke out (basically I said, put a cast on it and I'll deal with it all later), I talked to people in pubs and restaurants--a cast (or "plaster" as they call it here) is a great conversation-starter. It fascinated one small girl, who looked exactly like you'd want a small Irish girl to look, including the lovely red hair. I was gifted with a free night at the wonderful cottage we rented, which sits high atop a hill with wonderful views on all sides--and the land on which it sits once belonged to a Connolly--and iit was barely a mile from where my grandfather was born.
No way was I going to let a little thing like a broken ankle send me home.
Would my readers know if I never spent any time here? I hope so. As a writer you're supposed to notice details--the ones that capture the spirit of a thing or a place, and let you communicate it with the fewest possible words and still snag the imagination of your reader. If I slapped together some stereotypes and called it "Irish," I'd be insulting the people here and shortchanging my readers. This isn't Disneyworld East with shamrocks (although the Disney family did originate in Ireland), this is a place populated by real people, who happen to be very welcoming. Plus you keep stumbling over Neolithic stone circles and ruined medieval castles.
Don't worry--once I make it back I'll give you all the pretty pictures and such. And I've already got in mind a short story set in the emergency room...
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Taking revision to the next level
Elizabeth Zelvin
I continue to be amazed and pleased that sixty years after I first said I wanted to be a writer and four years since my first mystery publication, the road to learning my craft, especially as a fiction writer, is still rolling out before me. I would much rather be a writer of whom readers say, “She gets better and better,” than one who “never lived up to the promise of her first book.” And while I’ll leave it to others to judge my published work, I’m proud to say that I’m getting better and better at revision.
I might never have understood that revision is an essential part of writing if I had never taken the risk of subjecting my work to critique. I can’t say this didn’t come up until I started writing fiction. Back in the 1970s, when I was actively writing poetry, I was part of a leaderless workshop group that met monthly to critique each other’s work. I remember the group’s very lively discussion of one of my poems. It was a divorce poem (murder mysteries aren’t the only way a writer can get revenge) that later appeared in my first book. The memorable part is that when the group got through with it, and I’d gone back and rewritten it incorporating their suggestions, it was exactly the same poem—except that all the words were different.
I did a lot of tinkering with my first mystery while it was making the rounds for four years, having made the mistake of sending out my first draft. But the big revision came when an editor with a major publisher told me one of my alternating co-protagonists was terrific, but the other would do much better as a sidekick. This opportunity was too good not to grab, especially as I’d had a lot of rejections by that time. I had to rethink half the chapters and decide in each of them whether to give the scene to the other protagonist, tell it from his point of view, or turn it into a close third-person scene for the sidekick. It made the manuscript much, much better, and another editor at the same house eventually took it. Although it was an enormous revision, I found it went a lot quicker than writing the first draft. I already knew the story—I just had to change the words.
My most recent major revision, of a novel about a young marrano sailor with Columbus, has proved a voyage of discovery far beyond my previous horizons. The first draft itself presented some challenges, as this is my first historical novel and meant for a YA (young adult) audience, though my protagonist originally appeared in two short stories for adults in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It can be categorized as suspense, so it’s the first novel I’ve written (out of eight, if you count the unpublished ones) that doesn’t rely on the structure of a mystery: crime, investigation, climax, and solution. On the other hand, because it’s based on history that is well documented in some respects that comes from a limited number of primary sources, I was putting flesh on the skeleton of what really happened to such and such real people on such and such dates, and, to change the metaphor, weaving into all that my fictional characters and their story.
I had my protagonist and his sister in my head for more than a year before I wrote the story. When they talked to me, I’d jot down whatever they said. And I was reading and rereading my sources and becoming familiar with the chronology of the historical events. I wrote the first draft easily—first time that’s ever happened—and gave it to four readers, all published writers, including two who’d written historical novels and one who was a high school English teacher and thus familiar with what teens or “young adults” like to read. I’d expected critique, but three of the four responded more as enthusiastic readers. The fourth thought the first half of the book needed work. That was just one person’s opinion—until my agent read it and agreed.
I rewrote. I tried to make the scenes more suspenseful. I added action, texture, and a character or two. I sent it to my agent, who said it still lacked adequate suspense. I had to think more about pace and action. I understood that giving the first half of the story as much momentum as the second was crucial. There’s consensus that I got the second half, the part in the Indies, right the first time. But to get there, I had to get the reader onto the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria (metaphorically only: the novel is about the second voyage) willing to hang on and cross that ocean. The most dramatic events in the Indies actually happened. But I had to engage readers and keep them turning pages as my fictional characters make their way across Spain, having fictional adventures.
First, I was afraid I couldn’t do it. (But then, like many writers, I always think I can’t.) Then I realized I had to start the story in a different place. I had to take sections—multi-part scenes—in which the narrative moved gently along and make something happen, something dramatic, conflictual, suspenseful. I started with a nice clean hard copy of my previous draft. But I soon discovered that I wasn’t editing. I had to retell these parts of the story from scratch, without referring to the old text. This time, revision meant rewriting. To my surprise, it went as smoothly as creating the first draft had. Although I was making up new incidents, I knew the characters and the story well enough to choose among various ways that I might tell it.
The biggest surprise is one I attribute to all the years of writing and revising and trying to be open to critique and hearing other writers talk about their craft leading up to this moment when I absolutely had to change what I’d written to something better. You know how writers struggle with the need to “kill their darlings”? We hate to relinquish the well-turned phrase, the sparkling line of dialogue, the oh-so-clever joke. My revelation: there were hardly any darlings at all that I couldn’t bear to let go. And that freed me to write the same story with not only different scenes and incidents, but different (and I hope better) words.
I continue to be amazed and pleased that sixty years after I first said I wanted to be a writer and four years since my first mystery publication, the road to learning my craft, especially as a fiction writer, is still rolling out before me. I would much rather be a writer of whom readers say, “She gets better and better,” than one who “never lived up to the promise of her first book.” And while I’ll leave it to others to judge my published work, I’m proud to say that I’m getting better and better at revision.
I might never have understood that revision is an essential part of writing if I had never taken the risk of subjecting my work to critique. I can’t say this didn’t come up until I started writing fiction. Back in the 1970s, when I was actively writing poetry, I was part of a leaderless workshop group that met monthly to critique each other’s work. I remember the group’s very lively discussion of one of my poems. It was a divorce poem (murder mysteries aren’t the only way a writer can get revenge) that later appeared in my first book. The memorable part is that when the group got through with it, and I’d gone back and rewritten it incorporating their suggestions, it was exactly the same poem—except that all the words were different.
I did a lot of tinkering with my first mystery while it was making the rounds for four years, having made the mistake of sending out my first draft. But the big revision came when an editor with a major publisher told me one of my alternating co-protagonists was terrific, but the other would do much better as a sidekick. This opportunity was too good not to grab, especially as I’d had a lot of rejections by that time. I had to rethink half the chapters and decide in each of them whether to give the scene to the other protagonist, tell it from his point of view, or turn it into a close third-person scene for the sidekick. It made the manuscript much, much better, and another editor at the same house eventually took it. Although it was an enormous revision, I found it went a lot quicker than writing the first draft. I already knew the story—I just had to change the words.
My most recent major revision, of a novel about a young marrano sailor with Columbus, has proved a voyage of discovery far beyond my previous horizons. The first draft itself presented some challenges, as this is my first historical novel and meant for a YA (young adult) audience, though my protagonist originally appeared in two short stories for adults in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It can be categorized as suspense, so it’s the first novel I’ve written (out of eight, if you count the unpublished ones) that doesn’t rely on the structure of a mystery: crime, investigation, climax, and solution. On the other hand, because it’s based on history that is well documented in some respects that comes from a limited number of primary sources, I was putting flesh on the skeleton of what really happened to such and such real people on such and such dates, and, to change the metaphor, weaving into all that my fictional characters and their story.
I had my protagonist and his sister in my head for more than a year before I wrote the story. When they talked to me, I’d jot down whatever they said. And I was reading and rereading my sources and becoming familiar with the chronology of the historical events. I wrote the first draft easily—first time that’s ever happened—and gave it to four readers, all published writers, including two who’d written historical novels and one who was a high school English teacher and thus familiar with what teens or “young adults” like to read. I’d expected critique, but three of the four responded more as enthusiastic readers. The fourth thought the first half of the book needed work. That was just one person’s opinion—until my agent read it and agreed.
I rewrote. I tried to make the scenes more suspenseful. I added action, texture, and a character or two. I sent it to my agent, who said it still lacked adequate suspense. I had to think more about pace and action. I understood that giving the first half of the story as much momentum as the second was crucial. There’s consensus that I got the second half, the part in the Indies, right the first time. But to get there, I had to get the reader onto the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria (metaphorically only: the novel is about the second voyage) willing to hang on and cross that ocean. The most dramatic events in the Indies actually happened. But I had to engage readers and keep them turning pages as my fictional characters make their way across Spain, having fictional adventures.
First, I was afraid I couldn’t do it. (But then, like many writers, I always think I can’t.) Then I realized I had to start the story in a different place. I had to take sections—multi-part scenes—in which the narrative moved gently along and make something happen, something dramatic, conflictual, suspenseful. I started with a nice clean hard copy of my previous draft. But I soon discovered that I wasn’t editing. I had to retell these parts of the story from scratch, without referring to the old text. This time, revision meant rewriting. To my surprise, it went as smoothly as creating the first draft had. Although I was making up new incidents, I knew the characters and the story well enough to choose among various ways that I might tell it.
The biggest surprise is one I attribute to all the years of writing and revising and trying to be open to critique and hearing other writers talk about their craft leading up to this moment when I absolutely had to change what I’d written to something better. You know how writers struggle with the need to “kill their darlings”? We hate to relinquish the well-turned phrase, the sparkling line of dialogue, the oh-so-clever joke. My revelation: there were hardly any darlings at all that I couldn’t bear to let go. And that freed me to write the same story with not only different scenes and incidents, but different (and I hope better) words.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
You're such a fraud!
Sandra Parshall
Does success or praise ever make you feel like an imposter? Do you secretly worry that you”ll be “found out” and everyone will realize you’re not as intelligent or talented as they believe? Does praise embarrass you because you think your success is due mostly to luck?
If you answered yes to those questions, you’re far from alone. The “imposter syndrome” is as common as it is baffling. I’d say it’s especially common among writers, judging by the number of talented authors who react to success with jokes about waiting for everybody to realize they’re really hacks. In his latest newsletter, for example, the fabulously successful John Connolly says he's about to turn in a manuscript with "the usual misgivings about whether I've managed to fool most of the people most of the time once again."
Authors who say things like that are, admittedly, more charming than the jerks who think they’re the greatest writers alive and want everybody to know it. But when a person is demonstrably talented and widely praised, where do the self-doubts come from?
I’ve been poring over an article in the March/April issue of Scientific American Mind, trying to find out why so many perfectly decent people see themselves as fakes, frauds, imposters, con men. I was especially interested in whether women are more prone to this phenomenon than men. The answer is yes – and no. Some studies have shown that women feel less worthy, but other studies have found no difference between the sexes. The results of such research apparently depend a lot on who is studied and where they are in their lives at the time. Some people, male or female, may develop more inner confidence as they age and build up an indisputable record of success.
But what about those who never lose the feeling of being an imposter? Psychologists believe they’re caught in a “closed thought loop” that makes them over-prepare for even the simplest challenge – then attribute their success not to their ability but to their extreme preparation. If they don’t do any extra preparation and still succeed? Pure dumb luck, in their minds. If they fail, they blame their own stupidity and lack of ability, not their lack of preparation.
How do you break this vicious cycle? The experts don’t have a lot of help to offer beyond the kind of advice your mom might give: Reflect on your talents and intelligence, your strong points, all the things you do well. Respect yourself. Give yourself credit where it’s due. Easier said than done.
Back to the original question: Do you suffer from imposter syndrome? Exactly how much success would it take to make you stop feeling like a Great Pretender?
If you answered yes to those questions, you’re far from alone. The “imposter syndrome” is as common as it is baffling. I’d say it’s especially common among writers, judging by the number of talented authors who react to success with jokes about waiting for everybody to realize they’re really hacks. In his latest newsletter, for example, the fabulously successful John Connolly says he's about to turn in a manuscript with "the usual misgivings about whether I've managed to fool most of the people most of the time once again."
Authors who say things like that are, admittedly, more charming than the jerks who think they’re the greatest writers alive and want everybody to know it. But when a person is demonstrably talented and widely praised, where do the self-doubts come from?
I’ve been poring over an article in the March/April issue of Scientific American Mind, trying to find out why so many perfectly decent people see themselves as fakes, frauds, imposters, con men. I was especially interested in whether women are more prone to this phenomenon than men. The answer is yes – and no. Some studies have shown that women feel less worthy, but other studies have found no difference between the sexes. The results of such research apparently depend a lot on who is studied and where they are in their lives at the time. Some people, male or female, may develop more inner confidence as they age and build up an indisputable record of success.
But what about those who never lose the feeling of being an imposter? Psychologists believe they’re caught in a “closed thought loop” that makes them over-prepare for even the simplest challenge – then attribute their success not to their ability but to their extreme preparation. If they don’t do any extra preparation and still succeed? Pure dumb luck, in their minds. If they fail, they blame their own stupidity and lack of ability, not their lack of preparation.
How do you break this vicious cycle? The experts don’t have a lot of help to offer beyond the kind of advice your mom might give: Reflect on your talents and intelligence, your strong points, all the things you do well. Respect yourself. Give yourself credit where it’s due. Easier said than done.
Back to the original question: Do you suffer from imposter syndrome? Exactly how much success would it take to make you stop feeling like a Great Pretender?
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Comedy
Sharon Wildwind
I love comedy. If I could, I’d write great comedy like Neil Simon or Larry Gelbart, the creator of M*A*S*H. My heroine is the Canadian writer and actor, Susan Coyne, who wrote and stared in Slings and Arrows.
I’m not ga-ga over all comedy. Jokes based on putting other people down leave me cold. So does physical comedy like The Three Stooges and the Keystone Cops, though I have to admit that Buster Keaton, Jackie Gleason, and Art Carney had such marvelous timing that their physical comedy was a pleasure to watch. Most TV sit-coms produce more yawns than giggles.
What I don’t like in books or plays is a steady stream of one-liners. There was an author I loved several years ago, when I first read her. Her first two books were hilarious. A couple of more were tiresome. Then I stopped reading. She hadn’t changed her writing; I’d changed my reading. I got tired of waiting for the characters to stop slinging zingers and start developing as people. I figured it was never going to happen.
My favorite fictional comedy character is an unlikely choice. He was born with severe birth defects into a society that tolerated no physical imperfections. Only his family’s social status and a troop of armed housemen kept him from being smothered in his crib. His childhood caretaker died saving his life.
The first woman he became involved with dumped him. The second was disfigured because he made a serious error in judgement. The third had her own genetic problems that guaranteed her a short life. The fourth was married, and he was tried for killing her husband.
He started his career by risking being executed, and ended it by lying to one of the few people who had stood by him when there was a price on his head. He spent a lot of time between those two ignominious points either under medical care or drunk out of his skull.
A relative was tortured to the point of madness because of him.
Are you laughing yet?
Comedy is so elusive, and so personal, it would seem that a writer has no hope of making large numbers of people laugh. And yet, writers do it. Recently I came across a quote from Clem Martini, the Head of the Drama Department at the University of Calgary. He said this about comedy.
“What makes a play comedic instead of tragic: light tone, the improbable treated as entirely probable, an ability to withstand punishment without suffering, an intense unyielding desire approaching an obsession, highly complicated plots, and speed. Humor rises out of the unexpected turn of events.”
~Clem Martini, The Blunt Playwright
Some of you have recognized my favorite comedy character: Lord Miles Vorkosigan in the series written by Lois McMaster Bujold. She’s managed not only to include everything in Martini’s list, but to build on each one. A light tone with a dark twist. The improbable is so entirely probable that you stop noticing any improbability. It’s not that miles withstands punishment without suffering. To borrow a phrase from last year’s Olympic Games, Miles owns the podium when it comes to suffering. But he does withstand punishment without bitterness, and he learns from the suffering. Whatever terrible ordeal he’s just come through, once he’s watered, rested, and properly medicated, he’s obsessed to right the wrong that caused the suffering in the first place. Highly complicated plots? He’s got several planets and a space mercenary fleet to play with. Can’t get much more complicated than that.
Or funnier.
-----
Quote for the week
“Your forward momentum is going to lead all of your followers over a cliff someday.” He paused, beginning to grin. “On the way down, you’ll convince ‘em all they can fly.” He stuck his fists in his armpits, and waggled his elbows. “Lead on, my lord. I’m flapping as hard as I can.”
~Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior’s Apprentice
I love comedy. If I could, I’d write great comedy like Neil Simon or Larry Gelbart, the creator of M*A*S*H. My heroine is the Canadian writer and actor, Susan Coyne, who wrote and stared in Slings and Arrows.
I’m not ga-ga over all comedy. Jokes based on putting other people down leave me cold. So does physical comedy like The Three Stooges and the Keystone Cops, though I have to admit that Buster Keaton, Jackie Gleason, and Art Carney had such marvelous timing that their physical comedy was a pleasure to watch. Most TV sit-coms produce more yawns than giggles.
What I don’t like in books or plays is a steady stream of one-liners. There was an author I loved several years ago, when I first read her. Her first two books were hilarious. A couple of more were tiresome. Then I stopped reading. She hadn’t changed her writing; I’d changed my reading. I got tired of waiting for the characters to stop slinging zingers and start developing as people. I figured it was never going to happen.
My favorite fictional comedy character is an unlikely choice. He was born with severe birth defects into a society that tolerated no physical imperfections. Only his family’s social status and a troop of armed housemen kept him from being smothered in his crib. His childhood caretaker died saving his life.
The first woman he became involved with dumped him. The second was disfigured because he made a serious error in judgement. The third had her own genetic problems that guaranteed her a short life. The fourth was married, and he was tried for killing her husband.
He started his career by risking being executed, and ended it by lying to one of the few people who had stood by him when there was a price on his head. He spent a lot of time between those two ignominious points either under medical care or drunk out of his skull.
A relative was tortured to the point of madness because of him.
Are you laughing yet?
Comedy is so elusive, and so personal, it would seem that a writer has no hope of making large numbers of people laugh. And yet, writers do it. Recently I came across a quote from Clem Martini, the Head of the Drama Department at the University of Calgary. He said this about comedy.
“What makes a play comedic instead of tragic: light tone, the improbable treated as entirely probable, an ability to withstand punishment without suffering, an intense unyielding desire approaching an obsession, highly complicated plots, and speed. Humor rises out of the unexpected turn of events.”
~Clem Martini, The Blunt Playwright
Some of you have recognized my favorite comedy character: Lord Miles Vorkosigan in the series written by Lois McMaster Bujold. She’s managed not only to include everything in Martini’s list, but to build on each one. A light tone with a dark twist. The improbable is so entirely probable that you stop noticing any improbability. It’s not that miles withstands punishment without suffering. To borrow a phrase from last year’s Olympic Games, Miles owns the podium when it comes to suffering. But he does withstand punishment without bitterness, and he learns from the suffering. Whatever terrible ordeal he’s just come through, once he’s watered, rested, and properly medicated, he’s obsessed to right the wrong that caused the suffering in the first place. Highly complicated plots? He’s got several planets and a space mercenary fleet to play with. Can’t get much more complicated than that.
Or funnier.
-----
Quote for the week
“Your forward momentum is going to lead all of your followers over a cliff someday.” He paused, beginning to grin. “On the way down, you’ll convince ‘em all they can fly.” He stuck his fists in his armpits, and waggled his elbows. “Lead on, my lord. I’m flapping as hard as I can.”
~Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior’s Apprentice
Monday, March 7, 2011
More Advice From Grandma
by Julia Buckley
Grandma in gardening gear.
A few weeks ago I told a story about my grandmother and her passport. But in reminiscing about that story of course I remembered many more wonderful things about Grandma, especially the advice she doled out over her 88 years. I'll share a few here, starting with:
1. Dress for the calendar, not for the weather. Grandma's wisdom holds true today; how many people are we seeing, when spring peeks through the winter clouds and gives us a rare day in the 40s or 50s, who refuse to wear coats at all? Grandma would shake her head at them; they are bound for winter colds and flus.
2. Never look at a monkey. Grandma didn't like monkeys in general, and I'm sure there was something far in her past that somehow linked them to evil. But most especially one was not to look at a monkey while she was pregnant--this would mean that her child would eventually resemble that monkey.
3. Always wear blankets. We suffered through this particular wisdom on many a summer sleep-over at Grandma's house. Children who flung off covers would soon find themselves covered again. And heaven forbid if a child coughed. She would hear a distant, "Who vas dat coughing? Chreesy? Julie? Leenda?" and then Grandma herself would appear with--what else? Blankets.
This probably had something to do with the fact that her first-born son died of scarlet fever, something she never got over. But by the time we came along that was a distant memory--for us anyway--and we really couldn't understand her fear of a coughing child.
4. Everything tastes better with garlic and paprika. My grandmother was a wonderful cook who never worked from recipes. We begged her to write things down for us, but it was too difficult; she was an instinctive cook who had never gone beyond the fourth grade with formal schooling. She did not work well in text, but her cooking was poetic. When my mother asked for recipes, she would say, "Oh, a lilly bit of this and a lilly bit of that."
5. Never call someone a gypsy. In my grandmother's world, this word was the ultimate insult. So once, when she and my grandfather came to my parish school for the annual chicken dinner, and my grandfather leaned toward me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "Tell you grandma that lady looks like a geepsee," my grandmother turned her wrath on him. "You watch your mouth!" she hissed. I sat between them, not knowing the deep connotations of this particular word.
6. Never cross Grandma. Once we were out in Michigan at the little house that my grandmother inherited from her father, who had bought it with a railroad lawsuit. It had become our summer place. My grandparents had been married close to sixty years at this point, but my grandmother was angry at my grandfather for wearing a particular ring to the breakfast table.
She confided to me, rather than him, that he had received the ring from someone in his past named Margot Pinkotzi. "I did not get this ring from Margot Pinkotzi!" my grandfather boomed over his cereal bowl (from which he ate dried bread and hot milk). "I bought this ring from Joe Thomas for 75 cents!"
Neither of them seemed to find it ironic that they were arguing over something that had happened many decades earlier. In fact, when someone asked my grandfather what the secret was to his long marriage, he responded, "Argue a lot."
7. Always give gifts. My grandmother had never been a rich woman, but she was talented at cooking and needlework, so she always made us beautiful things. When Alzheimer's took part of her away near the end of her life, she still gave us gifts, even if they were strings of yarn or balled-up napkins. It was the giving she remembered.
She still gives to us today, in the form of memories.
Grandma in gardening gear.A few weeks ago I told a story about my grandmother and her passport. But in reminiscing about that story of course I remembered many more wonderful things about Grandma, especially the advice she doled out over her 88 years. I'll share a few here, starting with:
1. Dress for the calendar, not for the weather. Grandma's wisdom holds true today; how many people are we seeing, when spring peeks through the winter clouds and gives us a rare day in the 40s or 50s, who refuse to wear coats at all? Grandma would shake her head at them; they are bound for winter colds and flus.
2. Never look at a monkey. Grandma didn't like monkeys in general, and I'm sure there was something far in her past that somehow linked them to evil. But most especially one was not to look at a monkey while she was pregnant--this would mean that her child would eventually resemble that monkey.
3. Always wear blankets. We suffered through this particular wisdom on many a summer sleep-over at Grandma's house. Children who flung off covers would soon find themselves covered again. And heaven forbid if a child coughed. She would hear a distant, "Who vas dat coughing? Chreesy? Julie? Leenda?" and then Grandma herself would appear with--what else? Blankets.
This probably had something to do with the fact that her first-born son died of scarlet fever, something she never got over. But by the time we came along that was a distant memory--for us anyway--and we really couldn't understand her fear of a coughing child.
4. Everything tastes better with garlic and paprika. My grandmother was a wonderful cook who never worked from recipes. We begged her to write things down for us, but it was too difficult; she was an instinctive cook who had never gone beyond the fourth grade with formal schooling. She did not work well in text, but her cooking was poetic. When my mother asked for recipes, she would say, "Oh, a lilly bit of this and a lilly bit of that."
5. Never call someone a gypsy. In my grandmother's world, this word was the ultimate insult. So once, when she and my grandfather came to my parish school for the annual chicken dinner, and my grandfather leaned toward me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "Tell you grandma that lady looks like a geepsee," my grandmother turned her wrath on him. "You watch your mouth!" she hissed. I sat between them, not knowing the deep connotations of this particular word.
6. Never cross Grandma. Once we were out in Michigan at the little house that my grandmother inherited from her father, who had bought it with a railroad lawsuit. It had become our summer place. My grandparents had been married close to sixty years at this point, but my grandmother was angry at my grandfather for wearing a particular ring to the breakfast table.
She confided to me, rather than him, that he had received the ring from someone in his past named Margot Pinkotzi. "I did not get this ring from Margot Pinkotzi!" my grandfather boomed over his cereal bowl (from which he ate dried bread and hot milk). "I bought this ring from Joe Thomas for 75 cents!"
Neither of them seemed to find it ironic that they were arguing over something that had happened many decades earlier. In fact, when someone asked my grandfather what the secret was to his long marriage, he responded, "Argue a lot."
7. Always give gifts. My grandmother had never been a rich woman, but she was talented at cooking and needlework, so she always made us beautiful things. When Alzheimer's took part of her away near the end of her life, she still gave us gifts, even if they were strings of yarn or balled-up napkins. It was the giving she remembered.
She still gives to us today, in the form of memories.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Meg Interviews Bree
by Kate George
As some of you may know, I’ve been on the California Schemin’ Blast-Off Blog Tour since the beginning of February. This means I’ve been writing about random subjects for several weeks now. I’m getting a little tired of listening to my own voice and it raises the concern that others might be getting tired of me too. Not the effect I wanted. So I came up with this brilliant idea! Why not have my characters do some talking? Why not have Meg interview Bree?
Bree is the protagonist of Moonlighting in Vermont and California Schemin’ and Meg is Bree’s best friend. I think it’s the perfect solution – Meg will interview Bree, which will get you more acquainted with the two of them, and I’ll get to take a break. Genius. Take it away, Meg!
Meg: Really? I get to interview Bree? Fabulous. Can I ask anything I want to? Yes!
Bree, you are in so much trouble.
Before we get started I want to say that I’ve been friends with Bree for fifteen years. I deserve a medal for that. Bree, put that frying pan down. If you can’t be civil we’ll have to do this over the phone.
First Question: What did your brothers say when they found out you had inherited your grandmother’s farmhouse and acreage? Did it create a rift in the family?
Bree: Just you wait, Meg Maverick. I bet you anything I’ll get the chance to interview you too. And don’t expect me to fight fair.
What was the question? Oh yeah. No, no rift. Actually my brothers did a happy dance when they found out I had inherited the farm. I love the farm but it would have been a lead weight around the neck for either of them. Believe me, it was not a problem. Anyway, they got the bulk of the money. So it was fair.
Meg: So I hear you met a hunky federal agent on your trip to California. I’d hate to think you would drop Beau just because some guy in a uniform came sniffing around. I know how you love the men in uniform.
Bree: First of all, he didn’t come sniffing around. He abducted me. Second of all, he’s undercover. He doesn’t wear a uniform. I’m not even sure what kind of agent he is. Third, I may flirt but I never cheat. If I’m with a guy, I’m with a guy. I did not dump Beau.
Why are you being so mean?
Meg: I’m mad because you get all the adventures while I’m stuck at home with my kids and the newspaper.
Bree: Oh pooh. Deirdre can publish the paper, and Tom can watch the kids. If you want an adventure you should go have one. And what about when we took Gunner to the barracks? Wasn’t that enough of an adventure for you?
Meg: That was too much of an adventure.
Hang on. I’m supposed to be asking the questions here. Last one: Do you have any plans for this summer?
Bree: No! This summer I’m going to putter around the farm, swim in the river and hang out with you and the kids. I’ve had enough excitement.
Meg: That sounds like wishful thinking to me. You know – famous last words.
Bree: Oh, shut up. Let’s go feed the ducks.
Meg: So you can push me in the pond? I don’t think so.
Kate George is the award-winning author of Moonlighting in Vermont and California Schemin’. She lives in Vermont with dogs, kids, and currently, snow. You can reach her at www.kategeorge.com. Her books are available at www.mainlymurderpress.com, amazon.com or can be ordered from any bookstore.
As some of you may know, I’ve been on the California Schemin’ Blast-Off Blog Tour since the beginning of February. This means I’ve been writing about random subjects for several weeks now. I’m getting a little tired of listening to my own voice and it raises the concern that others might be getting tired of me too. Not the effect I wanted. So I came up with this brilliant idea! Why not have my characters do some talking? Why not have Meg interview Bree?Bree is the protagonist of Moonlighting in Vermont and California Schemin’ and Meg is Bree’s best friend. I think it’s the perfect solution – Meg will interview Bree, which will get you more acquainted with the two of them, and I’ll get to take a break. Genius. Take it away, Meg!
Meg: Really? I get to interview Bree? Fabulous. Can I ask anything I want to? Yes!
Bree, you are in so much trouble.
Before we get started I want to say that I’ve been friends with Bree for fifteen years. I deserve a medal for that. Bree, put that frying pan down. If you can’t be civil we’ll have to do this over the phone.
First Question: What did your brothers say when they found out you had inherited your grandmother’s farmhouse and acreage? Did it create a rift in the family?
Bree: Just you wait, Meg Maverick. I bet you anything I’ll get the chance to interview you too. And don’t expect me to fight fair.
What was the question? Oh yeah. No, no rift. Actually my brothers did a happy dance when they found out I had inherited the farm. I love the farm but it would have been a lead weight around the neck for either of them. Believe me, it was not a problem. Anyway, they got the bulk of the money. So it was fair.
Meg: So I hear you met a hunky federal agent on your trip to California. I’d hate to think you would drop Beau just because some guy in a uniform came sniffing around. I know how you love the men in uniform.
Bree: First of all, he didn’t come sniffing around. He abducted me. Second of all, he’s undercover. He doesn’t wear a uniform. I’m not even sure what kind of agent he is. Third, I may flirt but I never cheat. If I’m with a guy, I’m with a guy. I did not dump Beau.
Why are you being so mean?
Meg: I’m mad because you get all the adventures while I’m stuck at home with my kids and the newspaper.
Bree: Oh pooh. Deirdre can publish the paper, and Tom can watch the kids. If you want an adventure you should go have one. And what about when we took Gunner to the barracks? Wasn’t that enough of an adventure for you?
Meg: That was too much of an adventure.
Hang on. I’m supposed to be asking the questions here. Last one: Do you have any plans for this summer?
Bree: No! This summer I’m going to putter around the farm, swim in the river and hang out with you and the kids. I’ve had enough excitement.
Meg: That sounds like wishful thinking to me. You know – famous last words.
Bree: Oh, shut up. Let’s go feed the ducks.
Meg: So you can push me in the pond? I don’t think so.
Kate George is the award-winning author of Moonlighting in Vermont and California Schemin’. She lives in Vermont with dogs, kids, and currently, snow. You can reach her at www.kategeorge.com. Her books are available at www.mainlymurderpress.com, amazon.com or can be ordered from any bookstore.
Friday, March 4, 2011
PACING YOURSELF
by Sheila Connolly
By now I should be feeling very mellow, and I'll still have almost a week to enjoy in Ireland. Since, as I said last week, I'm not sure about what Internet connections I may have, I'm writing and posting these ahead. I choose to believe that it is a benevolent universe and I will be having a wonderful time and not thinking about all the things I left waiting for me on my desk.
As I mentioned last time, the pace of things in Ireland is (or was, the last time I looked) simply different. Case in point: I was staying in a bed and breakfast last time with a lovely young couple who were musicians from Texas. They were scheduled for a radio interview in Cork City, about an hour away, and they were running late--and being American, they were anxious. The landlady said, "sure and they'll wait for you, won't they? You're the show, after all."
As writers we worry a lot about pacing. As mystery writers there are those who insist that we have to have a body in the first chapter and introduce all the major characters immediately, which is not always easy. Then if we get past that, we have to worry about building suspense gradually, taking two steps forward and one step back. Once at a writers conference I saw a visual representation of this: the suspense is a straight line with an upward slope, but your story is an oscillating line that winds itself over and under the first line.
I'm not going to compare American, English and Irish writers and their use of pacing--I simply haven't read broadly enough (although I'll try to correct some of that). But I might suggest that we American writers are a bit more rushed. And I blame television.
By now I should be feeling very mellow, and I'll still have almost a week to enjoy in Ireland. Since, as I said last week, I'm not sure about what Internet connections I may have, I'm writing and posting these ahead. I choose to believe that it is a benevolent universe and I will be having a wonderful time and not thinking about all the things I left waiting for me on my desk.
As I mentioned last time, the pace of things in Ireland is (or was, the last time I looked) simply different. Case in point: I was staying in a bed and breakfast last time with a lovely young couple who were musicians from Texas. They were scheduled for a radio interview in Cork City, about an hour away, and they were running late--and being American, they were anxious. The landlady said, "sure and they'll wait for you, won't they? You're the show, after all."
As writers we worry a lot about pacing. As mystery writers there are those who insist that we have to have a body in the first chapter and introduce all the major characters immediately, which is not always easy. Then if we get past that, we have to worry about building suspense gradually, taking two steps forward and one step back. Once at a writers conference I saw a visual representation of this: the suspense is a straight line with an upward slope, but your story is an oscillating line that winds itself over and under the first line.
I'm not going to compare American, English and Irish writers and their use of pacing--I simply haven't read broadly enough (although I'll try to correct some of that). But I might suggest that we American writers are a bit more rushed. And I blame television.
My generation was the first for whom television was a significant presence in our lives, and that applied to a higher degree to children, who don't know enough about the world to judge critically. For a time there was a concern that watching violent television shows--like all those westerns with people shooting each other--would make us more violent. Maybe that idea was debunked when our most vocal representatives became hippies and tried to stop a war. Anyway, I can safely say that I am anything but violent.
But back in the day, shows were rigidly structured with commercial breaks every fifteen minutes. The result was that you had four discrete segments for any one-hour show (the longer ones were mostly dramas, as I remember), and you had to have a crescendo, a cliff-hanger, right before the commercial, so your audience wouldn't wander away looking for a sandwich and never come back. I could probably draw a picture of that too, if I were so inspired.
It's not the same any more. For one thing, there are more frequent commercials (and longer commercial breaks), at slightly more erratic intervals, so it's harder to build to a mini-climax. The final segment is now reduced to ten minutes maximum, and sometimes I'm watching a show and know the ending is going to be rushed because that's just not long enough to wrap up all the loose ends.
It has been a slow and subtle evolution, that kind of sneaked up on us. You recognize it when you see reruns of older shows, because you become aware of the fade-to-black moment that signalled the commercial in the old days, and there's a peculiar flatness when the next scene shows up immediately. In addition, the new commercials are often thrown in awkwardly, with no regard to the plot. It's hard to stay engaged in the story, although luckily we're probably watching the old shows because we've seen them before.
Why are we as Americans in such a hurry? It's not a new phenomenon. As a genealogist I've long been aware that we are an impatient people. Our earliest ancestors settled in a new world, and within a generation they began to feel crowded and started moving westward. And they did it again, and again. Luckily we have a large country, and it took a while until they hit the Pacific Ocean and ran out of room. But that restlessness, that urgency, has been part of who we are for a long time.
Does that spill over to our writing style? Are we capable of enjoying a story that evolves slowly, one where we can get to know the characters? Or must we have action, action, action immediately? Bang, you're dead--and you have 223 pages to figure out whodunnit and why?
Did I mention that Ireland has a very low murder rate? The local police may wonder why this strange American is asking them odd questions, but I hope they'll have the time to answer.
But back in the day, shows were rigidly structured with commercial breaks every fifteen minutes. The result was that you had four discrete segments for any one-hour show (the longer ones were mostly dramas, as I remember), and you had to have a crescendo, a cliff-hanger, right before the commercial, so your audience wouldn't wander away looking for a sandwich and never come back. I could probably draw a picture of that too, if I were so inspired.
It's not the same any more. For one thing, there are more frequent commercials (and longer commercial breaks), at slightly more erratic intervals, so it's harder to build to a mini-climax. The final segment is now reduced to ten minutes maximum, and sometimes I'm watching a show and know the ending is going to be rushed because that's just not long enough to wrap up all the loose ends.
It has been a slow and subtle evolution, that kind of sneaked up on us. You recognize it when you see reruns of older shows, because you become aware of the fade-to-black moment that signalled the commercial in the old days, and there's a peculiar flatness when the next scene shows up immediately. In addition, the new commercials are often thrown in awkwardly, with no regard to the plot. It's hard to stay engaged in the story, although luckily we're probably watching the old shows because we've seen them before.
Why are we as Americans in such a hurry? It's not a new phenomenon. As a genealogist I've long been aware that we are an impatient people. Our earliest ancestors settled in a new world, and within a generation they began to feel crowded and started moving westward. And they did it again, and again. Luckily we have a large country, and it took a while until they hit the Pacific Ocean and ran out of room. But that restlessness, that urgency, has been part of who we are for a long time.
Does that spill over to our writing style? Are we capable of enjoying a story that evolves slowly, one where we can get to know the characters? Or must we have action, action, action immediately? Bang, you're dead--and you have 223 pages to figure out whodunnit and why?
Did I mention that Ireland has a very low murder rate? The local police may wonder why this strange American is asking them odd questions, but I hope they'll have the time to answer.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Interview with Julia Spencer-Fleming
Interviewer: Elizabeth Zelvin
Liz: One Was A Soldier, the seventh mystery in your series featuring Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and small-town police chief Russ Van Alstyne, is about to hit the shelves in bookstores, and I’m one of many readers who can’t wait to find out not only what murder and mayhem these two intelligent and lovable people will have to disentangle, but what will happen next in their star-crossed relationship. What can you tell us about the new book without committing any spoilers?
Julia: You had to start with a hard question! Can I quote from the flap copy that will be on the finished books?
I wrote it myself, so it’s not cheating...much.
On a warm September evening in the Millers Kill community center, five veterans sit down in rickety chairs to try to make sense of their experiences in Iraq. What they will find is murder, conspiracy, and the unbreakable ties that bind them to one other and their small Adirondack town.
The Rev. Clare Fergusson wants to forget the things she saw as a combat helicopter pilot and concentrate on her relationship with Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne. MP Eric McCrea needs to control the explosive anger threatening his job as a police officer. Will Ellis, high school track star, faces the reality of life as a double amputee. Orthopedist Trip Stillman is denying the extent of his traumatic brain injury. And bookkeeper Tally McNabb wrestles with guilt over the in-country affair that may derail her marriage.
But coming home is harder than it looks. One vet will struggle with drugs and alcohol. One will lose his family and friends. One will die.
Since their first meeting, Russ and Clare's bond has been tried, torn, and forged by adversity. But when he rules the veteran's death a suicide, she violently rejects his verdict, drawing the surviving vets into an unorthodox investigation that threatens jobs, relationships, and her own future with Russ.
As the days cool and the nights grow longer, they will uncover a trail of deceit that runs from their tiny town to the upper ranks of the U.S. Army, and from the waters of the Millers Kill to the unforgiving streets of Baghdad.
Liz: Your website bio tells us that you were an Army brat. That life might provide an exciting, even glamorous childhood for one kid and a miserably dysfunctional one for another. What kind of experience was it for you?
Julia: It was all of those things, I suspect. It taught me to make friends quickly and let go easily, to adapt to new climate and customs readily, and to realize the stuff I carry in my head is the only stuff that can’t be lost or left behind or given away in the next move. I think it made me into a bookworm--moving from post to post and country to country, the books in the libraries stayed constant. I might be in Alabama, or Germany, or New York, but Narnia and River Heights and the Mushroom Planet were always right there with me.
Sometimes it catches me by surprise when I realize how many years I’ve been living in the same state, in the same house. My kids, whose childhoods have been as settled as mine was roaming, can’t imagine leaving, but I know if I had to, I could pack up our things tomorrow and decamp. “There’s always something to like, wherever you are,” my mother used to say. I agree with that.
Liz: How much research have you had to do for the military aspect of Clare’s life and the law enforcement aspect of Russ’s? What does “doing research” entail for you? Is it a pleasurable part of writing a new book?
Julia: I enjoy research a little too much, which is why I try to do the minimum to get into the book. Usually, I do the research necessary to understand, say, logging in the Adirondacks or bootlegging in the 1930s. Then, as issues arise while I’m writing the book, I write down notes for myself and add them to my Questions File. Later on, I’ll go back and look up whatever it is I didn’t know at the time--the type of gun or the name of a state agency, for instance.
Writing about returning vets, I felt I had to do a great deal more research to get into the situation and to do justice to the experiences of the men and women I was portraying. I probably spent a good six months reading books, newspapers, blogs and interviewing people. (One of the reasons the book was turned in so late!) I normally use all those resources when prepping a novel--this was just a lot bigger in scale and deeper.
Of course, the book I’m writing now is basically Russ and Clare trapped by a killer in a cabin in the frozen woods. My goal is to not have to research anything for this one!
Liz: What about Clare’s role as a priest? You give readers a lot about the daily tasks of being responsible for a church and congregation as well as her role as a leader in the community. How about Clare’s spiritual life? Beyond her ethical concerns, social conscience, and pastoral counseling role, how interested are you in how she gets along with God and whether she struggles to maintain her faith?
Julia: When I started the series, I purposely cheated a bit in order to emphasise Clare’s isolation. Under normal circumstances, a priest would have a spiritual advisor to meet with, probably on a weekly basis. She didn’t get that until I introduced Deacon Willard Aberforth in the fourth book. I figured I could get away with it because Clare’s issue isn’t maintaining her faith so much as it is trying to decide of she’s the right person for the job she’s doing. The goad she lashes herself with--repeatedly--is that she’s a “bad priest.”
One Was A Soldier comes closest to Clare struggling with her own faith. She’s not doing well after returning from her tour of duty. She’s drinking and dosing herself with pills and eventually winds up in therapy with several other vets. Intellectually, she knows she needs help, but emotionally, on a level she’s not really quite aware of, she feels God ought to be enough.
To me, the most important thing to get across is that religious faith doesn’t mean the end of doubt or fear or sadness. Clare, and others in the books, are genuinely faithful--and also sarcastic, self-centered and stupid at times. Contrary to the popular portrayal of religion, believing in God doesn’t make life an endless Candyland Game. And conversely, as we see in Clare, experiencing pain and darkness isn’t necessarily a reason to stop believing.
Liz: At what point did you realize that Russ had to become a co-protagonist in the series, not just Clare’s love interest and law enforcement buddy? You’ve taken a traditional-mystery formulathe team of amateur sleuth and small-town cop or sheriff and ratcheted it way up in complexity and emotional intensity (and frustration for the reader). I think it’s an extraordinary love story: two decent people trying to connect with each other in spite of a host of both internal and external obstacles. Did you mean it to turn out so achingly romantic? Can you see a conclusion to their story somewhere down the line?
Julia: Russ became the co-protagonist early on, while I was writing my first book. I realized I didn’t want the cops of Millers Kill to look foolish or lazy--you know how sometimes you read amateur sleuths and find yourself thinking, wait a minute! Where are the police? I wanted to give each of them control over a different area--Russ, the professional investigation and Clare, the social/emotional insights that come to her via her job.
I wanted their relationship to have romantic tension--a lot of romantic tension--as a way to keep the reader’s attention. When the investigation slacks off, as it invariably does in a mystery, the personal story steps to the fore. In one scene, a reader is (hopefully) biting her nails over an important clue. In the next scene, she is (hopefully) chewing her lip over a shared, meaningful glance between two almost-but-never-quite lovers. I did mean it to be painfully, achingly romantic, the sort of relationship that elicits big emotions from the readers, because that’s what I like to experience when I read. I like my heart to pound and my hands to sweat, and I hope that happens when people read my books.
I used to think the conclusion to their story would be in the fifth book. Then the sixth. Now...I just say as long as I have a story about Russ and Clare I really want to tell, I keep on writing them.
Liz: Like quite a few writers, you started out as a lawyer. What got you into the law, what got you out, and do you have any regrets? Do you bring any of the skills or mindset of being an attorney into the writer’s life and/or the stories you tell?
Julia: The best lawyer-related skill set for writing mysteries is the ability to think logically about a chain of events. Law school trains one to look for the primary cause, the proximate cause, the intervening cause--all useful when planning and covering up several murders per book.
What got me in? I was working as a non-profit fund-raiser. I loved my job, did well at it, and earned enough money to live with four other people in a house outside of DC and eat canned soup for dinner. I decided I wanted to earn enough money to buy a car someday. I wasn’t good at chemistry, so no med school. I wasn’t good at math, so no business school. Law school was the default. I loved law school, and have no regrets about going--but I also have no regrets about leaving the field as soon as I was making a little money writing.
Liz: You’ve won an impressive number of awards as well as getting your start by winning the Malice Domestic Best First Novel competition. How important is that aspect of success, and is there any one honor that was particularly meaningful to you?
Julia: It’s nice to win awards, I won’t lie. It is extremely gratifying to have groups of people say, “You’re book is so good, we’re going to give you this teapot/plaque/bust of Nero Wolfe to let everybody know.”
Having said that, I’m pretty relaxed about the whole process. Winning awards didn’t make me write better, or make my children magically start picking up their bedrooms without nagging.
The honor that was particularly meaningful? Probably, oddly enough, one I didn’t win. My third book, Out of the Deep I Cry, was nominated for an Edgar for Best Novel. (Jeff Parker won with his amazing California Girl.) Having served on an Edgars committee, I realized the sort of work my peers did to select those five nominees--and how very many books they had under consideration. It really, truly was an honor to be nominated.
Liz: Can you tell us something about your creative process? What is your schedule like? In what kind of environment do you write best? How much planning do you do before writing the first draft? Do you ever get stuck, and if so, what do you do about it? Do you show your work to anyone before you hand it in?
Julia: Schedule: none. Environment: upstairs, downstairs, in public libraries, in university libraries, at friend’s vacation homes. Planning: not enough, because I always get stuck after the mid-way point, convinced I’m never going to solve the crime and that the book stinks and I’ll have to go back to being a lawyer. I deal with this by complaining bitterly to my husband until he says, “Just write the damn book already. You can always change it later.” (His solution to any sticky plot point is to have a meteor fall on the characters, or a volcano erupt in Millers Kill or something along those lines. I’m always so outraged at his suggestions, they wind up jump-starting me.)
And no, I don’t show the work to anyone until after I’ve typed “The End.” Which doesn’t appear in the book, but which is SO satisfying to write.
Liz: Clare and Russ are the kind of characters that feel very real to the reader. How real are they to you? Do they talk to you in your head? Do they ever say or do things you don’t expect them to? Do you love them?
Julia: I don’t think anyone’s ever asked if I love my characters before. I guess I do, in the way you love someone you’ve known well the whole of your life. I know their flaws and their blind spots and I can tell when they’re going to make mistakes. I can’t protect them or glamorize them. They do feel very real to me, as if they have their lives apart from my imagination. As a result, they do and say things I don’t expect. If you, the author, really know a character, you don’t move him around and make him say things. You set the scene and then sit back and watch how the characters act and react and interact.
Liz: The late great Ruth Cavin was your editor, so not only have you experienced a recent loss, but you’re having the new experience of working with an editor who hasn’t been with you from the beginning. Can you say something about the process of working with editors? What did you learn from Ruth? Is switching a big deal or not? Also, how much input does your agent have into what you write, and has your path with agents been smooth or bumpy?
Julia: I’ve had the great good fortune to work with several wonderful editors at St. Martin’s--which of course is different than switching over and being a part of someone’s stable of authors. Ruth cut a broad swath with her editorial notes-I’d get three paragraphs that would result in cutting 40,000 words and a major recasting of roles. My current editors, Pete Wolverton and Katie Gilligan, are a lot more detailed oriented--I almost cried when I got something like ten pages of notes from Pete on the first go-round! Then I realized he was working at a sentence-and-language level Ruth usually didn’t tackle until much later in he process.
A lot of switching editors is like that--getting to know one another’s quirks. Fortunately, I share two passions with my new editors: Pete and I are both huge University of Alabama fans (Roll Tide!) and Katie is an alumna of Smith, where my oldest daughter is going to college.
I’ve been very fortunate with agents. I was ably represented by Jimmy Vines, and when he retired, I signed with the fabulous Meg Ruley of the Jane Rotrosen Agency. She’s less of a critical reader and more the sort to call me up weeping and laughing over the phone to tell me how much she loves the latest book. Which isn’t to say she doesn’t express strong opinions at times! I feel lucky to have so many smart, story-loving people looking at what I write and spending so much time making it better.
Liz: One Was A Soldier, the seventh mystery in your series featuring Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and small-town police chief Russ Van Alstyne, is about to hit the shelves in bookstores, and I’m one of many readers who can’t wait to find out not only what murder and mayhem these two intelligent and lovable people will have to disentangle, but what will happen next in their star-crossed relationship. What can you tell us about the new book without committing any spoilers?
Julia: You had to start with a hard question! Can I quote from the flap copy that will be on the finished books?
I wrote it myself, so it’s not cheating...much.On a warm September evening in the Millers Kill community center, five veterans sit down in rickety chairs to try to make sense of their experiences in Iraq. What they will find is murder, conspiracy, and the unbreakable ties that bind them to one other and their small Adirondack town.
The Rev. Clare Fergusson wants to forget the things she saw as a combat helicopter pilot and concentrate on her relationship with Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne. MP Eric McCrea needs to control the explosive anger threatening his job as a police officer. Will Ellis, high school track star, faces the reality of life as a double amputee. Orthopedist Trip Stillman is denying the extent of his traumatic brain injury. And bookkeeper Tally McNabb wrestles with guilt over the in-country affair that may derail her marriage.
But coming home is harder than it looks. One vet will struggle with drugs and alcohol. One will lose his family and friends. One will die.
Since their first meeting, Russ and Clare's bond has been tried, torn, and forged by adversity. But when he rules the veteran's death a suicide, she violently rejects his verdict, drawing the surviving vets into an unorthodox investigation that threatens jobs, relationships, and her own future with Russ.
As the days cool and the nights grow longer, they will uncover a trail of deceit that runs from their tiny town to the upper ranks of the U.S. Army, and from the waters of the Millers Kill to the unforgiving streets of Baghdad.
Liz: Your website bio tells us that you were an Army brat. That life might provide an exciting, even glamorous childhood for one kid and a miserably dysfunctional one for another. What kind of experience was it for you?
Julia: It was all of those things, I suspect. It taught me to make friends quickly and let go easily, to adapt to new climate and customs readily, and to realize the stuff I carry in my head is the only stuff that can’t be lost or left behind or given away in the next move. I think it made me into a bookworm--moving from post to post and country to country, the books in the libraries stayed constant. I might be in Alabama, or Germany, or New York, but Narnia and River Heights and the Mushroom Planet were always right there with me.
Sometimes it catches me by surprise when I realize how many years I’ve been living in the same state, in the same house. My kids, whose childhoods have been as settled as mine was roaming, can’t imagine leaving, but I know if I had to, I could pack up our things tomorrow and decamp. “There’s always something to like, wherever you are,” my mother used to say. I agree with that.
Liz: How much research have you had to do for the military aspect of Clare’s life and the law enforcement aspect of Russ’s? What does “doing research” entail for you? Is it a pleasurable part of writing a new book?
Julia: I enjoy research a little too much, which is why I try to do the minimum to get into the book. Usually, I do the research necessary to understand, say, logging in the Adirondacks or bootlegging in the 1930s. Then, as issues arise while I’m writing the book, I write down notes for myself and add them to my Questions File. Later on, I’ll go back and look up whatever it is I didn’t know at the time--the type of gun or the name of a state agency, for instance.
Writing about returning vets, I felt I had to do a great deal more research to get into the situation and to do justice to the experiences of the men and women I was portraying. I probably spent a good six months reading books, newspapers, blogs and interviewing people. (One of the reasons the book was turned in so late!) I normally use all those resources when prepping a novel--this was just a lot bigger in scale and deeper.
Of course, the book I’m writing now is basically Russ and Clare trapped by a killer in a cabin in the frozen woods. My goal is to not have to research anything for this one!
Liz: What about Clare’s role as a priest? You give readers a lot about the daily tasks of being responsible for a church and congregation as well as her role as a leader in the community. How about Clare’s spiritual life? Beyond her ethical concerns, social conscience, and pastoral counseling role, how interested are you in how she gets along with God and whether she struggles to maintain her faith?
Julia: When I started the series, I purposely cheated a bit in order to emphasise Clare’s isolation. Under normal circumstances, a priest would have a spiritual advisor to meet with, probably on a weekly basis. She didn’t get that until I introduced Deacon Willard Aberforth in the fourth book. I figured I could get away with it because Clare’s issue isn’t maintaining her faith so much as it is trying to decide of she’s the right person for the job she’s doing. The goad she lashes herself with--repeatedly--is that she’s a “bad priest.”
One Was A Soldier comes closest to Clare struggling with her own faith. She’s not doing well after returning from her tour of duty. She’s drinking and dosing herself with pills and eventually winds up in therapy with several other vets. Intellectually, she knows she needs help, but emotionally, on a level she’s not really quite aware of, she feels God ought to be enough.
To me, the most important thing to get across is that religious faith doesn’t mean the end of doubt or fear or sadness. Clare, and others in the books, are genuinely faithful--and also sarcastic, self-centered and stupid at times. Contrary to the popular portrayal of religion, believing in God doesn’t make life an endless Candyland Game. And conversely, as we see in Clare, experiencing pain and darkness isn’t necessarily a reason to stop believing.
Liz: At what point did you realize that Russ had to become a co-protagonist in the series, not just Clare’s love interest and law enforcement buddy? You’ve taken a traditional-mystery formulathe team of amateur sleuth and small-town cop or sheriff and ratcheted it way up in complexity and emotional intensity (and frustration for the reader). I think it’s an extraordinary love story: two decent people trying to connect with each other in spite of a host of both internal and external obstacles. Did you mean it to turn out so achingly romantic? Can you see a conclusion to their story somewhere down the line?
Julia: Russ became the co-protagonist early on, while I was writing my first book. I realized I didn’t want the cops of Millers Kill to look foolish or lazy--you know how sometimes you read amateur sleuths and find yourself thinking, wait a minute! Where are the police? I wanted to give each of them control over a different area--Russ, the professional investigation and Clare, the social/emotional insights that come to her via her job.
I wanted their relationship to have romantic tension--a lot of romantic tension--as a way to keep the reader’s attention. When the investigation slacks off, as it invariably does in a mystery, the personal story steps to the fore. In one scene, a reader is (hopefully) biting her nails over an important clue. In the next scene, she is (hopefully) chewing her lip over a shared, meaningful glance between two almost-but-never-quite lovers. I did mean it to be painfully, achingly romantic, the sort of relationship that elicits big emotions from the readers, because that’s what I like to experience when I read. I like my heart to pound and my hands to sweat, and I hope that happens when people read my books.
I used to think the conclusion to their story would be in the fifth book. Then the sixth. Now...I just say as long as I have a story about Russ and Clare I really want to tell, I keep on writing them.
Liz: Like quite a few writers, you started out as a lawyer. What got you into the law, what got you out, and do you have any regrets? Do you bring any of the skills or mindset of being an attorney into the writer’s life and/or the stories you tell?
Julia: The best lawyer-related skill set for writing mysteries is the ability to think logically about a chain of events. Law school trains one to look for the primary cause, the proximate cause, the intervening cause--all useful when planning and covering up several murders per book.
What got me in? I was working as a non-profit fund-raiser. I loved my job, did well at it, and earned enough money to live with four other people in a house outside of DC and eat canned soup for dinner. I decided I wanted to earn enough money to buy a car someday. I wasn’t good at chemistry, so no med school. I wasn’t good at math, so no business school. Law school was the default. I loved law school, and have no regrets about going--but I also have no regrets about leaving the field as soon as I was making a little money writing.
Liz: You’ve won an impressive number of awards as well as getting your start by winning the Malice Domestic Best First Novel competition. How important is that aspect of success, and is there any one honor that was particularly meaningful to you?
Julia: It’s nice to win awards, I won’t lie. It is extremely gratifying to have groups of people say, “You’re book is so good, we’re going to give you this teapot/plaque/bust of Nero Wolfe to let everybody know.”
Having said that, I’m pretty relaxed about the whole process. Winning awards didn’t make me write better, or make my children magically start picking up their bedrooms without nagging.
The honor that was particularly meaningful? Probably, oddly enough, one I didn’t win. My third book, Out of the Deep I Cry, was nominated for an Edgar for Best Novel. (Jeff Parker won with his amazing California Girl.) Having served on an Edgars committee, I realized the sort of work my peers did to select those five nominees--and how very many books they had under consideration. It really, truly was an honor to be nominated.
Liz: Can you tell us something about your creative process? What is your schedule like? In what kind of environment do you write best? How much planning do you do before writing the first draft? Do you ever get stuck, and if so, what do you do about it? Do you show your work to anyone before you hand it in?
Julia: Schedule: none. Environment: upstairs, downstairs, in public libraries, in university libraries, at friend’s vacation homes. Planning: not enough, because I always get stuck after the mid-way point, convinced I’m never going to solve the crime and that the book stinks and I’ll have to go back to being a lawyer. I deal with this by complaining bitterly to my husband until he says, “Just write the damn book already. You can always change it later.” (His solution to any sticky plot point is to have a meteor fall on the characters, or a volcano erupt in Millers Kill or something along those lines. I’m always so outraged at his suggestions, they wind up jump-starting me.)
And no, I don’t show the work to anyone until after I’ve typed “The End.” Which doesn’t appear in the book, but which is SO satisfying to write.
Liz: Clare and Russ are the kind of characters that feel very real to the reader. How real are they to you? Do they talk to you in your head? Do they ever say or do things you don’t expect them to? Do you love them?
Julia: I don’t think anyone’s ever asked if I love my characters before. I guess I do, in the way you love someone you’ve known well the whole of your life. I know their flaws and their blind spots and I can tell when they’re going to make mistakes. I can’t protect them or glamorize them. They do feel very real to me, as if they have their lives apart from my imagination. As a result, they do and say things I don’t expect. If you, the author, really know a character, you don’t move him around and make him say things. You set the scene and then sit back and watch how the characters act and react and interact.
Liz: The late great Ruth Cavin was your editor, so not only have you experienced a recent loss, but you’re having the new experience of working with an editor who hasn’t been with you from the beginning. Can you say something about the process of working with editors? What did you learn from Ruth? Is switching a big deal or not? Also, how much input does your agent have into what you write, and has your path with agents been smooth or bumpy?
Julia: I’ve had the great good fortune to work with several wonderful editors at St. Martin’s--which of course is different than switching over and being a part of someone’s stable of authors. Ruth cut a broad swath with her editorial notes-I’d get three paragraphs that would result in cutting 40,000 words and a major recasting of roles. My current editors, Pete Wolverton and Katie Gilligan, are a lot more detailed oriented--I almost cried when I got something like ten pages of notes from Pete on the first go-round! Then I realized he was working at a sentence-and-language level Ruth usually didn’t tackle until much later in he process.
A lot of switching editors is like that--getting to know one another’s quirks. Fortunately, I share two passions with my new editors: Pete and I are both huge University of Alabama fans (Roll Tide!) and Katie is an alumna of Smith, where my oldest daughter is going to college.
I’ve been very fortunate with agents. I was ably represented by Jimmy Vines, and when he retired, I signed with the fabulous Meg Ruley of the Jane Rotrosen Agency. She’s less of a critical reader and more the sort to call me up weeping and laughing over the phone to tell me how much she loves the latest book. Which isn’t to say she doesn’t express strong opinions at times! I feel lucky to have so many smart, story-loving people looking at what I write and spending so much time making it better.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Print Snobs and E-bullies
Sandra Parshall
It was inevitable, human nature being what it is. The so-called e-book revolution is already bringing out the worst in some writers, dividing them into two equally unpleasant categories: print book snobs and e-bullies.
Not all writers are taking defensive/offensive stances, but plenty are pouring their emotions into angry, insulting internet postings.
The print book snobs are unmovable in their convictions:
Only a stack of paper bound between covers can be called a Book.
E-books are merely an additional source of income from works that have first been properly vetted and produced by A Real Publisher.
People who go straight to digital are doing so because their work is amateurish and unreadable and no Real Publisher will touch it.
On the other side, the e-bullies respond in equally nasty terms:
Writers published in print are fools clinging to a dying format.
Any writer who gives a slice of profits to a publisher and an agent is an idiot.
A writer who hands over production and sale of her/his work to a publishing company is lazy, stupid, or both.
Any writer who really tries can make a lot more money from e-books than print books.
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’m sick of this argument already.
E-books are transforming the way we view publishing, no doubt about it. I respect anyone who can make money from e-books without first becoming a bestseller in traditional book form. (Right now, the print and e-book bestseller lists are virtual mirrors of one another.) To me, a book in e-format is as much a book as one in print form. A “book” is the words, not the platform on which those words are brought to readers. I hope every novel I ever publish will be available to readers as an e-book. I believe e-books will help many midlist authors find an audience and keep them from giving up on their writing.
On the other hand, I am passionate about printed books. Love the smell of them, the feel of them, the beauty of them. I have shelf after shelf filled with books I may never open again after the initial reading. I keep them because they’re beautiful, and because they represent gateways into other worlds. I love libraries for the same reason, and one of the most thrilling moments of my life was seeing my first novel in a library.
I understand why people become defensive and downright nasty when their choices are challenged. I don’t understand why anyone assumes the right to challenge another person’s choices.
All writers are struggling to understand the changes sweeping through the publishing world. Why can’t we respect each other, support each other, and walk into the future hand in hand?
It was inevitable, human nature being what it is. The so-called e-book revolution is already bringing out the worst in some writers, dividing them into two equally unpleasant categories: print book snobs and e-bullies.
Not all writers are taking defensive/offensive stances, but plenty are pouring their emotions into angry, insulting internet postings.
The print book snobs are unmovable in their convictions:
Only a stack of paper bound between covers can be called a Book.
E-books are merely an additional source of income from works that have first been properly vetted and produced by A Real Publisher.
People who go straight to digital are doing so because their work is amateurish and unreadable and no Real Publisher will touch it.
On the other side, the e-bullies respond in equally nasty terms:
Writers published in print are fools clinging to a dying format.
Any writer who gives a slice of profits to a publisher and an agent is an idiot.
A writer who hands over production and sale of her/his work to a publishing company is lazy, stupid, or both.
Any writer who really tries can make a lot more money from e-books than print books.
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’m sick of this argument already.
E-books are transforming the way we view publishing, no doubt about it. I respect anyone who can make money from e-books without first becoming a bestseller in traditional book form. (Right now, the print and e-book bestseller lists are virtual mirrors of one another.) To me, a book in e-format is as much a book as one in print form. A “book” is the words, not the platform on which those words are brought to readers. I hope every novel I ever publish will be available to readers as an e-book. I believe e-books will help many midlist authors find an audience and keep them from giving up on their writing.
On the other hand, I am passionate about printed books. Love the smell of them, the feel of them, the beauty of them. I have shelf after shelf filled with books I may never open again after the initial reading. I keep them because they’re beautiful, and because they represent gateways into other worlds. I love libraries for the same reason, and one of the most thrilling moments of my life was seeing my first novel in a library.
I understand why people become defensive and downright nasty when their choices are challenged. I don’t understand why anyone assumes the right to challenge another person’s choices.
All writers are struggling to understand the changes sweeping through the publishing world. Why can’t we respect each other, support each other, and walk into the future hand in hand?
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Joe, Meet Dave
Sharon Wildwind
You know that cartoon where the person with an idea has a light-bulb appear over her head? I have an energy-efficient, mercury-free, safe-disposal gigantic light-bulb on over my head.
Last week I wrote about David Mamet’s 7/10th theory that I learned in his book, 3 Uses of the Knife. The second big ah-ha I got from the same book is that I now understand (or think I do) the true purpose of the second act, also known as the mushy middle of novels.
Mushy middle is one of those technical writing terms. It’s where, at the same time, nothing happens and too much happens. It’s where we discover that Mabel can’t possibly know that James was at the Chicago riots in 1968 because we eliminated from this draft the scene where she learned that. It’s where Cal’s twin brother wanders through a scene. Not only didn’t we know that Cal had a twin brother, but we’ve just realized that a) the brother has a even better reason to commit the murder than Cal does and b) a sizable chunk of our plot has gone to heck in a hand basket. It’s where when someone asks us how the book is going, we blink and say, “I have no idea.”
I’m quoting and paraphrasing Mamet here. The words in quotes are directly from the book and the words in the middle are my paraphrase.
“[The true goal of the second act is] when the protagonist accepts the burden of the seemingly commonplace, accepts the drudgery, the necessity of continuing without exuberance or even interest in the proceeding. This is the point at which the play really starts to take on momentum.” The problem with many stories parading as drama is that the middle time of struggle is truncated into a montage of unpleasant events showing the hero enduring a passage of time. “The true drama calls for the hero to exercise will, to create, in front of us, on the stage, his or her own character, the strength to continue. It is her striving to understand, to correctly assess, to face her own character, [to choose her battles] that inspires us—and gives the drama power to cleanse and enrich our own character. … The inevitable yet unforeseen complication [of the final confrontation is] literally brought into being by the quest of the hero in the middle term.” (pages 40 to 43)
I’ve never seen Rocky, the 1976 boxer-as-hero movie starring Sylvester Stallone, but I’ve seen enough clips—one of them of Rocky running up a large outdoor staircase—that I’m pretty sure there is a montage of Rocky training for his big fight. We know that time passes because he gets stronger, and he sweats a lot.
Preparing for a boxing match means not only road work and punching the bag, but it also means going to bed early and eating right. It means that real life doesn’t stop: you still have to pick up your dry cleaning, pay your bills, and fight off a cold. This is what Mamet means by the seemingly commonplace, the necessity of continuing. From a cinematic/literature perspective, the commonplace is really, really dull. Do viewers/readers want to see Rocky turning down dessert or curled up in bed with tissues and a cup of hot medicine? Not likely.
If you are, as I am, a fan of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, you’re going to recognize these four steps from Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (1998):
6. Tests, allies & enemies: explore the special world (Begin Act 2)
7. Approach to the inmost cave: prepares for central battle (Act 2)
8. Ordeal: central crisis (Act 2)
9. Reward: rebirth and begins enjoying having survived (End Act 2)
I think the biggest place that writers get the mushy middle wrong is at step 6: tests, allies and enemies.
Mistake #1: ignoring step 6 or combining it into the montage, where step 7 gets top billing and 6 gets a passing mention.
Mistake #2: self-indulgence — possibly more often seen in speculative fiction than mysteries. I want to share with you this wonderful alternative world that I’ve created. The hero gambols through wonderful sights, exotic food, and maybe some alien sex, but what he’s doing doesn’t have a thing to do with the eventual outcome. Eventually he’s forced to make a rapid change into preparing for the central battle because something forces his hand, and he realizes he’s been lollygagging when he should have been in training.
Where self-indulgence does come with mysteries it’s often where the hero gets exactly the information she needs provided by the wonders of forensics or computer searches.
Mistake #3: no pain, no gain. We’re preparing for battle, so we must be serious. And preparing must hurt. All the time. And the hero must show super-human effort. All the time. And he must sweat. You guessed it, all the time.
So what happens when David Mamet’s accepting the drudgery meets Joseph’s Campbell’s belly of the beast?
We stop seeing the middle of a work as mushy. It’s not about the passage of time, it’s not about quick montages. It’s the place in the story where the hero has choices. She approaches each choice with deliberation. He has fun. She accepts that making a choice or even not making a choice has consequences. And though he and the reader don’t know it yet, those consequences will lead directly into the triumph of the final act. Okay, the reader being intelligent — are readers are very intelligent — knows what’s coming, but the hero is still in the dark
Rocky is eating alone in a restaurant. The waitress asks him if he wants dessert, and tells him that chocolate pie is on the menu. Because we’re good writers we’ve already established in act one that Rocky never met a chocolate pie he didn’t love. He ate a whole one at one sitting, stuffing the whole thing in his mouth so that chocolate custard and pie crust ran down his chin.
He hesitates. You can see the struggle on his face. Is he going to break training or not? He’s only human; he orders the pie. But this time, instead of wolfing it down, he studies it. He picks up his fork. He cuts off a piece, puts it in his mouth, chews, savors the taste. Maybe he eats the whole piece, maybe he eats only a few bites, but however much he eats, he enjoys it. He has fun with it. But wait, are we going to stop there? Let’s not.
As he’s paying, Rocky asks the waitress, “Who made the pie?”
She says, “I did.”
He says, “I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed pie so much. It was wonderful. Thank you.”
In the next scene, when we see him running up those outdoor stairs, we know he’s out there working off that pie, but that scene has a whole different meaning.
If we really want to push it to the limit, we put the waitress in the crowd at Rocky's big fight. Maybe she's only in the novel for one sentence, but the reader will understand the meaning. I told you that readers were smart.
You know that cartoon where the person with an idea has a light-bulb appear over her head? I have an energy-efficient, mercury-free, safe-disposal gigantic light-bulb on over my head.
Last week I wrote about David Mamet’s 7/10th theory that I learned in his book, 3 Uses of the Knife. The second big ah-ha I got from the same book is that I now understand (or think I do) the true purpose of the second act, also known as the mushy middle of novels.
Mushy middle is one of those technical writing terms. It’s where, at the same time, nothing happens and too much happens. It’s where we discover that Mabel can’t possibly know that James was at the Chicago riots in 1968 because we eliminated from this draft the scene where she learned that. It’s where Cal’s twin brother wanders through a scene. Not only didn’t we know that Cal had a twin brother, but we’ve just realized that a) the brother has a even better reason to commit the murder than Cal does and b) a sizable chunk of our plot has gone to heck in a hand basket. It’s where when someone asks us how the book is going, we blink and say, “I have no idea.”
I’m quoting and paraphrasing Mamet here. The words in quotes are directly from the book and the words in the middle are my paraphrase.
“[The true goal of the second act is] when the protagonist accepts the burden of the seemingly commonplace, accepts the drudgery, the necessity of continuing without exuberance or even interest in the proceeding. This is the point at which the play really starts to take on momentum.” The problem with many stories parading as drama is that the middle time of struggle is truncated into a montage of unpleasant events showing the hero enduring a passage of time. “The true drama calls for the hero to exercise will, to create, in front of us, on the stage, his or her own character, the strength to continue. It is her striving to understand, to correctly assess, to face her own character, [to choose her battles] that inspires us—and gives the drama power to cleanse and enrich our own character. … The inevitable yet unforeseen complication [of the final confrontation is] literally brought into being by the quest of the hero in the middle term.” (pages 40 to 43)
I’ve never seen Rocky, the 1976 boxer-as-hero movie starring Sylvester Stallone, but I’ve seen enough clips—one of them of Rocky running up a large outdoor staircase—that I’m pretty sure there is a montage of Rocky training for his big fight. We know that time passes because he gets stronger, and he sweats a lot.
Preparing for a boxing match means not only road work and punching the bag, but it also means going to bed early and eating right. It means that real life doesn’t stop: you still have to pick up your dry cleaning, pay your bills, and fight off a cold. This is what Mamet means by the seemingly commonplace, the necessity of continuing. From a cinematic/literature perspective, the commonplace is really, really dull. Do viewers/readers want to see Rocky turning down dessert or curled up in bed with tissues and a cup of hot medicine? Not likely.
If you are, as I am, a fan of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, you’re going to recognize these four steps from Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (1998):
6. Tests, allies & enemies: explore the special world (Begin Act 2)
7. Approach to the inmost cave: prepares for central battle (Act 2)
8. Ordeal: central crisis (Act 2)
9. Reward: rebirth and begins enjoying having survived (End Act 2)
I think the biggest place that writers get the mushy middle wrong is at step 6: tests, allies and enemies.
Mistake #1: ignoring step 6 or combining it into the montage, where step 7 gets top billing and 6 gets a passing mention.
Mistake #2: self-indulgence — possibly more often seen in speculative fiction than mysteries. I want to share with you this wonderful alternative world that I’ve created. The hero gambols through wonderful sights, exotic food, and maybe some alien sex, but what he’s doing doesn’t have a thing to do with the eventual outcome. Eventually he’s forced to make a rapid change into preparing for the central battle because something forces his hand, and he realizes he’s been lollygagging when he should have been in training.
Where self-indulgence does come with mysteries it’s often where the hero gets exactly the information she needs provided by the wonders of forensics or computer searches.
Mistake #3: no pain, no gain. We’re preparing for battle, so we must be serious. And preparing must hurt. All the time. And the hero must show super-human effort. All the time. And he must sweat. You guessed it, all the time.
So what happens when David Mamet’s accepting the drudgery meets Joseph’s Campbell’s belly of the beast?
We stop seeing the middle of a work as mushy. It’s not about the passage of time, it’s not about quick montages. It’s the place in the story where the hero has choices. She approaches each choice with deliberation. He has fun. She accepts that making a choice or even not making a choice has consequences. And though he and the reader don’t know it yet, those consequences will lead directly into the triumph of the final act. Okay, the reader being intelligent — are readers are very intelligent — knows what’s coming, but the hero is still in the dark
Rocky is eating alone in a restaurant. The waitress asks him if he wants dessert, and tells him that chocolate pie is on the menu. Because we’re good writers we’ve already established in act one that Rocky never met a chocolate pie he didn’t love. He ate a whole one at one sitting, stuffing the whole thing in his mouth so that chocolate custard and pie crust ran down his chin.
He hesitates. You can see the struggle on his face. Is he going to break training or not? He’s only human; he orders the pie. But this time, instead of wolfing it down, he studies it. He picks up his fork. He cuts off a piece, puts it in his mouth, chews, savors the taste. Maybe he eats the whole piece, maybe he eats only a few bites, but however much he eats, he enjoys it. He has fun with it. But wait, are we going to stop there? Let’s not.
As he’s paying, Rocky asks the waitress, “Who made the pie?”
She says, “I did.”
He says, “I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed pie so much. It was wonderful. Thank you.”
In the next scene, when we see him running up those outdoor stairs, we know he’s out there working off that pie, but that scene has a whole different meaning.
If we really want to push it to the limit, we put the waitress in the crowd at Rocky's big fight. Maybe she's only in the novel for one sentence, but the reader will understand the meaning. I told you that readers were smart.
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