Tag Archives: writer’s block

Writer’s Block: An Update

Posted on by
2

More book reviews and a possible solution to my problem.

Back in February, I reported again on a case of writer’s block I’ve been suffering with and what I’d been doing about it. (Refer to “Writer’s Block Still Sucks” in the “Writing for Pleasure” category.) That entry reads more like a series of book reviews than anything else. Here’s an update to that entry.

I finished Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages and The Plot Thickens. I enjoyed both of them; they provided some valuable insight to fiction writing and publication process. Not everything in the books was new to me, but enough was new or expressed in a new way to make them good reads. And keepers. (These days, when I read a book I don’t really care for, I donate it to my local library.)

Another recent read that I didn’t even bother to finish before dropping it off at the library was Norman Mailer’s book about writing. I can’t remember its name. It started off interestingly enough, but then got weird. The play by play review of Last Tango in Paris was probably what put me off the most.

I never returned Pen on Fire. I can’t find it. It has been con-Celiaed. (That’s a double pun. Celia is our Mexican cleaning woman who likes to put things away for us. Trouble is, she doesn’t know where things go. So she puts them where she thinks they go, thus concealing (or con-Celiaing) them. It’s a double pun because con means with in Spanish. I can’t take credit for this pun — Mike’s mother came up with it. I’m not sure if she realized it was double, though.) When I find the book, I’ll take it to the library.

I started, but did not finish, Writing Down the Bones. Natalie Goldberg is a poet. I am not. I don’t care much for poetry and don’t want to write like a poet. I want to tell a story, one that makes readers keep turning pages. Not one that makes readers sigh about my perfect choice of words, remarkable rhythm, or incredible imagery. Besides, one big piece of advice Ms. Goldberg offers is to keep a journal and force yourself to write in it every single day, even when you don’t have anything to write. Stream of consciousness stuff and all that. I believe that kind of exercise belongs in a high school writing class. I think I’m a bit beyond that. The book hasn’t made it to the library yet, but I’m sure it will.

On the flip side is Robert’s Rules of Writing: 101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know by Robert Masello. The book delivers 101 numbered rules, each explained in 2-3 pages. Rule #1 is probably what sold me on the book: Burn Your Journal. Rule #2, Get a Pen Pal, offered some relief for writers who need to jot their thoughts down somewhere after their journal has been turned to ashes. I realized when I read it that these blog entries are a kind of cross between a journal and letters to a pen pal. (You, dear reader, are the recipient of these letters.) I’m not saying the book is perfect — anyone who reads my critiques should know that I’ve seldom found perfection anywhere — but it’s got some useful information in it. I’m about 1/3 finished right now and read a few rules before bed each night.

One piece of advice I’ve read several places (including Mailer’s book and Robert’s Rules of Writing) is to stop reading fiction when you’re ready to write it. So I’m going cold turkey. That’s okay, at least for now. I just finished reading a ton of mystery novels and can use a break.

What have I been reading? Hillerman, for one. My local library numbers an author’s books in the order in which they were published. I started with 1 and got to 16. I can whip through a Hillerman in 2-3 days. Light reading, interesting locations, and the Navajo culture, which is quickly fading away, is/was fascinating. The main thing that bugs me about Hillerman’s work is the way he handles the love interests in his main characters’ lives. One character is completely wrapped up in a string of women who are wrong for him. The other character can’t get past the memory of his dead wife. I feel like slapping each of them on the side of the head.

I subscribed to a magazine called Bookmarks and go through each bimonthly issue for new authors. Not necessarily new authors, you understand. Authors who are new to me. That’s how I discovered John Dunning. The only unfortunate part about his mystery novels featuring bookman/detective Cliff Janeway is that he only wrote four of them. (Maybe five; I’m still looking.) And he’s old, so I can’t expect many more. The first and second were definitely better than the third. The fourth is still out on loan at my local library; it appears that someone else in Wickenburg is worse than me when it comes to returning books on time. I’ll pick it up in the fall.

(I don’t get fines for late books anymore. I’ve donated so many books to the library that I think they’re preparing a separate wing for me. I try to give them money when I’m late and they just won’t take it. I wish they would. It would make me feel better about bringing them back late.)

Megg Morin, my editor from Osborne, has recommended Nevada Barr. I picked book number 1 up at the library but never got a chance to read it, so I brought it back before it would be late. I’ll try again in the fall.

I got wrapped up in Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Now normally, I’m a very fast reader. I can get through most novels in less than 12 hours — which is why I don’t usually buy them. (Hard to spend $8 on a paperback I’ll get through so quickly and probably never read again.) But HBHG is a completely different animal. The book is excruciatingly detailed, with more history than the average person can swallow in casual reading. I’d been interested in the book since I read Dan Brown’s bestseller, The DaVinci Code. I didn’t think the book was well written, but it had a very good story, based on the second half of HBHG. The premise of HBHG is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen and fathered at least one child who escaped with Mary to France. The bloodline is the Holy Grail that the Templars and Priory of Sion were in charge of protecting. All this was in The DaVinci Code, but HBHG goes way further, producing evidence that Jesus may not have died on the cross and lots of other stuff that would really tweak religious folks. The book has dense type, no dialog (of course) and few headings. As a result, it was a slow read. I just finished it yesterday. Very interesting, but I wouldn’t want to debate it with a “born again” Christian.

Which reminds me of State of Fear, which I comments on in February. The book was blasted by a reviewer in Technology Today magazine (which I also recently subscribed to). And he wasn’t picking on Crichton’s poorly developed characters or loose ends. He basically said that the premise on which the book was built — primarily that global warming is a sham pushed on the public by environmentalists — is an outright lie. He produces several instances of Crichton distorting facts and misquoting sources. Now I wonder. Did he mean to do that? Or was he trying, like Dan Brown, to promote a radical theory through the use of popular fiction?

Now for the solution.

If you recall, when I wrote in February, I’d pretty much realized that my writer’s block problem was centered around plot. I hadn’t thought it out all the way and had no firm direction to go when I finally got rolling. I was also losing focus — a fact I realized when reading The First Five Pages. Finally, I had far too many distractions at home for me to get any work done.

The solution was threefold.

First, I went through what I’d written and ruthlessly cut out scenes and parts of scenes. I chopped 1/3 of the work’s length — 10,000 words — right out of the book. If it didn’t move the plot forward, it went bye-bye. (Bye-bye is an Edits file I use to store stuff I chop out that might be used another time.) I gave what was left a read-through and decided on a few more scenes that needed revision rather than cutting. I highlighted those in yellow so I wouldn’t forget them.

Second, I forced myself to sit down and write a list of scenes. It’s like an outline, but not very detailed. It laid the plot out in a way that made it clear how I needed to get from point A to point Z, by listing all the points in between, in order. Along the way, I cut my timeline down so things would happen quicker. Then, knowing that my outline would be an ever-changing thing that I’d add notes to all the time, I created a card file with large index cards, in an organized box. I have scene/plot cards, character cards, clue cards, and note cards. With this system in place, the computer-created outline is now dead and I’ll rely on the cards for all my notes and organization.

Third, I cleared my plate, made a hole in my computer book writing schedule, and left town. I’m writing this on the picnic table of our place at Howard Mesa, with the cool wind in my hair and nothing but my animals to distract me. I’m here for 6 to 8 weeks, working by day on a shed we’re converting into a temporary cabin and by afternoon/evening on this mystery novel.

If I discipline myself enough, I should be able to get both jobs done.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves…

Posted on by
Comment

…and other ranting book reviews revisited.

Just want to say a few quick things that came to mind yesterday evening in the shower, after I’d written too much about all the books I’ve been reading. (I’m referring, of course, to the entry titled “Writer’s Block Still Sucks” in the “Writing – For Pleasure” category.)

First of all, Eats, Shoots & Leaves did indeed make me laugh out loud. Really. More than once, too. But I read a review on Amazon.com where the reviewer absolutely hated the author’s sense of humor.

As for Bird by Bird, I really did get pretty sick of the paranoia and hypochondria jokes the author kept spitting out. It really turned me off to the book. (That and the fact that I didn’t learn anything from it other than the benefit of carrying around a few index cards and a pen everywhere I go.) Yet some of the reviewers on Amazon.com thought the author was outrageously funny.

As for State of Fear, the bestselling author in question really did leave quite a few loose ends in his book. Very untidy.

I have a theory about my reactions to these books. I think my problem is that I read too fast. For example, I can get through a novel in a matter of hours. As a result, the book is still very fresh in my mind throughout the reading process. So when an author makes the same kind of stupid jokes over and over, they really can get on my nerves. And when an author forgets to tie up lose ends, I still remember the end from when it was originally loosened. Someone who reads slower might forget some of these things, or maybe even not notice them.

Of course, I could just be a picky, opinionated bitch, looking for an excuse to make is sound as if I’m not so picky, opinionated, or bitchy.

Whatever.

Writer’s Block Still Sucks

Posted on by
Comment

As unlikely as it may seem to regular readers of these blogs, I’m still suffering from writer’s block.

Writer’s block? How could Maria be suffering from writer’s block? She writes blog entries several times a week and she still writes the computer books that pay the bills. How could she possibly think she’s blocked?

That’s what some of you might be thinking. And frankly, I think it, too. But I’m sure writer’s block is the problem. Sadly, I still can’t figure out what’s causing it.

Back in June, I wrote a blog entry complaining about writer’s block. Back then, I was having trouble writing almost anything I needed to write. No, not needed. Wanted. I couldn’t write anything I wanted to write.

That included fiction and eBooks for an eBook publisher I was writing for.

I still haven’t written another eBook for David. And, what’s bothering me most is the fact that I haven’t written a single new word of the mystery book I’ve been trying so hard to write.

Well, obviously I haven’t been trying hard enough. But let’s not go there, okay?

And this problem is making me feel miserable.

(Of course, it could be the weather that’s making me feel miserable. It’s been cloudy and rainy for a long time now — days, in fact — and I’m really not used to it. I live in Arizona where it’s sunny most of the time. This El Nino weather system we’ve been experiencing is great for the desert and the cattle and the wildlife and the wildflowers. But it’s making me understand why Seattle has the highest suicide rate in the world. It’s depressing!)

The problem is, I have an overwhelming need to write. I think that’s one of the reasons I write these blog entries. Something inside of me demands that I share my thoughts with others. Blogs make it easy. They also give me the freedom to write whatever I want to write about. So I don’t have to write 650 pages about how to use Mac OS X 10.4. (Well, actually, I do. But not in my spare time. Just during that 7 to 3 workday.) I can write about anything. The weather, politics, flying, or having a bad case of writer’s block.

Last time I wrote about writer’s block, someone e-mailed me with a lengthy message that advised me to read a specific book. There was a lot in that message and I put it aside to read it when I had more time. More time never seemed to come. Then I changed e-mail programs. The message and its advice was lost. (That’s another good reason to use the Comments feature on these blogs. I can’t lose a comment.)

Today, I was in a bookstore down in Surprise. (Sadly, the closest real bookstore to Wickenburg is 32.65 miles away.) I browsed the books in the reference section, the ones about writing. I found a few books about writer’s block. One was a psychology book that claimed to explain why writer’s block happened. It had diagrams of brains in it. The type was dense, without headings, and it looked very dull. I was afraid that reading it would give me reader’s block, which would probably be worse. A few other books claimed to cure writer’s block. Well, they didn’t actually use the word “cure” but they clearly indicated that they could help. They help by making you do exercises. One of the exercises chilled me to the bone: “Describe the first time you can remember being very embarrassed.” Who the hell wants to remember that? Writing about bad personal experiences is supposed to make you want to write more? I put the book back very quickly.

I’ve been reading a lot of books about writing lately. Sometime last year, I read On Writing by Stephen King. I was extremely surprised by how motivated I was when I’d finished it. (I wasn’t motivated to write while I was reading it because I was so absorbed in it that I couldn’t put it down.) Following Mr. King’s suggestion, I dedicated several hours every evening to my mystery novel project. In no time at all, I’d knocked off about 90 pages or 30,000 words. And what I’d written was pretty good. Then I ran out of steam. Big time. In fact, I guess you can say that the fire had been put out with ice water.

Then I started reading books about writing mysteries. Perhaps I’d be able to pick it up again when I got some advice from mystery writers. I started one book called…oh, hell. I don’t remember. And I don’t have it anymore. I hated the book so much that I donated it to my local library. The book was going to teach me how to write a mystery by using a sample story the author had come up with. The sample story was so gawdawful that I couldn’t bear to read about it. The poor victim — a teenage girl — couldn’t just be murdered. She had to be sexually abused (or made to look like she was) before being murdered. And the murderer was a wacko. (Obviously.) Sheesh. I could never write about something like that and I didn’t want to pretend I could. So I gave the book away.

Next, I picked up a book called The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery. The premise behind this book is that the reader is a part-time novelist with a busy day job and family. The reader can only spare time for writing the mystery on weekends. So the book set out tasks for 52 weekends. I figured that my time is a bit more flexible, so I could do most weekend assignments in one evening. For example, do a bunch of exercises that would define the detective. The victim. The murderer. You get the idea. I worked on my assignments faithfully for about a week and they really did help me out. But when it got to the point where I needed to come up with notes for scenes, I ran out of steam again.

That gave me the idea that my problem had something to do with plot. I knew what was going to happen, but not all the details. I needed the details to write them. But, for some reason, I couldn’t come up with a good outline.

I tried index cards, Word’s outline feature, and a notebook. I ended up with a bunch of index cards, a half-finished outline, and a lot of scribbled and disorganized notes.

There was something else nagging me, too. All the books I’d read so far assumed that the victim would die before the detective entered the story — or before the story even started. But after 30,000 words, my victim was still alive. And, at the rate I was going, he’d be alive for at least another 30,000 words. That meant I had to edit what I had to become more focused. But, for the record, I still don’t plan to kill him off before my readers get a chance to know him a little.

I started reading other stuff. I read a book called Seven Floors High, which I absolutely, positively, do not recommend. I bought the damn thing from Amazon.com after reading glowing praise about it in the online reviews. What crap! I think that every single review was written by one of the author’s friends or people who work for his publisher. And I really do mean that. There wasn’t anything worth wasting time on in that book. It was poorly written in first person, present tense (of all things!) and had more exclamation points than periods. It was repetitious, had virtually no plot, and was pointless in every sense of the word. It was about a guy who gets a job in telecomm startup in the U.K. The startup looks like a fraud and everyone who works there spends more time drinking and doing drugs than working. And throughout the book, there’s a “secret narrator” who interjects information about U.S. secret spy stuff, etc. Several conversations in the book were engineered just to share otherwise irrelevant information like this as part of the plot. But none of the characters were remotely involved with spy stuff, so none of it fit. It was weird and stupid and pointless. How an author can get a piece of drivel like that published is beyond me. Yet I kept reading, expecting it to get better at some point. Or for the telecomm startup plot to somehow connect with the spy stuff. After all, all those reviewers said such good things. In the end, I felt as if I’d been ripped off by Amazon.com. I will never buy a book based on a reader review again. And this one is so bad, I wouldn’t even donate it to my library. It went right into the trash.

I read some books about writing. Actually, I guess it’s safe to say that I started reading a few books about writing. The first was Bird by Bird. I don’t recommend it. It’s obviously for people who have been rejected so many times that they’re beside themselves with self-pity. The author tries to be funny with jokes about her own paranoia and hypochondria, clearly expecting the reader to feel the same way she does. I don’t. My paranoia is not as keenly developed — at least not yet — and I’m don’t have any undue concerns about my health. So I thought her jokes were pretty stupid, especially when she kept using the same themes over and over throughout the book. I made it about 3/4 of the way through it.

I started The Plot Thickens: Eight Ways to Bring Fiction to Life. After all, I had a plot problem, didn’t I? The book was good — well written and full of good insight — but I just didn’t feel like reading it. (Are you starting to get the idea that my writer’s block problem centers around my avoidance of the plot issue? I am.) So I put it aside about 1/3 finished.

Next, I read a Tony Hillerman mystery and a Dick Francis mystery. I liked the Hillerman mystery a lot. The Dick Francis book was good, but his main character did a few stupid things that nearly got him killed. It’s hard to believe someone smart enough to solve a mystery would be dumb enough to put himself in danger like he did. I’d taken a second Dick Francis mystery from the library with that batch and found myself wishing that I’d taken two Hillermans instead. So I returned all three books without reading the second Francis book. It’ll still be there when I’m ready for it.

I started The First Five Pages, another writing book by the author of The Plot Thickens. The premise behind this book is that there are 19 factors to consider when writing a book — fiction or nonfiction — and that the editor wading through the slush pile will look for these things when looking for an excuse to reject a book. Noah Lukeman, the author, presents the topics in the order they’re most likely to shoot you down. For example, the first five are presentation, adjectives and adverbs, sound, comparison, and style. According to Lukeman, if you screw one or more of these up, it’ll be easy to spot and the reader won’t get past the first five pages. I have to say that I agree with him. His 19 factors are what makes a book work. A writer must be proficient at all 19 of them to produce a publishable book. In reading this book (I got about 4/5 finished before putting it aside), I was able to objectively look at my own work and decide where my biggest problems are: adjectives and adverbs, focus, and pacing and progression. That’s not to say that I’ve got the other 16 factors licked. I’ll probably reread most of this book — perhaps with a highlighter or notebook nearby — to make sure I fully understand the problems and solutions I need to tackle. The only thing I didn’t like about the book were the author’s examples of bad writing. The examples were so bad, they weren’t good examples. After all, does anyone write that bad? (Well, maybe the author of Seven Floors High.)

One interesting thing in that book: plot is not one of the 19 factors. (Perhaps there’s hope for me after all? Nah, you can’t avoid plot in a mystery.)

A friend of mine loaned me a copy of Michael Crichton’s book, State of Fear. I read it. I found the book enjoyable in that it had a plot that moved and it was just far enough from reality to be a good escape. It was full of facts and figures about global warming and, if that information is real, I appreciate having my eyes opened. Now I know Mr. Crichton is a bestselling author and he obviously knows a lot more about writing than I do. But I just can’t stand the way he breaks up scenes with spacing between paragraphs. It’s customary to use additional space between paragraphs to indicate a scene change within a chapter. But he continues the same scene — sometimes the same conversation within a scene — after that additional space! It drives me bonkers. My brain is not prepared for that and I simply can’t get used to it. The other thing he does — which other bestselling authors who’ve had their work turned into movies often do — is to constantly switch back and forth between character pairs or groups within a chapter. This is writing for the movies or television. Although it works well with visuals in the movies — a dinosaur is sniffing around the car where the kids are trapped; switch to rapter pen — it’s pretty annoying when done to the same extent in writing. Maybe it seems like I’m being nit-picky, but this is personal preference. I just don’t like to read books that pick up and drop scenes like they’re hot potatoes — especially when they’re not. One thing I will swear by — and this is after reading so many books about writing in a short period of time — Mr. Crichton has a lot to learn about showing vs. telling. He tells us everything, not giving his reader much opportunity to figure stuff out for himself. But what disappointed me most about this book was the loose ends he left behind: What ever happened to the cell phone the guy in Hong Kong put in his pocket? It seemed so important when I read about it, but it was never mentioned again. What ever happened to the French girl and her American boyfriend? They seemed like important bad guys, but they were never identified and never caught. What happened to the two NERF guys who were so obviously bad guys? Were they arrested? Was NERF brought down? Were they punished for what they did? Which girl did the lame-o lawyer hero wind up with? I suspect it was Sarah, but I can’t be sure. But I guess none of that matters. He’s proven himself as a bestselling author and can write whatever he damn pleases, whatever way he damn pleases. People will continue to buy his work and overlook any shortcomings. Personally, I’m going to re-read Jurassic Park, just to see how it compares with this latest work. I’m willing to bet that JP is a lot better written.

Which brings up another pet peeve of mine: bestselling authors lending their names to series that they don’t even write. I’m talking about Tom Clancy’s Net Force and Op Center books. I got fooled by one of the Net Force books. I thought I was buying a Tom Clancy book, something equivalent in quality to Hunt for Red October. I got a book that read like a made-for-TV-movie, full of side stories that had nothing to do with the plot (who cares about the main character’s son’s soccer game?) and may have been added to increase page count, and a narrative that obviously suspected the reader of having an IQ below 50 (remember: show, don’t tell!). I knew after 20 pages that Clancy hadn’t written what I was reading, but it took a moment for “created by Tom Clancy” on the cover to explain it to me. I guess a bestselling author gets to a certain point when he doesn’t have to write his own books anymore and can still make a ton of money on them. I hope I don’t get to that point — at least not until arthritis makes it impossible for me to write.

Writer’s block, she says? How can she possible have writer’s block. Look at all she’s written in this entry alone! It might be the work of a raving lunatic, but it’s not the work of someone with writer’s block!

Plot. That’s the problem. I need an outline. I need to get motivated. I need to shut myself up in a room without access to the Internet or other work I’ve written or any other distractions and write the outline. I need to stay at it until I’m done.

I use outlines for my computer books. Frankly, I can’t imagine writing one without an outline. It keeps me on track, it tells me where to go next. It also reminds me that I shouldn’t talk about this now because I’m going to talk about it in Chapter 12. Or I already did in Chapter 2. This is no different. It will definitely help me with that focus problem Mr. Lukeman so kindly pointed out.

I just finished another book yesterday. It’s called Eats, Shoots & Leaves and it’s about punctuation. Oddly, it is a bestselling book in the U.K. I’d seen it more than a few times on Amazon.com, while searching for books to help me get over this block, but have always disregarded it. After all, I know punctuation pretty well. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m certainly above average. I don’t consider it one of my writing problems. But last week, when I stumbled into the library, looking for something new to read, I saw it on the shelf of new books. It’s a small volume with a Panda joke on the cover. (Unfortunately, my library stuck a library address sticker over the first two lines of the joke, making it difficult to read.) I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did. It turns out that I qualify as a stickler for punctuation, since I get all hot and bothered when people use apostrophes and quotes incorrectly in signs and headlines. The book was full of information about the history of punctuation, as well as lots of examples of how misused punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence. For example, compare “The convict said the judge is crazy” to “The convict, said the judge, is crazy.” Ouch! Unfortunately, the Brits have different punctuation rules than we do, so the book is of limited use to Americans who need to learn about it. But the author’s sense of humor is great. I didn’t think it was possible to laugh out loud when reading a book about punctuation, but it certainly is. I liked the book so much, I bought an audio edition of it to listen to on long drives (or flights) and a copy in print to send to one of my editors, Cliff, the comma king.

What’s currently on my reading list? Writing Down the Bones is another book about writing that has gotten lots of praise. I’m a bit worried that it’ll be another Bird by Bird, so I’m not rushing into it. Today, I picked up Writing Mysteries (a Writer’s Digest book edited by Sue Grafton) and Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within. I don’t know why I picked up this second book. The inclusion of words like woman and igniting in a book’s title normally raises red flags. I may be a woman, but I don’t see why a woman needs different advice about writing than a man. I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be instructions in here for balancing my family and career or finding time away from the kids to write. I don’t have kids. I don’t really have a family, either. And my career is as a writer — that’s my day job. As for igniting — that’s a stupid marketing word that someone at the publisher obviously wanted to use to punch up the title. (You wouldn’t believe how a publisher’s marketing department gets involved in cover copy when they obviously haven’t even read the book.) Actually, in paging through this book, I realize that I’d better take it back. It’s really not for me.

(Thinking back on this, I realize that I’d picked up this book in the store right before my cell phone rang. It was Rod on the phone and I hadn’t spoken to him in two months, so I found a comfy chair in a quiet corner of Barnes and Nobel and chatted with him for about 15 minutes. Mike came in from Best Buys and read a magazine in a nearby chair while I talked. Then I hung up and we decided to go. I didn’t review the books I was carrying. If I did, I would have noticed the illustration on one cover, which showed a laundry basket, a child’s toys, and a stressed-out looking woman with a pen in her hand. Not a book for me. So I’ll blame it on Rod.)

But Writing Mysteries shows promise. I think I’ll tackle that one next. Or at least after I finish The First Five Pages and The Plot Thickens. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

And about that outline…

I’m sure I’ll get to it soon.

It’s a Mystery to Me

Posted on by
Comment

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.

Work in Progress

Posted on by
Comment

About the work I’ve started that I’ll probably never finish.

I started writing a novel when I was thirteen. It was an adventure/love story, based roughly on an image I’d had in a dream. I wrote it in a series of five college-ruled notebooks, single-spaced, in the crude printed handwriting of a teenager. I actually finished it, although I can’t remember how long it took. When it was finished, it was about five hundred pages long.

It sat in a locked drawer for years. When my family moved, I took it with me. By that time, I’d started another novel, this one about a successful business woman who was targeted for murder by a rival businessman. I was in my late teens when I started it and it was far more mature than the first book. It covered pages in two thick college-ruled notebooks. I never finished it.

In 1984, I bought my first computer, an Apple IIc. One of the first things I did with it was to type the work I’d done on the second novel into the word processor that came with the computer: AppleWorks. The pages filled several 5-1/4″ disks. You know — the old “floppy” kind. I added pages to the work as time went on. I also dug out that first novel and began rewriting it, now with the knowledge of a 23-year-old.

Time went on. In 1989, I bought my first Macintosh. I wasted no time coming up with a method that would transfer all those bytes of fiction from the old computer’s floppy disks to the hard disk on my new computer. It required a special serial cable and a telecommunications program. I basically downloaded the information from one computer to the other. The limited formatting I’d been able to apply in AppleWorks was lost, but at least I didn’t have to retype hundreds of pages of text.

The first novel nagged at me. I worked on it regularly, changing the story but never finishing it. Instead, I started a second book with some of the same characters two years later. Then went back and started a book with some of the same characters a year before the first book. They became named Book 2, Book 3, and Book 1. One of the characters that was supposed to die at the end of Book 3 managed to survive. (He was too good a guy to lose.) He came back in Book 4. And I even have some ideas about Book 5, although I haven’t actually started it yet.

I’ve also written short stories about some of the characters. The stories were written as a means of clearing my head about prior events in a character’s life. You see, all of my major characters had lives before I started writing about them. It’s important to know about those lives to accurately write about each character’s actions and motivations.

What does all this mean? At this point, I have the modern version of an unfinished book I started writing nearly 30 years ago, as well as hundreds of pages of fiction about the same characters. I carry the files around with me on my laptop and keep a backup copy on my desktop computer’s hard disk, as well as in a Backup folder on my .Mac account.

When I’m on the road and want something to read, I open up one of the book files. I enjoy the story very much. Sometimes I read what I’ve written and am proud of my work. Other times, I read passages that I know need to be fixed up. Some of the passages are especially awful; I’m not too vain to admit it. Sometimes I add new scenes. Other times I make minor corrections to existing text. I’ve put hundreds — if not thousands — of hours into this work. But it isn’t done.

At this point, I don’t think it’ll ever be done. It’s a personal work, something I think I write just for myself. It would be great to see it in print, but at the same time, I wonder what people would think of me after they’ve read it. Some parts are very violent, not unlike some of the action/adventure movies that Hollywood keeps churning out. I find it entertaining, an escape from reality. My escape.

I’ve got other novels in progress as well. A bunch of years ago, I started writing a mystery that I got about 5 chapters into before I stalled. Last year, I started another mystery with some of the same characters. These pieces, if I ever finish them, will be marketable and I’ll do everything I can to see them in print.

So when I complain about writers block, as I did in a previous blog entry, it’s my inability to work on these pieces of fiction that’s the problem. Sure, I can write computer how-to books when an editor is waiting for them. The big motivation there is the milestone advance payments that are dangled like a carrot in front of my face. No computer books, no money. No money, no life. Pretty simple. I can also write blog entries because they’re easy and they help clear my mind of the things that clutter it. But fiction? Adding to a work in progress is like squeezing water from a stone.

Anyone else out there in the same situation? I’d be interested in hearing what you do to overcome this problem.