Duck!

By Deborah Sharp
I wonder if Charlaine Harris (she's pictured, left) has to chase ducks out of her writing spot? Or is she so rich and famous from her Sookie Stackhouse books she has someone to do it for her? A duck wrangler, if you will?

I'm thinking about that this morning as I've gotten up for the third time from my Florida porch and run shouting and waving my notebook at a particularly bold Muscovy drake. He prefers my backyard pool -- and its formerly white deck -- to the river only a few waddling duck steps away.

So far today, it's Duck 2; Deborah 0. Not only has he managed to distract me from writing, I also slipped in a smear of duck poo. Splat. Even though Charlaine is a known duck-lover, I bet even she would have conjured up a vampire by now to dispatch this particular duck.

What do my duck issues and Charlaine Harris have in common, you might ask? (I know I am.) She was a a guest of honor at Sleuthfest over the weekend in Orlando. I'm on the board of Mystery Writers of America/Fla. Chapter, which sponsors the annual event. It was one of our best ever. I'm so proud of the many volunteers and board members who do waaaaay more work than I do to make Sleuthfest one of the top mystery conferences in the nation.

Charlaine was incredibly kind and gracious, even sitting in the audience at panels when she wasn't scheduled to speak. As far as I know, she didn't kill a single duck while in Florida.

The point is, all writers have irritations and distractions, even Charlaine Harris. Of course, hers include things like her publisher demanding she do day-long visits to book warehouses, where she must autograph her work over and over (and over and over and over and over and over ...) This is so stores across the globe can be shipped signed copies to sell. So far, I haven't been irritated or distracted in such a way.

What about you? What distracts you from doing your job? What's most irritating about your work? If you're a writer, and not yet as successful as Charlaine Harris, here's a multiple choice answer to get you started:
A) Chasing critters (or family members) from your writing space.
B) Royalty statements that make your tax guy laugh.
C) Spending more at conferences than you make all year.
D) Stretching to make a blog post point by taking the name of Charlaine in vain.
E) All of the above.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? (And Does It Matter?)

"Where do you get your ideas?"

I mean, really, is there any other question so ubiquitous in the life of an author?

That said, it’s also a GREAT question because I know as a reader I often find myself looking up from the page and thinking, “I wonder how the author came up with this?”

After all, since the birth of the Internet we all have access to scads and scads of information. So how can it be that two people might look at the same occurrence or the same news article or the same commentary and then disappear into their offices to write two entirely different books? How can it be that Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse (once called her “Southern Vampire” series) be incredibly different from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight? Which is different from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat? Which is different from Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Which is different from Rosemary Laurey’s Kiss Me Deadly?

Truth to tell, there’s nothing new under the sun. Or, ahem, under the full moon either.

Today I found an old handout from Lou Heckler, one of my favorite speakers. Check him out at http://www.louheckler.com/ It would be difficult to find a more thoughtful, entertaining and erudite platform professional. If you ever get the chance to see him, by all means do. (While you listen, pay careful attention to the structure of his talk. He’s very canny about the order he uses to present and emphasize information. Really, each time he speaks, it’s a master class in the art of giving an effective presentation.) In this particular handout, Lou discussed how “theme” is not the same as “slant.” You see, all those books I mentioned above have vampires as their theme. Each book, however, has a different slant.

Charlaine Harris’s work raises questions about xenophobia, what it means to be human, and whether our prejudices might stem, in part, from our religious beliefs.

Stephenie Meyer’s work takes the form of a romance novel with its extended riff on unfulfilled sexual promise, but she is writing about the trauma of being an awkward teenager.

Anne Rice’s work had a decidedly gothic theme and a religious viewpoint. Their setting—New Orleans—was as vibrant as any character.

Bram Stoker’s work wasn’t the first mention of vampires in literature, but it was probably the great granddaddy of most of what we think about the undead, blood-suckers. Written in epistolary form (diary and newspaper articles provide much of the information), it sprang from the legend of “Vlad the Impaler.” The novel is supposedly a riff on the clash between the new world and the old.

Rosemary Laurey’s work is incredibly romantic and yet very modern. It follows many of the ideals of popular romance novels, but adds in the sort of questions that are part of our zeitgeist.
As I write this, I think of the classes I’ve taught about getting published. Many times students will tell me they fear having their ideas stolen. That’s reasonable. That can happen. But most ideas for books are fungible. It’s the slant, the plotting, and the author’s voice, that make a book unique—and therefore, salable.