Column A

After Beth Groundwater's wonderful post yesterday, I give you a short, simple, writerly tip of the day:

What goes in Column A comes out in Column B.

Several years ago I was cramming to meet a deadline. I had been holed up in my attic writing lair for about three weeks solid when a social obligation arrived out of which I could not wiggle:a long planned dinner with friends. Oddly, they called my significant other the night before and told us to wear sweats. They said they had a surprise.

Oka-a-a-ay. I know these folks, I'm not worried. Maybe a little. But we wore sweats. When we arrived, they served wine, light appetizers and bottled water, and in the other room they had booked a masterful masseuse (pardon my alliteration), and we each took turns for a forty-five minute session. The outcome was that I turned to jelly, went home invigorated, and wrote like the wind for the next two weeks. I finished my deadline on time, and I believe my writing (Column B) improved greatly from stepping away for that massage evening with my friends (Column A).

From The Writer's Life, Insights from The Right to Write by Julia Cameron: One of the mysteries of the writing life is the fact that an investment of interest in column A—say listening to a great piece of music—will pay off obliquely when we set pen to paper on an entirely different topic. Writing is what we make from the broth of our experience. If we lead a rich and varied life, we will have a rich and varied stock of ingredients from which to draw on. If we lead a life that is too narrow, too focused, too oriented toward our goals, we will find our writing lacks flavor, is thin on the nutrients that make it both savory and sustaining. Although we tend to think of it as a linear, writing is a profoundly visual art. Even if we are writing about internal experience, we use images to do it. For this reason, we must consciously and constantly restock our store of images. We do this by focusing on what is around us.

If you are blocked or frustrated today take a minute or twenty for yourself to take a walk, look around. Shut your eyes and listen to music from the viewpoint of one of your characters. Leaf through a magazine and clip items that remind you of your story and your characters. Go to the dollar store and buy one item representative of your protagonist, another representative of your antagonist. Put them on your desk or carry them in your pocket as talismans. Or, get a massage!

Happy writing.

Susan Goodwill

author of The Kate London Mystery Series

Brigadoom:2007

Little Shop of Murders: 2008

How did you start?

Sometimes I have to pinch myself that I'm in the company of authors--that I am an author. Me.

All my life, I've dreamed of "being an author." I grew up talking about writing, loving books. That picture is my mom with her nonfiction book, The Giant Hobby Handbook, published the year before I was born.

Over the years, I've read every book on the subject of writing, subscribed to "Writer's Digest", talked about it, and wrote bits and pieces of stories and oddball poems that I kept in my sock drawer.

As far back as I can remember, I scoured the mystery shelves at my library for the gold sticker that provided this intriguing information: "Agatha Award Nominee."

And now, I call Agatha Nominees like Joanna Campbell Slan and G.M. Malliet my colleagues--my friends. Congratulations to you both.

It's pretty wonderful to hang out here. To be a writer--an author.

Here's how it happened for me:

After all those bits and pieces of writing, I finally started writing every day. I took an inciting incident and a rough mental outline for a mystery and wrote a few chapters, very rough. I'd just turned forty. I guess it was my own weird form of biological clock, but it was that now or never feeling that finally got me moving.

It took a few months after that, maybe a year, but I finally screwed up my courage and joined a local writers' critique group. I pretty much had to. The universe sent me messages until I did. (I stumbled across the same flyer for the same group no less than five times on bulletin boards up to thirty miles apart, then it turned out the group leader was a friend of a friend.)

The workshop gave me a little more nerve, and I moved on to another, more serious, group.

Six months or so later, I took a deep breath and signed up for a ten day intensive novel writers' retreat. I was terrified. I felt like an impostor, but I went. My first trip to that retreat changed my life. I "became" a writer. A year later, on my second trip to the same retreat, I met my agent and signed with her. By now, I had most of my first book written.
My third trip, my first book was completed, and I began work on the sequel while my agent shopped my first book in New York. After a few rejections and a serious rewrite, we sold both books to Midnight Ink.
I've been at it ever since.
The point is this: I was terrified and I felt like a fraud and an impostor, but I went to my first workshop anyway. It was quite literally, the best thing I have ever done for myself. If I hadn't gotten an agent or sold my books, getting serious about writing and getting involved in the writing community would still be the best thing I'd ever done for myself. I have made lifelong friends and begun the career path I never dreamed possible.
How did it happen for you? Or will you make it happen for you?

Facebook!

So, I joined Facebook today. Holy smokers! Holy high tech!
Friends are popping out of the woodwork, and it's making me feel all connected and popular.
I'm in deep doo-doo.
(OMG, Facebook's been around like-- 4-EVER! Susan, U R so slow!)
Anyway, Facebook is simultaneously way powerful--Barack Obama has over 4 million supporters on Facebook --and way a potential time waster--all those games and groups. What about online Scrabble? Is there a Milli Vanilli fan club?
I love the chatty sense of community and the pictures, the videos, the wall writing, and all, but I can see that this could blow Spider Solitaire out of the water when it comes to its ability to gobble up my writing-day job-waking hours (add this to gobbling them up all the other low tech ways I'm already using when not at the computer).
But when I am seated at my magic box, mouse in hand, I can fool myself and others into thinking I am writing or working the day job. That's the danger.
"Can't help you right now, honey. I'm at my computer." Note--I didn't mention working or writing--crafty huh? At the computer smoking electronic crack is more like it.

Lately, I've been playing enough Spider to give myself a severe case of button-itis, the disease that George Jetson came down with from pressing too many buttons. I contend it was one button George pressed--the mouse button. (George is believed to have been a closet Spider Solitaire addict himself.)
But this--this Facebook thingy-- it's a GOOD thing.
Right?

Let's look at the plus side, Facebook has all this potential for a writer: stealthy and not so stealthy promotion, creating an online writing lounge, online critique groups, fan clubs, a dog lovers area, connecting with people who have drafty houses built before 1930. Wait, those last two veered off a tad.
I'm sure it's productive though, right?
Right??

Hey! I just got another friend request, I gotta go...

Inspiration

They say the first step to changing a bad behavior is facing it, admitting it. So, here's my confession: Hello, my name is Susan, and it has been one year since I have written anything significant.
I've talked about it and diddled around with maybe 100 words at a pop. This has gone on for at least the last twelve months. Okay, fourteen.

Most of the folks on this blog sneeze and a hundred words hit the paper. But for some reason, this past year and this book and this all-or-nothing personality of mine have conspired to create a wee bit of some kind of er, ummm…, BLOCK!
There, I said it. And I do NOT believe in writers' block.

Here's the thing: I want to write. I plan to write. It's what I feel I'm on this planet to do. Honest. But every day, I don’t. I can make enough excuses to fill a dozen blogs, let alone this one. The truth is, I've procrastinated because writing is hard, and it doesn’t pay well at this point in my career. The odds are that it will never pay well.

The pay well part is important because I am largely motivated by financial recognition and furthermore, I like to eat.

But here's what happened. The receptionist at my doctor's office left me a voicemail last night. She had just finished my second book, Little Shop of Murders. After the various and sundry appointment information, she launched into a gushing riff on how much she loved Little Shop.

This morning I called to change my appointment. She called my book the best book she'd read in a long time. She proceeded to say that she stayed up until 4:00 AM finishing it. She said that what she loves about my books is that they are funny with a good mystery, but that there is something about them that is just a tiny bit sad underneath. No one else has gotten that yet, but I meant for it to be gotten.

And she asked that I put her first on the list for the next book.

I am bottling that phonecall and putting it on a shelf in the writers' room in my head. I'll take a sip every day and use it to inspire me to get back on track. 2009 will bring another book. I swear.

Anyway, eating is overrated.

So, what keeps you guys going?

Something in the air?

Maybe it's because I'm a Detroiter, but this year there's a different feel to the holiday season. On a drive through the area last night, my significant other, Bob, commented on the lack of Christmas lights on the houses. Most years it seems that every house has something festive-- something to push back the darkness, something that looks warm and inviting on a frigid wintry night.
Of course, there are the dark and vacant windows peppering even the most affluent streets this year. It's hit everyone in the area in some way or another. I know of at least six lakefront homes in the general vicinity (not my closest vicinity!) that were listed for over a million each before the bottom fell out and the owners were evicted.
In the poorer sections of Detroit, the empty houses are often falling down or boarded up. Mostly they don't even bother with the boards any more.
The middle ground between poor and rich is the hardest hit.
Out here in Oakland County, the foreclosures are more subtle than in Detroit, but still easy to spot: they're the ones with the orange or white stickers on the windows that say "Warning! This house has been winterized. Do not use plumbing!"
On the way home from the mall, I counted over a dozen before I gave up. A columnist I know commented that it feels like the whole city is teetering on a precipice. Well said.

I think when we hit this time of year with its longest night, and even more so, when it feels dark in the day, the thing in our DNA that makes us celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa-- the thing that makes us celebrate hope, comes forth. It searches for the image of light and love wherever it can be found.

I have an orchid plant Bob gave me about five ago last September. Since I have a notorious black thumb, it came with his promise to water it as well.
For the last four years, that little orchid has taken it upon itself to bloom on Christmas eve. And bloom it does, like clockwork. The buds are here again this year, getting fuller by the day. It seems to say, hey, don't give up. Look at me! I'm still here. I'm doing what nature made me to do. I have hope.

I intend to take my cue from that little orchid and do what nature made me to do. I will turn toward the light and bloom. I will celebrate hope and love and Christmas and the season of lights.

Happy holidays everyone.

Susan Goodwill

Plot, Place, Character?

In searching for a subject for this morning's blog post, I was glancing through Speaking of Murder—Interviews with Masters of Mystery and Suspense published by Berkley Prime Crime, way back in 1998. I stumbled upon an interview with Elizabeth George where she speaks about her deep "psychic" connection to England. She goes on to say how she starts with the merest kernel of a plot then spends about a week at the location of choice (a spot in the U.K.) to allow the seed to germinate. She often goes back later, as the story develops, to soak up more of the region.

She particularly likes writing about a foreign country because she notices every detail. She goes on to say that when writing about U.S. locations, she doesn’t pick up the same info on her radar. The nuances of every day life, like the type of raincoat a person wears, the food one orders, the newspapers one reads, all are so familiar, the tiny things get lost in the shuffle.

So this started me thinking, how much do you think a sense of place has to do with your story?

I know that most of the authors that post regularly on this blog write series mysteries, so the question of place is often answered in advance. Not always, though. And sometimes, just like similar plots or the same core characters go stale without a new twist, a writer needs to shake things up a bit with their sense of place.

I believe this is why, as a series goes on, we often see characters from a small town take a trip. You see it all the time on TV.

Lucy and Ricky and Ethel and Fred loaded up the car and went to Hollywood. Later in the series, they even bought a country inn. And then, look at "Murder She Wrote." Cabot Cove having beaten out Detroit and Washington, D.C. as the town with the most killings per capita, Jessica Fletcher split for greener (or more bloody) pastures just about every week. But, I think it's safe to say, by that point in the series, the sense of place established by the series traveled with her. Maine in that big black purse, ah-yup.

And take a look at the CSI TV shows, talk about a sense of place! NY, Las Vegas, and Nevada, ne'er the twain shall meet. (Except that one time when Horatio flew to N.Y. He seemed so lost without his shades, but don't get me started!)

When Midnight Ink first considered my book, BrigaDOOM, they asked if I would move the Kate London Mystery Series from the western Michigan coast to Cleveland. Cleveland??

After I finished gasping and got up off the floor, I took a deep breath and explained how inextricably linked a small, blighted town on Lake Michigan's shore was to the characters' sense of self, the stories, and the series in general. The frustrations of an 'almost tourist town' that is unique to that part of Michigan, the feeling of a peninsula, the shortest of summer seasons, the dunes, so many things would change or be lost. I grew up not far from Cleveland, and a person not from Michigan might argue that they are close enough, take it from me, they're not.

Midnight Ink, thankfully, agreed.

So, how strong is the sense of place in what you write? In what you read? What would happen if you moved your protagonist to another town?

November is NaNo Month!

Nine days from today an estimated 100,000 participants will start out on the novel writing journey of a lifetime. Yes, it's NaNoWriMo time again: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

By November 30th last year, more than 15,000 participants had crossed the finish line and completed a 50,000 word rough draft of a novel (of sorts) in thirty days. The remaining eighty-some thousand walked away with a kernel of an idea, a partial draft, a great experience, new friends, or like me, simply used the collective energy to further their own writing goals in their own way.
I like the excitement and camaraderie (or maybe just the misery with company) of all those intrepid fiction kamikazes barreling into the great unknown.
NaNo tends not to be for the published writer, it's more of an exploration, although, several published authors I know participate in some form or another and some participants have worked their NaNo drafts into their first commercially viable published novel--Lani Diane Rich comes to mind.

As if NaNoWrimo wasn't cool enough, self-described as "a global, uproariously fun endeavor, where participants exchange advice and writing tips on the NaNoWriMo website and in real life, with group write-ins held in coffeeshops, living rooms, and libraries all around the world, there's this:
The NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program also takes place in November, offering a similarly exhilarating prose adventure for 12-and-under authors and those taking part in NaNoWriMo as part of a K-12 classroom. In addition to motivation-raising goodies for the young writers, NaNoWriMo provides teachers, youth librarians, and homeschooling parents with resources and curriculum to help get kids and teens excited about writing. In 2007, over 18,000 students took part in National Novel Writing Month's Young Writers Program.
www.nanowrimo.org
Script Frenzy brings the hands-on, inclusive approach of NaNoWriMo to the world of screenplays, stage plays, and TV scripts. Either individually or as part of a writing team, Script Frenzy participants first learn the basics of scriptwriting, including structure and formatting, before rolling up their sleeves and writing their own 100-page blockbuster (or art-house masterpiece) in the month of April. Script Frenzy launched in 2007 and had over 7,000 participants its first year.
In Script Frenzy's Young Writers Program, kids and teens spend March taking part in a fun, four-week online boot camp to help get them up to speed on plot, characters, and scriptwriting conventions. After a month of learning and practicing, they'll try their hand at writing their own movie, play, TV show, or comic book script.

Guest authors are always welcomed. Check out the programs. Maybe offer yourself up to blog or speak. Maybe just participate or lurk.

The enthusiasm and joy of these fledgling writers may be just what you need on a dark and stormy November night.

NaNoNaNo!
Susan Goodwill

Susan Goodwill writes the Kate London Mystery Series published by Midnight Ink

Brigadoom in March 2007

Little Shop of Murders 2008

Try the Wine by Susan Goodwill

Ray Bradbury has always been the author that inspires me most. Not only that, but he truly writes books that have changed the way the world thinks, like Fahrenheit 451 or the Martian Chronicles. His first book, Dark Carnival was released in 1947. His most recent, Now and Forever, was released last year-a sixty year span. Sixty years!
In Zen In the Art of Writing, he captures the true joy he feels at being born a story teller. He relates a story where, as a child of about twelve, he entered a carnival tent. A mysterious magician tapped him on the shoulder with a sword of electric blue flame. "Live forever!" he roared. Ray tells us that at this very moment he new what he would do with his life. He would be a writer and live forever! He's never looked back.
If you haven't read him, you should. If you have, pick him up again. To feel the inspiration of a writer who has such excitement and love for the art of the story is a wonderful thing. May I suggest the vintage Dandelion Wine? It's a fabulous summer blend. Once you decant it, you'll find it as sweet and tangy to the palate as a life of words well lived.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August 2000, Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you'll come along."

You can visit Ray at http://www.raybradbury.com/ .