The LadyKillers

From Mary Anna - Does "initiation" mean the same as "hazing"? Eek.

We're talking about initiation this week at The LadyKillers, and my brain is talking to itself again.  It can't decide which meaning of "initiation" to highlight.

How well I recall my sorority initiation, standing in the hallway in my slip, blindfolded, waiting for someone to slip my arms into the secret robes of sisterhood.  The process took forever, because there were 59 of us to be initiated, and the blindfold made me hyperaware of sounds.  We weren't allowed to speak and it was midnight, so there wasn't much to hear, only rhythmic rapping sounds that didn't fit into my image of the comfortable sorority house where I'd taken my meals for months.  Only when it was my turn did I learn that those sounds were the secret knock, repeated again and again for each initiate  ahead of me in line.  We were queued up in alphabetical order and my name started with an "S," so I'd been listening to that knock for quite some time.  I can't tell you what it is, nor can I tell you what happened when I went through the door, because then I'd have to kill you.  Or, more likely, some sister might have to kill me.  These are secrets one takes to the grave.

So maybe I should talk about initiation in terms of how I start a new book.  (And it's really past time for me to do that.  Ack.)  It's a straightforward process.  I talk about possible plots and settings with my editor, Barbara.  Then I read as much as I can about the setting and its archaeology until a story forms in my head and I start to hear my characters' voices in my ear.  Only then can I initiate something as huge and daunting as a book.  First, I have to get ready.  I have to prepare myself, just as young sorority initiates must don new robes and wait for an invitation to learn a society's secrets.

To my Phi Mu sisters out there--and to everybody else, I wish for a you a future of new beginnings, longstanding secrets, and friendship.

Mary Anna

Starting a new story

 

-from Susan

At a party the other night, a woman I’d just been introduced to said brightly, “I could never write a book. I mean, where do you even get your ideas? How do you start?”

The noise level was high, her comment was merely party chatter, and we had moved on to other topics within a minute. Knowing she wasn’t an aspiring writer, I didn’t try to answer the question seriously, just murmured something about ideas being all around us. But for LadyKillers, I will offer a few parts of an answer that shifts, deepens, and changes over time for me. I’d like to hear others’ answers too.

1. Ideas really are all around us. I think writers are observers, standing back from the world a bit, listening (okay, eavesdropping), watching how other people interact, noticing oddities in the news, and people’s behaviors. It seems to come with the writing gene.
2. Our imaginations are healthy. If you’ve been to a writers’ conference, you’ve heard at least one panelist explain the “What if…?” habit. I see a skinny man at the ATM who’s shifting from one foot to the other, holding his cigarette in a curled hand as if to shield it from other people’s view, and glancing jerkily over his shoulder every few seconds, and I can’t help it. “What if he’s waiting til foot traffic dies down to rob an ATM user? Or install one of those ATM hack machines? Or plant a bomb?” He becomes a bad guy in my imagination and a physical model for a character whose crime could start a new story.
3. Writing is an itch that must be scratched. Starting’s not so hard for us, even if the start turns out to be a false one, as Michael’s story yesterday shows. We write because it’s essential. It’s our way of being in the world.
4. We crave attention for our stories. Why else would we keep at it when the first draft caves in the middle, or the complicated rationale for the crime threatens to morph into nonsense, or the editor wants a fifth rewrite?

We start because the wished-for outcomes – if not fame and riches – are readers who get a weekend’s pleasure from what we’ve worked on, and who tell us they never guessed who did it, and because we got to tell the story of the desperately ill man whose calloused hand curled around the cigarette to shield it from the rain, and whose wife never met him at the ATM because she had been kidnapped….Ooops, there I go.

Bye for now. I have a story to start.

 

First Books... and Turkey

So, technically, today's post is supposed to be all about first books. And while it will be that, I would like to add a little dash of thanksgiving, because now, years later, I can be truly thankful for the horrendous series of events that brought about my first book. But first, a little background...

I was in the second grade when I put aside childish dreams of being a spy/cartoonist/veterinarian to follow the calling that pulled my ear each night: writing. I had things to say, things the world needed to hear. Granted, the first one was about penguins afloat on an iceberg and the second a book about time-traveling orphans and an easy-going beach-comber. Hey, I said I had things to say that the world needed to hear; I didn't say they were things anyone wanted to hear.

Anyway, the dream continued on through grade school, through a middle-school stint where everything I wrote featured some kind of coming-of-age segment (braces, menstruation), through a melancholy high school Sylvia Plath phase, through a collegiate change-the-world phase and off into the real world. Post graduation, I figured I would take an indiscriminate day job while pushing out the Great American Novel at night. How hard could it be?

Ten years later, I knew. It was hard. Really freakin' hard. So, being unattached and with the minimum of responsibilities, I quit my job. It's now or never, I told myself.

And then I broke up with the man I planned to marry.

And then my house burned down.

And then I found myself over thirty and back in my salmon-pink childhood bedroom, cuddling my ratty old teddy bear underneath a poster of The New Kids on The Block, their smiling mugs still glossy with Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers.

I was miserable at that time in my life. I was lonely; my sole possessions were a sequined halter top, a left shoe, and the clothes I wore on the day of the fire. I lost everything. But it took losing everything - everything - to be reminded of my purpose in life. I was going to write. I was supposed to write. And for that tiny realization, that small certainty, I wast thankful.

I was also a slow learner and ridiculously hard headed (hence the need to have my entire house burned down), but that's beside the point. Now, four years later, my life is nearly unrecognizable from the salmon-colored one. I write. I go on book tours. I have my own home and a wardrobe that includes far more than that sequined tank top, but above all, every single day, I'm thankful.

My first novel, Rebound Guy, came out of that miserable experience. I snagged my agent with it, and although it never sold (though it is currently available as an ebook on Amazon), it was the novel that got me on my feet again, pointed me in the right direction. I was never a woman who thanked the universe for small favors. But now, so many years later, I don't wait for the day the turkey pops out of the oven, the day the top button pops off my pants: I make it a point to be thankful for every day, for every person and every experience that brought me to my current state. Because good or bad, I know with my whole self that I am exactly where I'm meant to be.

With that, I wish a happy Thanksgiving to you all and I hope that you all take a moment today to think about what it is you are truly thankful for.

 

Is it the End or the Beginning?

Ending are tricky.  Not just writing them but also identifying them.  Everything that seems like an end: a graduation, a harvest, a fire or flood, even a death, can be viewed as a beginning.  The idea that events are linear is actually a strange and recent one. (By recent you understand that I mean anything less than 500 years ago).  And it’s really only in Western culture that this odd idea exists.  It must have taken a great deal of effort to convince people not to believe what they saw - that everything in life is a cycle. 

In the Middle Ages, the concept of a Wheel of Fortune (no letters involved) was everywhere.  Not even kings or popes were exempt.  The seasons turned, the stars revolved in yearly patterns.  Everything moved in a circle or a spiral.  In religion and philosophy, not just Christian, each event resembled one past and presaged a similar one to come.  Even death was definitely not at end but a gateway into something probably wonderful.

So what has this to do with writing?  To my medieval mind, everything.  Ending a book is more of a pause, generally occasioned by a deadline and/or the need to feed oneself and one’s family.  With my Guinevere books, I was really ready to make an end.  I took the story long beyond the death of Arthur, killed off the main characters and most of the minor ones. (There was a convenient plague about 540ce) I was sure the story was over.  Other people didn’t think so.  I was asked for short stories about bits I hadn’t talked about enough.  Some people even wanted a prequel. 

Well, I was young then.  I didn’t understand about endings.  Now I know that whatever I write won’t be finished, even when it’s taken away from me and published.  One of the joys I’ve recently found, that is when I master the technology, is that I can rewrite my earlier books as they are digitized.   I’m looking forward to adding photos, music, editorial comments and, maybe, even alternative endings.

 

As a serious codicil to this, I have been reading reports about how Terry Pratchett, in my opinion the most brilliant writer of my generation, has decided to end his life before his Alzheimer’s robs him of his amazingly wonderful mind.  It breaks my heart but I think I would do the same.  After all, I do believe that nothing ever really ends.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203622/Ill-die-endgame-says-Terry-Pratchett-law-allow-assisted-suicides-UK.htm

 

[Sharan argues this particular point of view about our inablity to believe in endings in her recent non-fiction book THE REAL HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD  Berkley, 2010]

Writers, Gardeners, and Bakers

By Margaret Lucke

 “Where do you get your ideas?” is said to be the question that writers are most often asked. And many writers – I’m one of them – tend to respond with a version of: “Hey, ideas are everywhere. Just reach out and grab one as they come floating by.”

Okay, I grabbed one. And it’s lying there in a lump. Now what?

Here’s a secret. Generating that first idea, all by itself, is not enough to generate a story, to set characters, setting and plot percolating in a writer’s brain.

Many of us have had the experience of starting a story with enthusiasm only to have it come to a screeching halt when we reach page 3 or chapter 7. One problem that can lead to this unhappy result is that the writer expects an idea to be larger than it is, to give them more answers than it will.

Remember analogy questions on tests in school? They ask you to make comparisons:  X is to Y as Z is to __________ (choose the correct answer from a, b, c, or d).

Here’s an analogy about writing that many people believe:

An idea is to a writer as a seed is to a gardener.  

What could be more obvious? We talk this way all the time: This story grew out of an experience I had when …

  And what could be easier? You tuck the seed into the dirt of your imagination, water and nurture it, and the story blossoms forth, the way a tulip emerges from its bulb or an acorn yields an oak tree. It’s as if the idea contains some sort of DNA that makes the story inevitable.

There’s only one problem with that analogy—it’s wrong. It’s based on misperceptions.

I like this one better:

An idea is to a writer as flour is to a baker.

When you’re baking, flour is the starting point. It may be an essential ingredient, but you need to add many more ingredients in order to turn the flour into cornbread or apple pie or chocolate cookies.

Writing a story is similar. You begin with the flour idea — that initial spark that kickstarts the story process. Then you add chocolate, sugar, and egg ideas, or apple and nut ideas, or ginger and molasses ideas. Each idea builds on and yet changes the final story – like other ingredients in a recipe.

The synergy that occurs when two or more ideas come together is what makes the story happen. As with a cake in the oven, a chemical reaction takes place in the imagination as the story is written. The final product is more than the sum total of its ingredients – it becomes something new and whole. The ingredients can’t be uncombined again, or separated out.

A conversation about houses triggered an idea for a paranormal suspense tale: what if a real estate agent realizes the property she’s selling is haunted? Promising notion, but there’s no story there. Okay, let’s choose the haunted house—what kind of place would flavor this recipe well? When I took a visitor to the see the dramatic view of the coast at the Muir Beach overlook north of San Francisco, I decided this bluff above the ocean would be a great place to set the house. I modeled the structure itself on a friend’s home in Hawaii. Still no story. Why is it haunted? What happened there?

Then the ghost in the house whispered a few opening lines into my ear.

I tossed her words into the mixing bowl of my imagination, added more ideas, and took a few out again. The tasty (I hope) result was my novel House of Whispers.

May some great ideas come together for you. Happy baking … I mean, happy writing!

 

 

There are friends, and then there are FRIENDS

Holmes and Watson. John Steed and Emma Peel. Prince Hal and Falstaff. Laurel and Hardy. Everyone's gotta have a buddy, but some fictional pairs (film and/or books) just seem made for each other. For instance...

...Thelma and Louise immediately spring to mind.

I also have a soft spot for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (Well, Robert Redford and Paul Newman: Why not?)

As for my own characters... my protagonist Inez Stannert has her business partner Abe Jackson to provide a steadying influence, and her friend Susan Carothers. In the newest book, Inez's sister Harmony comes to Colorado... Sisters can be best friends as well, right?

So who are some of your favorite "buddy pairs" in fiction, film, and/or real life?

I'd Rather Be Drafted

I have a hate/hate relationship with my first drafts, but I'm not sure this is a permanent condition.

Folks who have fought their way through half a dozen books have no doubt nailed their own process pretty well.

However, as you can see from the illustration, my process and I are about as unnailed as you can get.

Part of the problem is that my first attempt at a novel was the seriously misguided attempt to turn one of my screenplays into a book. Now, plenty of books can be turned into screenplays, because a novel is (usually) "bigger" than a screenplay, storywise. It's one of the reasons I started writing novels:

• Juicy subplots
• The occasional whackanoober tangent, just because you feel like it. If you write it well enough, you can get away with it in a novel. No matter how good the tangent is in a movie, the audience does not usually return with you (unless you are Tarantino).

When you translate a novel into a film, it is usually a process of reduction: fewer storylines, fewer characters, fewer scenes. There is also a telescoping of time (most films take place over a short period of time, while novels are, to quote my old professor Lewis Buzbee, about the effect of time on a person with a problem).

However, taking a short work like a screenplay and turning it into a book means adding subplots, themes, characters, and often expanding the time horizon. What I got was something that looked a lot more like the Winchester Mystery House than a novel (but they gave me an MFA anyway). And far too often, I'd get tangled in the mechanics of writing in past tense. Screenplays, being the blueprint for dreams, are always written in present tense, camera POV :)

On my second novel, the WIP, I decided to throw caution to the wind. Forget all my structure theory and just write naked, as it were.

You know what happens when you write naked?

Chafing.

And I do not mean the dish.

It was a horrible struggle because although the structure of a novel is an easy-fit jean compared to the skinny jean screenplay, I do still need my roadmap. My character sketches, my plot outlines, my timeline spreadsheet. Oh, how hard it was to write this first draft without my favorite tools! Despite the swearing and the damaged self-esteem that results from wandering around lost in your own creation, this process did also prompt me to write some unexpectedly interesting things, including a quiet, frightened character I might not have found otherwise.

Luckily, somewhere down deep in my DNA, I had some guideposts, instincts, and awareness of structure to guide me--things that might not be so weak if I didn't rely so heavily on a mechanical knowledge of structure. But I am, after all, the girl who counts things.

Now that I'm banging away on the second draft, things are more harmonious in the House of Mysti.

Please tell me, do you struggle still to find the ideal process? Do you think it exists? Do you think there are three kinds of writers: those who love outlines, those who hate them, and those who've never even thought about it?

Midweek News Flash!

News Flash!!

Susan C. Shea's has a launch party for MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT! June 25, Friday evening, 7 PM, Great Good Place for Books, Montclair, CA, with Camille Minichino also participating.

You can also catch Susan and her new book June 23, Wednesday at Janet Rudolph's literary salon in Berekeley, CA, or June 26, Saturday for the official launch at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA, with reading, signing, and cupcakes (4 PM).

A List of Ideas About Ideas

By Margaret Lucke

It’s what all writers hope for—the lightning strike, the bolt from the blue. Or the Muse's soft, seductive whisper in our ear. As soon as we get the right creative spark, we're going to sit down and write something brilliant, amazing … well, anyway, we'll sit down and write.

Of course it doesn't really work that way. And maybe that’s a good thing. According to the National Weather Service, your odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are one in 500,000. If ideas were that rare, no book would ever get written.

So where do writers get their ideas? It's a commonly asked question and I can see why—the creative process is fascinating. My answer is that coming up with ideas is a matter of minding your P's and Q's (well, one Q). Tying this theme with our last one, here’s a list:

1.    Pictures.  A mental picture, that is. An image, a phrase, a sound, a line of dialogue happens to pop into your mind. This is what comes closest to the lightning bolt. It's a gift from the Muse—cherish it when you receive one, but don’t count on the Muse to dole out these goodies on demand.

2.    People.  A character wanders into your imagination and sets up camp. You watch an intriguing stranger walk across a crowded room. An acquaintance offers you a likely model for a detective or a victim—or a villain. More than one mystery has begun with the angry thought, "Wow, do I ever want to kill So-and-so." Mystery writer Jaqueline Girdner has a slogan: "Meet a jerk. Get to work."

3.    Premises.  You run across a situation that's fraught with dramatic possibilities. Perhaps it's a twist of events on your own life, or a dilemma that a friend is facing, or something out of a news story. One of my favorite places to look is advice columns like Dear Abby. They're full of problems, fights, and conflicts.  In other words, ready-made story material.

4.    Places.  As you walk down a city street, hike in a rocky canyon or dense forest, or take tea in the library of a Victorian mansion, a thought occurs to you: "Hey, this place would make a great setting for a mystery." Sometimes you can guess where a writer spent a recent vacation by checking out where she set her latest book.    

5.    Passions.  What’s the most thrilling thing you've ever done? What frightens you the most? What makes your blood boil? What cause do you fight for? Each answer is a potential story idea. What's more, it's a story you're likely to get excited about writing because you feel strongly about the subject.

6.    Questions.  Whenever something jiggles your mind enough to make you curious, it’s a clue that a story idea is there. Start with the words "I wonder … " and fill in the blank. What caused this or that to occur? Why would anyone behave in such a way? If a person did x, y, or z, what would be the result? If someone wanted to discover a secret or save a child or bring down a government, how would she go about it? The Muse loves questions:  Who?  What?  When?  Where?  Why?  How? The curved hook of a question mark activates the Muse and pulls it into gear. 

What do you think? Where do you get your ideas?

Full disclosure: I adapted some of the items on this list from my book Writing Mysteries, published by Self-Counsel Press.

Beginning with Sidekicks

by Margaret Lucke

Hello, everyone! As a once-a-month Ladykiller, I missed the chance to begin during the Beginnings weeks, so I thought I’d say a few words of introduction before jumping into the discussion of sidekicks.
 
My beginning as a writer came when I was four years old. For my dad’s birthday I decided to give him a book of my own creation, entitled We Are Going to a Birthday Party. I wrote the story—well, dictated it to my mom—and drew the illustrations. I cut a cover out of oilcloth and Mom helped me bind my book with yarn.

I could not have been more excited. My first book! Nothing beats the thrill of holding your first book in your hands. Okay, it was a bit short on plot and the characters development left something to be desired. But a story had emerged from my imagination and been captured in this set of pages. And the most important literary critic in the world, my dad, said it was wonderful.

At age four, I was hooked. I decided I was going to spend my life writing stories. Nothing since then has persuaded me to change my mind.

Beginning a new story is an adventure, an exciting and slightly scary journey into unknown territory. Fortunately I’m accompanied by my sidekick, the Muse. (Notice that smooth transition between topics?)

Except that sometimes the Muse comes with me. All too often, she’s reluctant or rebellious, and despite my urging, she refuses to pack up her duffel bag and set forth on the path. Instead she gives me a raspberry (not the edible kind), rolls over, and goes back to sleep. And I’m left by myself, staring at the blank page. Some sidekick. More like a kick in the pants.

I began to wonder about the word sidekick. It means a close friend or associate, a companion, a buddy, a pal. It’s obvious where the side part comes from—this is someone who stands by your side. But what about the kick?

Doing a little research while I waited for the Muse to come back from her coffee break, I learned that sidekick dates back to the first decade of the 20th century. Some sources claim it originated with the writer O. Henry, who used the term side-kicker in a couple of his short stories. But O. Henry had to get it from somewhere, and the delightful website The Word Detective suggests that before the word began to lead a respectable life, a sidekick was a denizen of the underworld, a slang term for someone who was an accomplice or confederate in a criminal enterprise. Specifically, picking pockets.

In the mid-1800s, kick meant a pocket, and side-kicks were the side pockets in a pair of men’s trousers. Within a few decades, sidekicks were the people who helped remove dollar bills and gold watches from those pockets. Pickpocketing was, and still is, often a two-person game. The first person distracts the mark by asking directions or otherwise engaging his attention, while the other one slips his fingers into the mark’s pocket and helps himself to the contents.

So it’s fitting that sidekicks are a strong tradition in mystery and crime literature, though now they’re on the side of the good guys. Well, most of them. I have suspicions about my Muse.