Tag Archives: fiction

NaNoWriMo ’05

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Maria Speaks Episode 17: NaNoWriMo.

My comments about the National Novel Writing Month project and the NaNoWriMo ’05 Podcast by Darusha Wehm.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Maria Speaks Episode 17: NaNoWriMo

I’ve been listening to the NaNoWriMo 05 Podcast by Darusha Wehm. And I’m really sorry if I just mangled her name.

NaNoWriMo — that’s capital N – A – capital N – O – capital W – R – I capital M – O — is short for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is new to me. The goal appears to be to write a 50,000 word novel during the period of November 1 through November 30. It’s an interesting idea, a sort of forced deadline for procrastinators who don’t have an editor reminding them of a deadline as it approaches.

I subscribed to Darusha’s podcast to learn more. You can subscribe, too, at nanorwrimopodcast.blogspot.com. I’ve found that after each episode, I have some comments I’d like to add. That’s what this podcast is all about. I’ll record it and send it to Darusha and she can decide what she wants to do with it. She did, after all, ask for comments in MP3 format. I’m not sure if she expected them from such a cynical realist. But I’ll try to behave myself and be gentle with everyone listening.

First, let me tell Darusha’s listeners a little about me. I write for a living and have been doing so since 1992. That means I write stuff and I get paid for it. I’ve had over 60 books and literally hundreds of articles published in the past fifteen years.

I mostly write computer how-to books and articles. I make a good living doing what I do, but there’s no rest for the weary. Every time a new version of a software product I’ve written about comes out, I have to hit the keyboard to revise my book. I don’t earn royalties on out-of-print books, and most of my books have gone out of print. After all, the average life of a computer book is 12 to 18 months.

I’ve worked on a number of novels over the years but have never finished one. I think it’s because deep down inside, I fear the rejection of something that’s near and dear to my heart. You see, fiction comes from your imagination and soul. Having an editor say he won’t publish it might hurt. Having an editor turn down a new computer book title, on the other hand, doesn’t faze me in the least because there’s so little of me wrapped up in it.

Maybe I need NaNoWriMo to get my latest work in process novel done. I don’t know. I have some thoughts about the 50,000 words in a month deadline that I’ll get to later on in these comments.

And now my comments about things I’ve heard on Darusha’s podcast.

NaNoWriMo gear?

Darusha mentioned that you can buy NaNoWriMo gear on the NaNoWriMo Web site. That raised a flag. And I may as well start these comments with a bang by pissing off some people.

I visited the nanowrimo.org Web site and maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t understand why they need to raise $110,000. I’m also trying to understand why would-be novelists should be so interested in building children’s libraries in Laos. I’m not trying to say that children’s libraries aren’t a worthy cause. But why do NaNoWriMo writers need to support it? And why not support libraries in their own countries?

Okay, so I’m a cynic. It’s hard not to be one when you’re born and raised in the New York City metro area. It just seems to me that the NaNoWriMo gear you can buy at the Web site does more to serve the people selling it than the people buying it.

You want to write a novel in a month? Do you really need a t-shirt to do it? I don’t think so.

And who are the people running the NaNoWriMo web site anyway? It looks to me like some kind of scam to get wanna-be novelists to fund annual vacations for a bunch of Web programming geeks. There’s no indication on the Web site of any real writing organization behind it.

Sorry.

Supporters

Darusha’s episode 3 talked about the importance of supporters. I couldn’t agree more. And I have some comments to add.

I agree that you cannot write a novel or anything else in your spare time without the complete support of your significant other or family. If you just require support for this one month, it’s easy. Ask for it. Explain how important it is to you. Make them understand that by supporting you, they’re helping you achieve your goal. When you achieve your goal with their help, it’s a team effort. But the ball is in your court: if you get the support you need, it’s your responsibility to succeed. Failure would let down everyone and make it just a little tougher for them to support you next year.

Remember, you can’t completely neglect your responsibilities. Do your best to fit your regular chores into your schedule. Rearrange your schedule if you have to, if you can. Just make sure you fit in the things you absolutely must do — like have dinner with your family or go to work — with enough time to get your writing quota done each day.

If you’re trying to write a novel outside of the NaNoWriMo one-month deadline, getting long-term support from your significant other and family might be a little more difficult. One word of advice: be reasonable. Locking yourself up in a room every evening or morning or whatever and neglecting your responsibilities because you’re writing a novel month after month, year after year is just plain irresponsible and stupid. Don’t do that to the people you love. Don’t do it to yourself. Make a deadline and stick to it. And take off enough time during the writing process to keep your life alive.

Novel writing software

Episode 4 talked about tools. Darusha specifically mentioned the phrase “novel writing software.”

I’m sorry, but isn’t any decent word processor an appropriate tool for writing a novel?

This reminds me of an e-mail I got from a guy who wanted to start writing computer how-to books. He asked me to recommend some book proposal software. I told him to try Microsoft Word. That’s what I use and it hasn’t failed me yet.

Here’s the point. There’s no special software that’ll make you a better writer — unless it comes with a creative writing teacher who can critique your work and offer tips for making it better. You can fool around with writing software all you like and it all comes down to your own capabilities. Either you can write or you can’t. Either you have a good idea that you can form into an interesting plot or you can’t. Either you can write realistic dialog and good descriptive prose or you can’t.

That’s not to say that you can’t get better. The best way to be a better writer is to read more, write more, and listen to feedback about your work by people who know what they’re talking about. That doesn’t include your spouse, aunt Tillie, mother, or fellow writing club member — unless one of these people has already had his or her fiction published or works in the industry.

But novel writing software? I looked at CopyWrite, the software package Darusha suggested. It doesn’t look like something you could pick up and start using effectively without a lot of experimentation. So don’t run out and start playing with it now, especially with the NaNoWriMo clock ticking. Use your favorite word processor to write. It has a word count feature built in. And take notes on index cards. Big ones or small ones — your choice. They’re easy to sort, modify, and read. That’ll help make your downtime — like the time you might spend on a bus or train on your way to work or the time you spend at lunch — more productive.

And that brings up something else. Writing a novel is more than just typing words 2 to 4 hours a day until you’re done. It’s planning and plotting. It’s creating backstories for your characters so they’re real. It’s including little details that make your work come alive. When you’re not sitting at your desk, typing away to meet your NaNoWriMo deadline, open your eyes and look around you. Take notes about what you see. Use the index cards. You can put them in your purse or a jacket pocket. Make the most out of all your time, not just the predefined writing time you’ve set aside for this project.

NaNoWriMo forums

Darusha’s Tools podcast also mentioned the NaNoWriMo forums. I visited those on the Web site, too. And here’s my sad report: There are literally hundreds of thousands of posts. My question: why aren’t these people working on their novels? I know from experience that fooling around on the Internet is a great way to procrastinate. Cut it out! Get to work!

If you feel you absolutely must participate in these forums, set a time limit for yourself each day. Something like 15 minutes. Remember, if you type 50 words a minute — which is probably pretty average for someone who actively participates in Internet forums, in those 15 minutes, you could have typed 750 words in your novel. If you wasted an hour in a forum, that hour could have been spent meeting your word count quota for the day.

The good thing about podcasts is that you can listen to them while you’re doing something else. Like driving the car, taking a shower, or working out. So if you must get an Internet fix, do it with podcasts. That’s another way to make the most out of down time.

Backup plan

Darusha also talks about having a backup plan — that is, a plan to backup your novel files. This should be a no-brainer, but I’m sure it isn’t. Most people probably don’t even think of backing up important files — until those files have been wiped out by a hard disk crash, virus, or fire.

Back up your important files. Period. It doesn’t matter what kind of files they are: accounting records, contact databases, or word processing files containing your novel. If you’ll miss it when it’s gone, back it up so you won’t lose it.

Darusha makes some good suggestions for backing up. The main idea is to have an offsite backup. That means backing up on a computer or other device that isn’t sitting right next to the computer where the data lives and breathes. What good is copying your important files to a CD once a week if you store the CD next to your computer? When the burglar steals the computer, don’t you think he might take the disks with him? When the fire breaks out because your superfast, undercooled computer processor got too hot for its own good, don’t you think everything around the computer will burn, too?

Okay, so it isn’t likely. But it is possible.

It’s odd because I was sitting at my desk finishing up for the day while I was listening to Darusha’s podcast in iTunes. Just as she was talking about backing up, I was setting up a folder on my publisher’s FTP server to back up my current work in progress. That folder is accessible by me, both of my editors, and my indexer. I made sure my editors knew why it was there. You see, I’m also a helicopter pilot and there’s always the possibility that I might not match successful landings to take-offs. If something happens to me, I want my editors to be able to get someone else to finish the job without reinventing the wheel.

Check with your ISP. Chances are, you have space on your ISP’s server for your own Web site or something like that. Use that to back up your important files. All of them.

Well, that brings me through Episode 4 and I’ve already said nearly 2,000 words. (Hmmm, if I were writing this for NaNoWriMo, I’d already have my quota met for the day.) But I do have one more thing to say, and that’s about the whole idea of NaNoWriMo.

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo because you see it as a great way to meet the challenge of writing a novel before a specific deadline, great. You must know what goes into writing a novel and see that it’s more than just the challenge of getting words down so they can be read.

But if you’re participating just to see if you can write 50,000 words in a month, stop and think about it. Are you writing 50,000 words that someone else might want to read? In other words, are you crafting a novel or doing what 100 monkeys at keyboards could do?

My point is this: if you want to be a novelist, it takes more than just saying you’re one and typing 50,000 words as a way to prove it. It takes planning, creative genius, writing skill, and a lot of hard work. NaNoWriMo is one way to see if you can meet deadlines. But there’s more to being a novelist than meeting a deadline.

Do I think it’s possible to write a publishable novel in a month. Yes. The people who do it regularly are referred to in the industry as hacks.

Heck, I’ve been referred to as a hack. But there’s something magic about seeing your name on the cover of a book in a bookstore. Even after the 60th time.

Good luck!

On Blogging and Podcasting

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Episode 7: On Blogging and Podcasting.

Everyone has a different idea of what blogging and podcasting is for. I thought I’d take a few bytes to explain my views. It’ll help readers and listeners understand what motivates me to share the information I share.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Maria Speaks Episode 7: On Blogging and Podcasting.

Everyone has a different idea of what blogging and podcasting is for. I thought I’d take a few bytes to explain my views. It’ll help readers and listeners understand what motivates me to share the information I share.

My blogs and podcasts are separate and, in most cases, do not overlap. This entry is one exception; it’ll appear in both.

My blog, which is called Maria’s WebLog, contains over 270 entries written since October 2003. These entries cover a wide range of topics dealing with my everyday life and opinions about what I see going on around me.

I consider Maria’s WebLog to be an online journal. My main purpose is to share my experiences and views with readers. Part of it is to journalize my life so I can remember events in the future. The other part is to let my friends and family members know what’s going on in my life. I’m surprised when I meet someone and they tell me they’ve read my bLog. They’re welcome to read it, but they need to understand that I’m not writing it for them. I’m writing it primarily for me.

I don’t know how many people actually read my blog because it’s hosted on my .

Mac account and there isn’t any stat software for me to track it. But it appears that it is widely read by people all over the world. (If you’re reading it now, you might want to take this opportunity to use the Comments link to check in with your name and location, just for kicks.)

Some people read my blog entries and are offended by them. I think that’s pretty funny. There are so many things in this world that are far more offensive than anything I could write. But these people focus on a comment or observation or opinion I made in these blogs and use it as evidence that I’m some kind of evil person. Whatever. I think people like that need to get a life.

I made an entry the other day that left people wondering whether my entries were truth or fiction. What do you think?

One more thing about the bLog. I maintain it using iBlog software, which is a Macintosh-based blogging client. iBlog is a really cool little software package because it runs on my Mac and does not require access to the Internet to use. Instead, it keeps a database of all my blog entries as I write them. When I’m ready to publish, I connect to the Internet and click a button. This was really useful when I took my laptop to my place on Howard Mesa, which is off the grid. I’d just hit the coffee shop in Williams a few times a week and use their wireless access to update my blog and check my e-mail.

Maria Speaks is my podcast. For the folks reading this transcript in my bLog, here’s a brief definition. A podcast is an audio recording saved in a format that can be listened to on a computer or MP3 player, like an iPod. I call my podcast Maria Speaks because it’s me talking and I couldn’t think of a better name.

My idea of a podcast is that is should share useful information with listeners. After all, that’s why I subscribe to and listen to podcasts.

For example, I’m a big fan of NPR and now that I’m not tuned in all day, I like to listen to NPR stories as podcasts when I’m driving or flying.

I’ve tried a bunch of podcasts that I thought were a waste of my time. I don’t listen to them anymore. If there’s no value in what I’m listening to — if I can’t learn something or be entertained by something I can’t hear elsewhere — then what’s the purpose? There are too many podcasts full of talking heads that aren’t saying anything worth listening to. I don’t want my podcast to be like that.

So when it came time for me to do my own podcast, I had a choice. I could either vocalize my existing bLog entries by reading them — like I’m doing here — or I could create new content of interest to listeners. Since I don’t think my bLog entries are informative enough to attract listeners, I decided to go with new content.

I make my living writing about computers and there’s always some tip or trick I could share. So I decided to focus on computer-related topics, including tips and tricks for being more productive. I’m primarily a Macintosh user, so most of my podcast entries are about Mac computing, although I did publish a cross-platform episode about Microsoft Word yesterday. And because I’m not comfortable recording without a script, each episode has a transcript available online, complete with screen shots if necessary.

Please don’t get the idea that Maria Speaks will only be about using computers. I hope to come up with other interesting topics to enlighten listeners. I also encourage all listeners to visit the Maria Speaks home page and leave comments about what they’ve heard. Was the episode helpful? Not helpful? Boring? Interesting? What do you want to hear? All I ask is that you be gentle with me. Harsh comments don’t get results.

You can find links to the home pages for Maria’s WebLog and Maria Speaks on my Web site, www.aneclecticmind.com. Those pages include links for subscribing to the RSS feeds for both.

Well, as usual, I hope you found this episode interesting. You can read its transcript on Maria’s WebLog. Thanks for listening. Bye!

Feedback? No Thanks!

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I remove the Feedback links.

I just deleted the Feedback links from this blog. Why? Because someone used it to try to sell me something.

Sheesh.

Get this. This guy writes me an e-mail message commenting on my articles about Wickenburg. Some of them are pretty good, he says. (Gee, thanks.) Then he comments about the only piece of fiction I wrote that appears on my Web site, telling me that it “needs work” and suggests adding a serial killer. (I can’t make this shit up.) Finally, he gets around to his real purpose for clicking that Feedback link: to suggest that I read a book that I suspect he wrote and self-published. Except he doesn’t call it a book. He calls it a “story.” And he provides a link to a Web page about the book.

I read the message four times, trying to figure out if I knew this guy. After all, he wrote to me as if we’d already met. And insulting a stranger’s writing isn’t a good way to score points with them, so he must have already known me. Right? So I wrote back, telling him I was trying to figure out why he was trying to sell me a book. I also asked if I knew him, apologizing, in advance, if we’d met and I’d forgotten him. (I forget people all the time.) That’s when he got kind of huffy and apologized for taking up my time.

End of story.

I deleted the message. And I deleted the Feedback links. I’ll also be deleting my e-mail address from my Web site when I get back to my office on Monday morning.

But I can’t help wondering how many other people he contacted, out of the blue, to try to sell his book to.

Some people really do need to get a life.

Old Stuff

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I re-read some very old work.

I just spent an hour re-reading portions of a novel I was working on back in the 1980s.

The files are on my laptop and I know how old they are because I read the creation date of the files — August 1989 — and know for a fact that they date before that. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, they were originally written in longhand on yellow legal pads when I had my first job, right out of college. That would set the date at around 1982 or 1983. More than twenty years ago.

I probably typed them into my first computer, an Apple //c, not long after I bought it in 1984. I used AppleWorks back then. Then, when I bought my first Mac in 1989, they were probably among the batch of files I transferred from the Apple //c to the Mac IIcx via a specially-constructed serial cable as an upload into Microsoft Works. Somewhere along the way, I converted most of the files to Word format, but a few of them are still Works files. Word will open them, but there are a lot of extraneous characters that need editing out to make the work really readable.

I don’t really want to discuss the work here. I will say that it’s one of several novels I never finished and it really isn’t bad. It isn’t good, either, though. I know there’s more to it — still on yellow legal paper — somewhere in a box downstairs. I remember reading it not long ago when I was cleaning out a closet. It was never typed into AppleWorks. I probably lost interest in the piece before the typing was done.

I typed much slower in those days — only about 20 words per minute — and I remember how tedious all that typing was. I’m much faster now — probably 80 to 100 words per minute — and I actually type much faster than I write longhand. Maybe someday I’ll finish typing it all in, just so I can have some more aging computer files to look back on.

My PowerBook has just about all the fiction I’ve ever written and put into digital format stored on its hard disk. The backup is on my desktop Mac back at my office and on my iDisk storage space. I don’t write fiction in the office. And I don’t write computer books on my laptop.

Of all my fiction, I’ve only put one short story online. It’s a story about some of the characters from yet another unfinished novel. A back story, turned into a short story. I have a bunch of those back stories, but the one I put online is the only one I wanted to share with others. That story is also old — at least 5 years, according to the creation date of the file on my laptop. But then again, that might not be the original file. It could be older. Maybe I should date my work so I can tell how old it really is, even after file creation dates get changed by software updates and the like.

I think I’ll dig out those yellow pad pages again. I’d like to read the rest of what I wrote.

It’s a Mystery to Me

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A little bit about the mystery novel I’ve been working on (or not working on) for the past year.

About a year ago, I started writing a mystery novel. It’s the same novel I mentioned in the entry titled “Writer’s Block Sucks” earlier in this blog. I haven’t added a word to it since then.

The book’s characters are very strong, based roughly on people I knew not too long ago. They were odd people with odd relationships, the kind of people who would be memorable in a novel. I haven’t seen these people in over two years now, but my memories of them are very clear — especially the memories about their unorthodox attitudes and behaviors. In recreating them for fiction, I changed them enough to avoid a lawsuit if the work ever got published. The similarities remain, but there’s not enough of them for any of the people to say, “Hey, she’s writing about me!” Even I’m in the book, changed enough to be barely recognizable. My character is both secondary protagonist (or sidekick) and suspect.

The protagonist or detective is completely fictional. From New York, he’s well-off and lives a comfortable Manhattan life. Yet his wealth is relatively new and he’s down-to-earth. He can mix well with all kinds of people. And the southwest town environment he’s in for this novel is a true test of his ability to adapt. His name is John and he’s a first-person narrator. In writing about the small town of Coyote Springs as seen through his eyes, I explain small, southwest towns like Wickenburg as seen by New Yorkers. It’s a view I had when I first came here, but is quickly fading as my memories of New York fade away. Part of what I’m trying to achieve in this work is to capture the wonder and disbelief I felt about the southwest years ago and document it for all time.

When I started this work, I wrote quickly with only a handful of notes to guide me. I knew who the characters were, I knew who was going to die, I knew who killed him, and I knew why the murder was committed. I also knew motives for a few other characters (red herrings). The words came quickly as I developed scene after scene. Some scenes did what they were required to do: provide background information and move the plot forward. Other scenes developed character relationships and shared information about the fictional setting with readers.

About 100 pages into the work, I stalled. And I remain stalled, to this day, right there.

A little writer’s block is normally nothing to be worried about. I’d had it before and I’ll have it again. I usually snap out of it within a few weeks, depending on what I have to write. If I’m writing a computer book, I snap out of it in a day or so — I have to if I expect to continue earning a living. But a work of fiction, with no buyer lined up for the finished product, is different. There’s no one prodding me for more pages, no one asking when the next chapter will come. There’s no milestone advance check dangling in front of me, like a carrot on a stick. There’s no real reason to finish.

But I wanted to finish this work. I wanted to try to get it published. I’d read a lot of mystery novels and I felt strongly that I could craft a story with characters, puzzle, and plot that was just as good as most of them — and better than quite a few. Still, I remained stalled.

I thought about what had gotten me started in the first place. It was a combination of things. One was the idea of killing someone I couldn’t really kill. No, I couldn’t murder someone I didn’t like, but I could, in writing, tell the story of how a fictional representation of that person was killed. And, along the way, I could entertain and educate readers. And write something other than computer how-to books and articles.

The other thing that motivated me to begin was a Stephen King book. No, it wasn’t one of his horror books. Although I was a big fan of Stephen King years and years ago — when his first novel, Carrie, came out, in fact — I hadn’t read any of his work in years. But while browsing the bookstore shelves, I came across a nonfiction book he’d written: On Writing. I bought it and devoured it (with my eyes, not my teeth) in just two days. It was an excellent motivator for me. It told the story of how he’d gotten started and the way he works. It then provided guidance for writers that didn’t talk about grammar or usage or any of the nonsense many writer’s guides go into. (If you can’t structure a sentence, you shouldn’t be a writer.) The other thing conspicuously missing from the book: exercises. Stephen King wasn’t leading a “how to write a novel” course. He was telling the reader about his experiences and what he thought worked. And, given his record, that’s something worth reading.

When I finished On Writing, I felt charged up and ready to go. And I did. I wrote about 100 pages in less than two weeks. But that was it.

I tried to analyze the problem. I knew I had scenes to write, but I was worried that the plot wasn’t progressing at a fast enough pace to keep the reader interested. I felt that the problem I was posing was too easy to solve, that the murderer would be too obvious. I made notes about other character relationships, building stronger motives for other characters. And when all that thought and note-taking didn’t help, I hopped onto Amazon.com, shopped around, and bought a few more books about writing. I hoped that some of them would motivate me.

Among the books I bought were books specifically about writing mysteries. I read a few of them right away. One of them said something that chilled me to the bone. It said that if you wrote without being fully prepared, you’d get about 95 to 100 pages into your story and stall. At the time, I didn’t know how far I’d gotten, but I whipped out my laptop and checked. 98 pages. Sheesh. How did he know?

All the books made one important assumption: that the murder had been committed before the novel opens. In fact, they all seemed to assume that the story opens at the scene of the crime, with the body still in place.

My mystery doesn’t start like that. In fact, 100 pages into the novel, the victim is still alive. I’ve been giving that a lot of thought. Why isn’t he dead yet? Why haven’t I killed him? My conclusion: I’m developing his character along with the others. I want the reader to feel like I do: that he deserves to die. But in reading these how-to books, I realize that may be a mistake. To make a reader care about solving the murder, you have to make him care either about the victim or about clearing the name of a suspect he likes. Although I’m establishing one character as a likable suspect, one that the reader doesn’t want to see as guilty, I shouldn’t waste pages making the victim so unlikable.

In looking at my notes, I realize that at least another 50 pages will go by before my victim dies. That’s something I need to fix.

Years ago, I had a friend who was passionate about becoming a fiction writer. She wrote short stories, novels, and other works of fiction after work. She frequented writer’s message boards on BBSes (before Internet mailing lists), and spoke up about what she believed. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a very good attitude about the business of writing. In her mind, editors were evil and their sole purpose in life was to destroy the work and moral of writers through extensive editing and rejection. When she quit her job to write full-time, I knew what the outcome would be. I was right: a year later, she was deep in debt and still hadn’t sold a single piece of work. I don’t know where she is now or what she’s doing, but I’m pretty sure she’s not making a living as a writer. Yet there was one thing I remember her saying, one piece of advice that I can’t argue with: “If you can’t go forward, go backwards.”

I don’t know if I understand that statement the way she meant it, but it does make sense to me. If you can’t continue a story, there must be something wrong with what went before it. Go back to previous pages and examine them. Where did the plot take the wrong turn? Tear out the bad pages and write new ones.

The idea of discarding something you’ve written is sometimes referred to as “killing your darlings.” It’s a fact of life: when you write something, you often fall in love with it. It’s difficult to discard it, never to use it again. But a real writer — a professional who cares about the final product — shouldn’t be so in love with her work that she doesn’t edit out what doesn’t work. So I need to do some editing.

I have a plan of attack on my novel that isn’t fully fleshed out yet. Basically, I plan to ruthlessly cut away scenes that aren’t moving the plot forward. Some of them can be salvaged. For example, there’s a scene where John is taken on a tour of the ranch. Later, he takes a horseback ride that covers some of the same territory. Some of the places he sees on both trips are important later in the novel. But do I need to talk about them twice? No. I can cut out his first tour and keep the later one (not written yet). I can use some of the descriptions I’ve already written when I write the new material.

Another goal: kill the victim by page 50. Now I know I just told you that all the how-to books say the book should open at the murder scene with the victim already dead. But I’m not writing a murder mystery that’s just a puzzle for the readers. My story is also in entertain and inform. To do the job properly, I need to develop relationships between characters. And I can’t do that if one of the main characters is dead. Besides, I believe that by bringing the narrator into the story before the murder, I’m giving readers a clearer vision of what the events leading up to the murder are. They see what’s going on because the narrator sees what’s going on. The facts aren’t brought forward solely by the detective having question and answer sessions with witnesses and suspects. Instead, the reader is in on the plot.

Besides, I’ve read plenty of mysteries that started out with a live victim, so there’s obviously more than one way to get the job done.

But although I write for a living, I don’t write mystery novels for a living. That means I need to take care of my day job — writing computer how-to books and articles and building a helicopter tour business — first. To further complicate my life, a tenant recently trashed a rental property I’m trying to sell, and I’ve been spending a lot of time there, cleaning up her mess and dealing with contractors. So I don’t think I’ll be writing much more about Coyote Springs over the next week or two.

But I’ll be thinking about it, and that’s the most important part of writing any complex plot.