Five Words

Part of the process of writing is improving one's craft. The more I write, the more I learn, and the better I become. I assume this is true of other writers. Even so, I encounter fairly often a few slip-ups that grate on me, so I'm closing out the year with what matters most to me—words and how we use them.

 

Presently. This word does not mean now, at present. It means soon. Currently means now. Currently I'm reading Catherine Dilts, and presently I shall be reading John Floyd. And now you should be able to guess what I'm reading.

 

Uninterested/Disinterested.  These two words do not mean the same thing. Uninterested means to lack interest in something. You don't want the judge in your case to be uninterested in what's happening in the courtroom. You want him to be disinterested, without selfish or personal interest in the court activities; without bias; impartial. You definitely want the judge to be impartial. Ignore the suggestions in dictionaries that the words are beginning to share a single definition. There are some of us who will be massively confused by your writing if you do so.

 

Indifferent. Just to confuse things, we have the word indifferent. This word can mean the same as uninterested, but with nuances that make it less than a good substitute for it. The word means something that is neither good nor bad, or someone who has no interest in something, apathetic, or doesn't care. The word leaves us with a shrug.

 

And now a pesky reminder about I and me, she and her, he and him. In each pair, the first is the nominative case and the second is the objective. She and I gave weapons to him, and then he gave ammunition to me and to her. There is today among many speakers as well as writers an effort to sound correct. Hence we hear sentences like "Will you go with he and I?" I cringe. I hope you wouldn't say, "Me cringe." Talk (and write) as though you're with an old friend, or your grandmother, and let the words flow unselfconsciously.

 

As one of my favorite grammarians said in relation to the objective case, Use it with confidence. And so I do, and urge you to do so too.

 

 

My Notebooks

The holiday season is a time for getting together with family and friends, and this year though different has already brought out moments to be treasured and recorded. And, as I do year-round, I pulled out my notebook and began to jot down a few comments to remember—a book title that someone mentioned, an idea for a story that popped up when an interesting-looking stranger passed me on the street, a plan for a spring get-together, the name of a shop I wanted to return to. No one comments when I pulled out my little composition book, and I doubt anyone who knows me well even registers what I'm doing.

I have stacks of them. Each one usually covers about six months. The stacks are high enough to prevent the desk from closing properly, so I'm wondering about where I'll put them. Curious, I pulled out one from June 1998, when I attended a city planning meeting and noted the statistics someone gave. What would our little city look like if every lot were built on? This was all part of the city's master plan, and giving residents a chance to debate the proposals. I can't remember why I went, but the notes are evocative. 

 

A few pages later I had notes on Emotional Intelligence by David Goleman (1995), along with the Boston public library and its call number, followed by a few quotes.

 

In the beginning of one book is a short dialogue with two gay men, recorded moments after the fact.

 

First man to second: "You're a goodlooking guy. Here's a hug."

And then to me: "And you too."

Me: "I'm a distant second."

First man: "It's in the reading, not in the text."

 

This dialogue hasn't made it into a story yet, but other snippets overheard have. 

 

One of the best locations for catching dialogue is on Amtrak (sometimes even the Quiet Car), where riders are comfortable enough to shout over the rocking and clacking of the train. Coffee shops seem to be overrated for eavesdropping, but a hair salon is still a good spot along with certain grocery aisles.  

 

Sometimes I'm recording minutes of a meeting or drafting a grant proposal (when I was still working) or working out the idea of a letter I'm drafting. Lots of pages are filled with trial sentences. If the topics have changed over the years, my handwriting hasn't.

 

A colleague noticed my note taking one day and commented that she did the same thing. I asked if she reread her booklets at the end of the year. She said no, she threw them out. She never kept one.

 

My notebooks are inelegant, subjective, personal, and practical. They reflect my life and way of doing things, and I can't imagine throwing them out. 

 

Do you keep a journal? Any kind of record? Would you throw it out when it was filled? This is the kind of quirk that could lead to an interesting story character.

 

 

 

 

 

Characters not from Real People

A few weeks ago a friend taking a writing workshop was given the assignment to write a piece that included a description of someone she knew. She gave me part of the essay to read, and asked if her description of me seemed accurate. I was sure that it was, but I read it anyway.

 

Friends of writers have different reactions to hearing that we're working on a story and developing certain characters. Some are worried that they'll pick up a copy of the finished book and find themselves in it, and not appearing in a flattering light. Others pick up a copy of the same book and are blind to their appearance. I know one writer who regularly includes a sibling she's dislikes who never recognizes herself in her sister's work. And then there's the acquaintance who barely suppresses the hope that she is in the book, perhaps as the heroine or as a brilliant walk-on. 

 

Maybe it's the nature of the traditional mystery to attract this kind of fevered attention, emotions seesawing between avid desire for a moment of fame—or infamy—and a chilling, nearly paralyzing fear of being exposed, put on display for the babbling reviewers on social media. I haven't encountered the same concern highlighted to the same extent from thriller or romance writers, but perhaps that will change.

 

Fortunately, I've steered clear of including anyone I know in my fiction, but that hasn't stopped numerous people from quietly turning to me at a party or a meeting, when they think no one is listening, and asking, "Is that so-and-so?" Sometimes I'm shocked at the question because it tells me more about how the questioner see so-and-so than the idea that I might include him or her in a story. Usually I can't see the connection, and it's easy to say, "No, the character you're asking about came strictly from my imagination, except for the shoes. I saw a man wearing those on the T one day and never forgot them." And that is the truth.

 

During a reading at a book group populated mostly by older women, one guest asked after I finished reading a particular passage, "Is that your mother?" The question surprised me because I had never seen my mother act at all like the woman in the story, and said so. But thirty years later, as she coped with aging, my mother did indeed act exactly like the woman in the story. Either the guest was prescient, or I had given something away without realizing it.

 

Fiction is about creating a world in which characters the writer has invented behave in a way that is so true to life and their character, their personality and beliefs and expressed principles, that readers accept and follow them as though they were as real as the local mayor or postman or neighbor out mowing his lawn late on Thursday night. Fiction is a lie we believe because we can see that it is true to life as we have lived it. We take from people we know the off-hand remark that reveals a deeper sense of the person and give it to our protagonist at a crucial point in the story. We borrow a hair color, strawberry blond, to make a woman more distinctive. But the person we create will be nothing like the person borrowed from. She doesn't have to be; she only has to be true to her fictional self.

 

In her essay, my friend composed a revealing portrait of me, so much so that I winced, surprised that she had been so perceptive and able to express what she saw and felt so clearly. But if this had been fiction, the rest of me would have disappeared behind a new personality designed to carry an action and trajectory that I would not have taken. No matter how close some people think we might be getting to a real person, the writer borrows only details and remakes their significance to support a larger understanding in her fiction.

Naming My Characters

Most of my fiction begins with an image of a man or woman engaged in some act, caught in a freeze-frame of intent and purpose. I can see him or her, usually her, moving forward, the goal just out of view but I know it's there. This person's identity is only partly unknown. I don't have a name or full view of family and friends but I can see how she or he behaves. 

I spend time thinking about the names for my characters. Only once, after writing most of my first novel, in college, I had the bizarre idea that the main character's name was wrong for him, and decided to change it. The student who was typing my handwritten drafts was surprisingly upset. She said the story just didn't feel the same. And she was right. I took the lesson to heart. 

 

The name for any character may come as a sudden inspiration or after several minutes—or days—thinking about it. The name for my first series character, Chief of Police Joe Silva of the Mellingham series, reflects the Portuguese heritage of the area, as well as his approachability. Silva is a common Portuguese name in the towns and cities around Boston, and Joe, from Jose, underscores his basic amiability and implies all that he brings, from the Hebrew meaning "God will add." It also sounded very familiar, as typical of the Portuguese I encountered growing up.

 

In the second series, featuring Indian-American photographer Anita Ray, I wanted a name that could be both Indian and American, as well as having the lightness and cleanness of sound that most Indian names have. (This is just my bias.) I wanted the last name to also sound both Indian and American Irish, and gave considerable thought to both. When a friend casually remarked that another writer had once said her name was perfect for a character, I knew I was on the right track, and Anita Ray was born. Auntie Meena, who in India would be addressed as Meena Auntie, came easily after hearing a child call out.

 

The main character in Below the Tree Line, the beginning of a new series, had to express her Irish heritage but also her particular heritage of the female line, as a healer. The women in her family tree carried names that are mostly forgotten today—Justice, Charity, Faith—but I wanted one that expressed her character. Felicity O'Brien inherited the family farm, and practices her healing gift among friends. 

 

In a short story that first appeared in AHMM ("How Do You Know What You Want"), a social worker in child welfare delivers a teenager to a new foster family. It's a walk-on part but I knew who she was and her name just popped into my head. I didn't expect to deal with her again, but she has shown up in two more stories and is now the protagonist in a novel I'm working on. Ginny Means is forty, unmarried, and devoted to her work, but she has a secret that she carries uneasily, but someone else wants it exposed. In an online discussion I mentioned her and another participant said, "That's a good name for a social worker." 

 

When I struggle with naming a character, I think of Dickens, who was brilliant at this along with just about everything else in composing stories. Capturing the right name, one that doesn't feel "wrong" or "ill-suited" two months or two years later, takes time and effort. It doesn't have to be unusual or startling, like Sarah Strohmeyer's Bubbles Yablonsky or Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. But it should be like the name Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, able to tell you about the character on some level. The right name lifts the story and carries the personality.

 

That's where my thoughts are now as I ponder naming the minor characters in my current WIP, beginning with the various villains (and there are several) and the townspeople who encounter them.

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Getting It Right on Page One

A couple of weeks ago I began a working on a new mystery featuring a series character who has shown up in a number of short stories. The opening scene told the reader everything she needed to know and moved the story forward, but I wasn't happy with it. I kept writing scene after scene, exploring the characters and pleased with the ideas that came to me as I was writing farther into the story. I kept notes, deepened the characters and complicated the plot. But still, though I could feel the story was developing the way I wanted it to, I wasn't happy. I made more notes.

When a story idea feels like a good one to me, little pieces of the plot, snippets of dialogue, visuals show up waiting to be put in place. I don't try to force the ideas to come, sitting down and deciding this is the motive or that is the backstory. I let the ideas unfold. It's a slow process in the beginning but I pick up speed once I have the basic idea. The problem I was having was with the beginning--the scene that tells you what's going to come sooner or later, the promise and the expectations. I trust my process and I trust my ideas.

We've had wonderfully warm days lately, so my midday walk with the dog is especially enjoyable. A few days ago as we strolled down a quiet side street a helicopter flew overhead. This isn't terribly unusual here. Occasionally a news copter shows up and we all wonder what's been going on. I looked up and watched it hover and move on, not in any great hurry, as though the pilot were looking or perhaps teaching someone how to fly. Watching the copter from below as it flew nearly directly overhead I thought it looked like a tadpole. And just at that moment I had the opening of my new mystery--a young woman racing to get home before curfew who sees a copter flying overhead and stops to wonder why.

I won't tell the rest of the opening, but I knew I had it right by the the scene that took shape in that minute and the eagerness I felt to get to my computer and get to work. Because I had things I had to do at the end of the dog walk, I couldn't go back to work, but the idea stayed warm and grew warmer, with little details coming along to vivify the moment when the main character looks up and sees the copter overhead.

Because of the actions of the main character in the new opening scene, some of what I've already written needs to be recast. This is not unexpected, and I already know how I'll change a few things, adding and deleting. But the relief and excitement at having found the perfect opening for this tale is buoying. It feels like a different mystery now, and it is.

I need this kind of energy to keep the story flowing so the writing, the construction of the story, doesn't start to feel mechanical. The total narrative now has a somewhat different arc from my original intent, but the new one is much better. My desk is now littered with notes, a map of my fictional town, and research tidbits to work into the story. The month of November promises to be productive.

My New Series Character

Over the summer I came up with the idea for a new mystery, a stand-alone I thought, but as the story line itself evolved, the woman at the center of the investigation or conflict grew hazier and hazier. I couldn't seem to get a handle on her. I let the idea sit and germinate, and one day, while I was straightening out my husband's studio, onto the stage of my stalled novel walked a character I knew, a woman who had already appeared in two short stories with a third on the way to publication. 

 

Social worker Ginny Means first appeared in "How Do You Know What You Want" (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March/April 32017) as a walk-on. Her job was to deliver a teenage girl to a new foster home, and not much else. I didn't think about her again for a while until I got another idea for a story, and there she was, ready to introduce the setting and problem in "Just Another Runaway" (AHMM November/December 2019), and now scheduled to appear again in AHMM in "The Deacon's Mistake." 

 

Ginny Means has evolved in each story. The details of her life appeared as needed, but I kept track of them, and now as I look over my notecards I can see she's ready for her own novel. She's the middle of three girls, unmarried and childless, and prone to casual attire. Her mother and sisters are yard salers, scouring the countryside on weekends for their "finds." Her case work focuses primarily on teenage girls in foster care. 

 

When my imagination plucked Ginny Means from the list of possible main characters I was reluctant to consider her because, after all, who really wants to read about teenage girls getting in and out of trouble all the time. Aside from being depressing, it could also be monotonous. Ginny needed more in her life, and that turned out to be easier to solve than I at first expected.

 

In Massachusetts at least whenever there is a severe budget crunch, the state lays off vast numbers of social workers. Many never return to the field, and others limp along on part-time work. Ginny became one of those, supplementing her reduced hours with a small counseling business on the side. With a MSW in social work from a major university and several courses toward her PhD, she earned for a license as a counselor. Now a LICSW, she comes into contact with a much more varied population of troubled and troubling individuals, mostly adults. And that's where my novel stuck in a ditch climbed out and began to move forward.

 

But not all my problems are solved. A character who works in a short story may not expand well into a novel. I have yet to spend enough time with Ginny Means and her family to know her well and anticipate what she'll do, how she'll face other problems and challenges. Her thoughts and inner life are still mostly unknown. An additional consideration is that I located her and her work in the Pioneer Valley, where my short-lived third series featuring Felicity O'Brien is set. I'm not inclined yet to move her (a decision that can be made at almost any time), since I like what I've seen (created?) so far. The most important element, however, is my new-found enthusiasm for Ginny as a lead character. I like the way she thinks and confronts people and problems, and I like spending time with her. It's time to let her take over the story and see where it goes.

Definitions of the Cozy Mystery

A spirited discussion on the Short Mystery Fiction Society list led to several short or longer definitions of the beloved cozy mystery. I collected most of them, and list them here. Some are tongue-in-cheek, some are serious, but all give insight into the genre. I've omitted the writers whose definitions are quoted and edited lightly.

 

A cozy mystery is one in which the blood is dry before it hits the page.

They are a place for the reader to escape, a place the reader will like being. The language used is soft, not harsh, the people are those the reader would like as neighbors, and the killer has a very good reason--at least in their own head--for doing the deed. That pleasant place where order will be restored.

 

A cozy is a mystery in which someone gets killed but no one gets hurt.

 

I think of the word cozies as mysteries to which the word "cozy" applies in two ways.

First, cozy in the sense of comfortable. They're not disturbing to read. Violence happens offstage, sex is only suggested, the language is mild.

Second, cozy in the sense of close and contained. The story takes place in a community of limited size, such as a small town and there is only a handful of suspects.

Life as it should be with a little excitement added in (murder).

 

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

 

I would also note that cozies have a strong element of female empowerment. The protagonists are busy making a life for themselves, often a new life after a tragedy, and often against the odds. They run businesses and libraries and community theaters, and sometimes families. Their world is disrupted, and they do everything it takes to put it back together. They get sugar done. 

 

"Cozy" is essentially synonymous with "traditional mystery."

 

I do want to say that although the cozy genre is very heavily weighted towards female protagonists, there are some authors who have done a great job making male protagonists work in a cozy as well. I’m thinking about M.K. Wren’s Conan Flagg series, Jack Ewing’s Primed for Murder, Stephen Humphrey Bogart’s R.J. Brooks mysteries, Matt Witten’s Jacob Burns mysteries and many more.

 

Cozies have nothing in them that will upset *anybody,* even the most strict reader.

For traditional mysteries, the most important thing is the puzzle. 
The level of action and danger varies, and we don't always like the protagonist that much, but the puzzle needs to hang together. The reader gets intellectual satisfaction from the solution of the puzzle.

For cozies, the most important thing is that the reader feels that the protagonist is a friend, and they feel comfortable in their company. 

Cozies can have some mild action, and some danger, and they have a puzzle, but all of that is subordinated to creating an emotional bond between the protagonist and the reader.
The reader gets emotional satisfaction from having spent an enjoyable few hours in the company of their friend.

 

A cozy is a book you can read before going to sleep at night, and still be able to go to sleep at night.

Both cozies and traditionals: no excessive, graphic, gratuitous sex or violence on the page, plus very little or, preferably, no “expletive deleted” words. Usually a small-town setting. Emphasis on backstory, character development, whydunit as well as whodunit.

Difference between cozies and traditionals: in a cozy, the sleuth is always an amateur, generally female. In a traditional, it is a professional, sometimes a police officer, but more often a private investigator, and more often male. 

Christie’s Poirot books are traditional; Miss Marple books are cozies. 

 

Someone dies, no one gets hurt.

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the
difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are
definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with
little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small
town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional
mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha
Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman is one of my favorite writers, so much so that I have to remind myself not to give away too much, so no spoilers here. 

Sunburn by Laura Lippman William Morrow, 2018 

In Belleville, Delaware, in 1995, a man and a woman meet in a bar. Both are just passing through, but each one for different reasons decides to stay. Polly gets a part-time job in the Heigh Ho bar, and Adam signs on as a chef who turns out to be creative enough to draw customers from beyond the small town. They are soon enmeshed in each other's life. 

But both are lying about who they are and why they are in that small town in the first place. Gradually their histories--or parts of them--are revealed, and at each stage one or the other faces the challenge of accepting this unexpected truth about the other. As the passions deepen, the seesaw increases. 

Told from multiple points of view, the story moves through Polly, Adam, Adam's secret employer, and Polly's abandoned husband. Each character is focused on one goal, and through that focused determination Lippman explores their character, the twists in a life that have brought them to this point. Polly, who at first seems the worst of the lot for abandoning her husband and three-year-old child, grows on every page into a complicated woman whose goal isn't fully realized until the final chapters. Her husband, Greg, also turns into someone he probably didn't expect to become. 

The writing is graceful, the pace steadily increasing, and the twists and revelations very satisfying. Highly recommended.

Here's the Thing about Stuff

Back in the late 1980s, when Reagan left the White House and it was evident he was in decline, a journalist reported that others had noted the mental failing much earlier because the president began using the word stuff, dropping it in more often rather than developing the rest of the sentence. Instead of being precise and clear, he used the word as a shortcut, making his sentences sound informal rather than incomplete. This, apparently, is a sign of declining mental skills, and an early sign of dementia.

Well, that got my attention. With a grandmother who died with Alzheimer's, and later a mother in the early stages before she died, I took note of the signs I could look for in my own speech. When the use of the word stuff and others like it turned out to be one of them, I hopped on that bandwagon and have been riding it ever since. I have long been uncomfortable with the sloppy use of the word thing, and avoid it whenever possible, so now I had two words that made me cringe when I heard them skidding into place in a sentence.

Changes in contemporary American vocabulary are obvious to anyone who reads an old newspaper from the 1950s or earlier. I'm not convinced this is a sign of the shrinking of our language skills, but it is certainly an indication of their changing. Our writing and speech are much simpler, more casual, blunter in many cases, more often laced with slang. Linguists may argue about the size of the English vocabulary--half a million words or fewer than two hundred thousand if most of the inflections are skimmed off--but in daily transactions our chosen words are few. The ever-present stuff and thing may be a sign of change and nothing more.

A professor in graduate school, in the 1970s, remarked a few times on the tiny vocabulary of a particular Slavic language. I haven't been able to track it down, but I did come across a language thought to have the fewest vocabulary items. Toki Pona is a language created by Sonja Lang, and has 123 words. It takes usually about thirty hours to learn and the speaker must rely heavily on creating metaphors to get his or her point across. I can't say it appeals to me. Even though language grows through metaphor and borrowing  from other languages (one of the reasons English vocab is so large and rich), I think I'd be frustrated at not having more words to play with, especially technical terms. This particular language strikes me as replete with versions of stuff and thing.

A writer who captures a character's linguistic oddities--speech patterns and rhythms, vocabulary and inflection--wins my eternal admiration. This doesn't mean the author demonstrates a vast vocabulary; only that she captures the peculiarities of an individual in words. The first time I read George Higgins I felt like I was in the room with his characters and at any moment they'd be menacing me as though I were in the story.

The news about Reagan may have startled me out of a complacency I didn't know I had. But in the end it made me a more conscientious writer, alert to moments of laziness in thinking and writing that can be corrected and thus perhaps improve the work in ways not imagined. Whatever challenges me to be more alert is good, regardless of the original motivation.

The Writer Wasting Time

There was a time in my life, not so long ago, when I could say that I never wasted time. I couldn't because I simply had so much to do. I worked full time, produced a semiannual literary journal with a colleague and later an anthology of crime fiction with two other colleagues, ran a monthly writers' group, critiqued friends' mss, and oversaw my mother's health care during a critical time. And I wrote.

My focus was on crime fiction, novels in two series with a few short stories based on the main character in one, Anita Ray. I wrote both stories and novels during the brief interlude between arriving home from work and dinner, after taking snatches of time during lunch or while walking to a meeting or waiting on hold to think through what I wanted to write in the next scene or passage when I got home. When I could I attended writers' conferences and participated in a few volunteer projects. And then I retired.

I have long felt that writers' block is an indulgence. I may not feel like writing, but once I sit down and begin, the words come. No matter how bad the writing might seem at the moment I know I can always return later and rework it. The point for me is to keep going. Once I retired I didn't feel the same pressure, but I also didn't stop writing. While working I had to use every minute I could find but now I could begin earlier in the day, whenever I wanted, and take more time working through what I was trying to say. I might still sit down unready to write, as it were, but I still wrote no matter what. I wasn't at my desk to play solitaire. Nothing changed in retirement, just my attitude to time now that I had more of it. I let myself daydream more, stare out the window more, talk to the dog more.

Did having more time make a difference? Did I write more? Did I write better? Did I think more deeply? The only question I'm sure about is the latitude retirement gave me to try new things--new characters, new settings, new problems. And then last year I began thinking differently about how to construct a story, and that produced a very different novel from my usual fare. 

Last summer I set aside the reliable and much enjoyed cozy/traditional format and pulled up one character and got her into trouble in the first line and kept her there. The story is obviously suspense and not a cozy. I learned a lot about a different style of writing but in the end I also learned about me. I see the world in a certain way, and even in a suspense novel with danger in every room, threats at every corner, the main character is going to have a certain world view and certain beliefs that might be shaken but won't be destroyed.

Writing suspense meant going deeper into certain characters but it also meant uncovering the roots of principles, the drive leading to the goals that can be misdirected, and inchoate beliefs that can underlie a life and be twisted before being recovered in a truer form. I spent a lot more time thinking about these issues before I began writing--weeks, even months.

Being willing to take the time to explore these discoveries in fiction might not have happened in earlier years when writing another cozy seemed the obvious choice, the easier path. I might have ended up wasting a lot of time--months if not years--in producing another series that was okay but not much more. But in the end I finished with a novel that is different from my usual work and a level above it. And now comes the test. My agent has it and now I wait. Once again, the issue is time. Waiting time. 

And also thinking time, thinking about the next character who will be in trouble in the first line and stay there until a few paragraphs from the end. Time is set only as we choose to set it.

Out and About in the Neighborhood

Various forms of social media now bedevil just about every writer I know. We have to decide what to participate in from among the many options, how to participate, and find the discipline to maintain the effort. All this is in the service of promoting ourselves and our books. It sounds ludicrous and it is. So, how do I, for one, go about it?

About a year ago I signed up for Instagram. It was obvious at the outset that most writers were using the site to post about their books—lots of covers and writer selfies. I have occasionally posted the cover of a book or a magazine containing one of my stories, but that pales pretty fast, at least for me. I enjoy posting pix of stacks of books I’m reading, or a photo of strangers deep in a book at a local park, but I’ve learned Instagram has more to offer. 

With the pandemic worsening, I wanted to enjoy what I could do and not think always about promotion. I used my walk to entertain myself, and I’m very glad I did.

At the beginning of the pandemic people in my neighborhood were learning to hunker down, avoid the playground, and find ways to entertain themselves and their children. First, a group of over three dozen families settled on decorating front doors for spring and Easter. I photographed a number of them, and posted those. 

Next came the teddy bears and other stuffed animals propped up in windows for children to spot on their walks or bike rides. Not exactly a treasure hunt but close enough. I had a good time finding those, including some life-sized bears settled on porches and rows of stuffed animals filling windows. 

Gardens bloomed and animal statues popped up under the azaleas and by the tulips. I’ve never been one for garden creatures but I’ve come to enjoy the hunt to find them in other people’s gardens, and I have pulled out an old sprinkler in the form of a tin frog to use in mine.

But my favorite of all my discoveries during this time are the flamingos. A woman several streets away has nine plastic flamingos which she presents in various poses—dining out, dancing around a maypole, going on vacation, sitting around a campfire. She puts time and effort into these tableaux, and I love them. We have never met but occasionally if she’s there when I walk past, I tell her how much I enjoy her work.

I have spent years walking around India with a camera, looking for interesting shots and unusual perspectives, but the flamingos have taken a special hold on me. And I’m not the only one. In staid, reserved New England, no one would expect bright pink plastic lawn toys to become popular, but they’re popping up now throughout my little city. I’ve come across three other “families” of the birds but no one else has animated them in scenes as creatively as the first neighbor. The original nine are still the standouts.

Why does this matter? The last year didn’t seem a problem for me and my husband. We’re both retired and engaged in our long loved creative work, he with photography, and me with writing. But the limitations on our activities have forced us, just like millions of others, to stay close to home and that means noticing more of what is happening around us. Unexpectedly I learned a little bit more about myself this past year. I have liked my neighborhood since we first bought our home in the late 1970s for practical reasons—location. I can walk to the library, restaurants, the train, and friends. But now it means a lot to me for other reasons—for how people live and interact, how much creativity goes into their ordinary lives that we don’t always notice, and how closely neighbors who don’t know each other well will reach out to collaborate and cooperate during unusual times. In previous years, being wrapped up in my job and my fictional worlds, creating stories and meeting deadlines, has meant paying less attention to the worlds around me, those of my neighbors. Walk two to five miles every day along the same streets, past the same houses, and you are guaranteed to see and learn more. And what you pick out from among the thousands of images that pass in front of your eyes will tell you even more about who you are and how you see the world. But it will also teach you a lot about the people around you. Some are more creative than others, and some are far more houseproud than others. 

Community, humor, joy, generosity come to the fore in this collection of streets and homes. And I intend to keep looking for how it is expressed long after the pandemic has receded.

Reading around the World (6)

Quiet in Her Bones, by Nalini Singh

Berkley 2021

Set in modern New Zealand, this mystery depicts the multicultural world of the contemporary rich. I hadn't meant to read a mystery for this country, but when I picked this up to read as a mystery I found its depiction of the modern New Zealander vivid and interesting. The author drops in cultural details about the country that move the story occasionally beyond the mystery.

Aarav Rai remembers his mother as beautiful, glamorous, devoted, if sometimes outlandish. But what sticks in his mind most is the memory ten years ago of a scream and then his mother’s car driving away into the rainy night, never to be seen again. Now twenty-six years old and a best-selling writer, Aarav returns home to recuperate from a car accident, home to the cul-de-sac he left years ago. Half a million dollars went missing from his father’s safe that night, and Ishaan Rai is convinced his wife stole it and ran off with her lover. But life goes on in the exclusive cul-de-sac until the police arrive ten years later to inform Mr. Rai that they have located his wife’s Jaguar deep in the bush, concealed within the fast-growing forest. The car holds the body of a woman but no money. When Aarav learns that his mother was in the passenger seat, everything changes. He is determined to find out who was driving that night.

Throughout his investigation of his mother’s last night and the private lives of their neighbors in the cul-de-sac, Aarav recalls his mother, Nina, in all her extravagant ways, her wild fights with her husband, her ever generous and loving relationship with her son, her loyal friendships, and her secret transgressions. Aarav is a determined investigator, struggling to recall those days despite his migraines and erratic memory. One day he is the unreliable narrator of his own life, and the next he is a hard thinking avenging angel. Through it all he seems to live on Coca Cola and candy, and the occasional decent meal provided by his sweet stepmother, one of the few characters whose façade doesn’t crumble under the glare of reality.

The son is well positioned to watch the goings-on in the homes around him, as men or women sneak out of one house and into another, hopefully concealed by the night while others indulge their secret, sometimes illicit passions.

The solution to the crime resolves all the questions, but it feels less satisfying than it should considering the number of less central questions that are resolved and leave the reader with a greater sense of completion. Nevertheless, this is a rewarding page turner.

 

Reading Around the World (5)

This is my fifth post about my project to read a novel by a woman from every country. This week it's Morocco. I'm learning a lot about how non-English and non-European writers conceive of the novel form and purpose. The language of composition undoubtedly plays a role.

Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman’s Journey toward Independence, and Other Stories, by Leila Abouzeid

 

Translation from the Arabic by Barbara Parmenter

Introduction by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 1989

 

In the tightly constructed novel of the title, Zahra returns to her home village after a sudden divorce. This is 1950s Morocco just after Independence. Her husband informs her she will receive whatever the law allows, which is one hundred days of support. After the years of fighting shoulder to shoulder with her husband and others for independence from France, the woman is stunned and angry, feeling betrayed and lost. Childless, she can return to live with a sibling but chooses instead to live in the room of the family estate she inherited from her father. The various rooms inherited by relatives have turned the old estate into an apartment building, but at least she has a place to live. A holy man in the local mosque listens and advises her as she recalls her years in the resistance, her many visits home bedecked in jewels and fine clothing, and her plans for a new life once the colonial power was driven from the land. She is unprepared for life as a divorced woman—no money, no skills, no family connections that she wants to submit to. A few friends attempt to aid her but there is little they can do and she wants her own life of dignity and position. She navigates this new world, assessing the changes in her old collaborators as well as her husband, but in the end she makes peace with the new nation of Morocco and her new self, and grows well beyond the woman her husband divorced.

 

Also included are eight short stories that are glimpses of life in Morocco as it struggles to transform itself from a traditional culture ruled as a French colony into a modern nation on the world stage. In most cases they read more like scenarios than fully developed stories but the view of a traditional culture clashing with the modern world is clear.

 

This is the first novel by a Moroccan woman written in Arabic and translated into English. As such it marks two important trends—the growing use of Arabic instead of French or English in literature and the rise of educated women in public and literary life. Although some reviewers have enjoyed the writing style, I didn’t find it admirable. The novella moves along well, and the ending is both ironic and hopeful.

 

 

An Exercise in Character Description

One of the first pieces of advice I received when I began writing mysteries, in the 1980s, was this: Every story should have something real in it. Not everything can be invented; the story will begin to feel ungrounded, thin. The real element can be in the setting, characterization, dialogue, or plot development.

In writing classes I illustrated this general rule with a simple writing exercise focusing on character development: describe three people, one whom you know, one whom you have seen around where you live but don’t know personally, and one who is entirely your invention.

 

Every student reacts to this exercise differently.  At first I thought students would approach the three characters in the order in which they were presented, and some did, but not all and not even most. I expected they would devote an equal amount of time and thought to each one, but again they did not. Some spent paragraphs on one and only a line or so on the others. Again, I expected most would fall into the pattern of a basic description, but I was wrong. Some gave a basic description of each person, almost like an abbreviated biography, and some gave the same information in a bullet list. Others wrote a scene with snatches of dialogue, and still others described the person in question engaged in an activity. For some this exercise was clearly the beginning of a short story. But in the end almost every student responded to one of the three characters most strongly and most creatively.

 

The second character I asked them to describe—the one whom you have seen around the town or city where you live but don’t know personally—brought out the most original and compelling characterizations. After listening to the students describe their process, I wasn’t surprised at the results.

 

The first person, one whom you know, brought along a lot of limitations, and the writers felt restricted—and some felt uncomfortable—in describing someone they knew well. The last one sounded tempting, and for several it was, but the character felt less than real, sometimes fanciful and often dull. The middle one—one whom you’ve seen but don’t know personally—gave them a starting point. The mere fact that this was a person who had caught their attention suggested their imagination was already engaged, and the descriptions became vivid, going far beyond the person they had seen at a distance. By not knowing the individual personally no one was constrained by specific characteristics. The half-knowing seemed to stimulate the imagination, and the descriptions took off from the basic reality of the person seen from afar.

 

The second person had enough grounding in reality to give the character, no matter how fancifully or outrageously described, a certain persuasiveness because he or she was in fact real. Even when we’re making something up in its entirety we add that telling detail we glimpsed while sitting opposite someone on the subway or a manner of speech we overheard at a party. We look for something that caught our attention and use it to catch the reader’s.

Getting Organized: A Lesson in Keeping Track

Image by Hatice EROL from Pixabay

I recently made a mistake that at the beginning of my           writing life would have made me cringe and want to   crawl under the desk, but by this time I just kicked myself once and set about making sure it didn’t happen again. What was the error? I lost track of the final version of a short story, and submitted an earlier draft to a publication that has published everything I’ve sent it so far. It was rejected, of course.

 

My decision last year to increase the number of short stories I wrote and submitted meant more work floating around on my desk top and in my files, so I needed a better tracking system. I could no longer rely on the lists on paper I kept in a three-ring binder. I set up my spreadsheet and listed title, magazine/publisher, date submitted, date responded, response, notes. Sometimes a story is accepted by the first editor who reads it, and some titles end up going to a number of magazines before finding a home. The spreadsheet gave me a clear overview of where my work was. Apparently I was not as tidy with the stories themselves, and that’s where the trouble came in.

 

After the story was rejected I went looking for the final version I thought I had submitted. I easily found what I had submitted—it was right where it was supposed to be. But it did not read like the final version, which I remembered clearly because of the research it involved for a very neat ending (at least I thought it was near). I found and reviewed the research, but no matter how many times I searched, the only version that came up was the early rejected draft—in several places.

 

Several writers I know talk about pulling out work from years earlier and reworking the material into something new. To me the old stuff is just clutter but it still sits on my computer. After the mix-up with the story in question I’ve decided to clean out the old stuff and keep only the one version of material I’m working on. The danger of once again losing the one version that matters amid all the clutter and finding only the rejects is enough to decide me.

 

When the personal computer first became available and many writers were skeptical (many of us were still in love with our typewriters), The Writer carried an article about a novelist who argued in favor of the advantages of the new technology. He talked about how easy it was for him to compose two versions of the same scene. I remember vividly the photograph of him sitting at his desk holding up one version in his left hand and another in his right while he considered which was best for his work. That image haunted me because to me it meant he had two different novels, not two choices within one novel.

 

I may be a party of one in this matter, but I know that I rarely return to an earlier version. And in fact I can’t think of one instance in which I did, and then chose it over the more recent one. By now (a few weeks after the fact) I’m mostly philosophical about the incident. With the increase in my productivity in the last year it was probably inevitable that I would make such a mistake. I just wish it hadn’t been this one. And it won’t happen again. 

Around the World . . . Continued

When I set out on my trek around the world in the company of women writers I didn’t anticipate the challenges of finding contemporary fiction written by women from each country. This was naïve but also reflective of my ignorance of the history of literacy, literature, and women in many other countries. The current title is an example. I pulled this novel from my pile in part because my house painter two years ago was Albanian, a young man whose painting crew required him to learn several languages. Standing silent nearby on some mornings was his father, whom he’d recently brought over to the States.

Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones fills the slot for Albania while underscoring the challenges of finding a novel by a woman who lived and wrote in her native land and native tongue. Dones was born in Albania, educated in Europe, and now lives in the US. She has written several novels, in both Albanian and Italian, and this one was written in the latter and translated into English. Under the Ottoman Empire, Albanians were forbidden from writing in their native tongue so many adopted Italian. Half of the story takes place in the US as the protagonist, Hana, tries to make a new life for herself. Still, I came away with a deeper understanding of a country I know little about.

 

Hana is on her way to the States to join her cousin, Lila, and the cousin’s husband and daughter, but she is still tied to her old land in ways unimaginable to those outside her culture. Orphaned at a young age and raised by her aunt and uncle, who are childless, she shows promise in her first-year college courses. After her aunt dies she cares for her uncle while continuing her college education in Tirana until traveling from her mountain home to see doctors and get medicine for her uncle becomes too dangerous. Fearful for her safety after his death, her uncle attempts to find a husband for her before he dies, but she rebuffs his efforts. She ultimately makes another choice. Her mountain village lives by a code that dates to the early Middle Ages, where clan feuds lock people into their homes, a woman traveling alone is fair game, and grinding poverty is the norm after years of living under the thumb of the Ottoman Empire and then the Communists. The only solution for Hana is to become a man, a custom sanctioned by the code ruling the northern mountain region of Albania.

 

In a family with no surviving males, a woman who commits to remaining a virgin for life may adopt the role of the man in the family, with all the freedoms and prerogatives such a change entails. She takes a male name, dresses as a man, and moves among men in the bars and cafes, celebrating with them and avoiding women. She drinks as men do, carries a rifle, and is accepted as one by all other males. This is a lifelong choice, and Hana becomes Mark for fourteen years. 

 

When her cousin, Lila, writes to her from the US begging her to join her family. Hana/Mark at first says no. When she ultimately agrees, she knows she is once again making a life choice that will shut the door on all she has known. 

 

The reader follows Hana/Mark through her life in Albania and then in the US as she adopts a new land and tries to discover her old persona, the woman she left behind at age nineteen. The story moves through the issues of gender identity, rural/urban conflict, and modern/traditional ways of life.

 

Written in a gentle, crisp style with astute observations of how men and women relate to each other, the story moves among a small cast of characters. 

 

I would like to have known more about how the old culture of Albania interacts with the new, but nevertheless I found this story satisfying and enlightening.

Three Hours a Day: Update and a Correction

Last week I talked about my plunge into the six-figure strategy proposed by an agent. This is a plan to reach a six-figure salary by writing three hours a day in the morning and marketing three hours a day in the afternoon. My report was posted on Thursday last week, when I was 4 for 4—four stories over four days. I finished the week with five stories. But I also finished the week with very little marketing, perhaps an hour or so in the afternoon. So where am I now?

Like many other writers, I keep notes on paper or on my computer (and sometimes my phone) of ideas for stories—novels, novellas, full-length novels. Over the previous two or three months I’d come up with and rejected a number of story ideas, but six or so remained, blinking at me from the page but never stirring enough interest to get me to start writing (or typing). But last week pushed me to write.

 

The psychological pressure to produce verbiage over three hours pushed me to take the risk of developing a story every day, of trampling doubt and hazy thinking to make an idea into a character with a plot. Each day I finished a complete story—beginning, middle, end. I might not be happy with parts of it, but overall the story felt finished.

 

Marketing was an entirely different matter. After editing in the afternoon I explored outlets for each story. Some journals are clear about what they want and don’t want. What they don’t want can be more important than anything else. If you send a noir story to someone who prefers humorous cozies, you’re wasting your time. But even then, as all writers know, a story that matches the guidelines of theme, etc., may still not catch the editor’s eye. So far I’ve sent out three of the stories.

 

What else did I learn?

 

In a composition class in college, a professor took me aside and pointed out that I had a habit in my writing that I should work on. Manuscript in hand, he pointed to the opening paragraph, which he approved of, and then the following paragraph, which he said just went around in circles. “That’s what you do,” he said. “You keep writing while you decide where to go next, and then you write on.” Under pressure to take an idea and complete a story in three hours I managed to break the habit of writing while I thought about where to go next. 

 

As you can perhaps divine, I didn’t take on the challenge for this week. I’m not writing a short story every morning this week. But the idea is worth adopting—writing according to time instead of scene or pages or words. I’m considering trying it again, perhaps once a month. I’ll let you know. Right now I'm developing story ideas--a sentence or two, perhaps a paragraph, that gives the general idea. I like having a known starting point even if everything that comes after that is totally different.

 

Correction: During NaNoWriMo, my total output was 40K words, not 48K. That was wishful thinking. 

Three Hours a Day

A successful short story writer once explained that she wrote a new short story every morning and edited a draft of an older story in the afternoon. This sounded like an admirably disciplined approach, and I’ve remembered this part of her talk for almost forty years. Recently an agent talked about his strategy for getting his clients to a six-figure salary. His advice was simple: writers should write three hours a day and work on marketing three hours a day. Like many of the other writers on the zoom program, I wondered if this was sustainable.

 

When I begin a new novel, I set a word quota for the day and usually reach it. My basic goal is 1,500 words, but the day’s results may range from 800 to 2500 words. For this year’s NaNoWriMo I logged in 48k words over the month (and after taking off most weekends). But I did not always write for three hours. I compose by scene, any one of which can be long or short but always moves me forward as I want, allowing for surprises, digressions, corrections and additions to earlier scenes. But the question of time doesn’t arise.

 

With the idea of time nagging at me, I decided to try a week of writing for three hours each morning. Because of other commitments, I couldn’t commit to three hours of marketing in the afternoon, and will set that aside for another time. (Any excuse will do to get out of three hours of marketing.)

 

I began my three-hour commitment on Monday morning. How am I doing? So far I’m four for four—four short stories written over four mornings, spending three hours each morning doing nothing but writing fiction. 

 

What have I learned? The time pressure changed my process. Sunday evening I began wondering what I’d write the next day since I’m not working on a novel (that would have been easy). In a file of short story ideas I found one that had been rattling around in my head without any sense of urgency. But once I knew I’d be writing soon the story began to feel warm, taking shape. At ten in the morning I was on my way, and at one o’clock, I was done, with a three-thousand word story. I set it aside to marinade, as it were, for revising at a later date. 

 

On Monday evening I once again wondered what I would write in the morning. Would my discipline dry up? I had a vague idea and held onto that through the evening. In the morning I went to work and after three hours had another three-thousand word story by one o’clock. Wednesday and today, Thursday, went the same with an idea in the previous evening and a three-hour sprint in the morning. Today my story is only twenty-five hundred words so I’m writing this blog to fill out the time.

 

The difference between this challenge and my regular approach to short stories is time. I don’t usually put myself under pressure to develop a story on a certain day at a certain hour. I prefer to take the time to think about it, let it take shape, and write it when I feel ready. The challenge has made me much more prolific, at least as far as short fiction is concerned, and I now have four stories to polish and send out. By tomorrow lunchtime I may have a fifth. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to try for a second week. I’ll let you know. 

 

 

The History of a New Book

For participation in a book group I usually buy a copy of the book so I don’t have to worry about renewing it with the library or returning it to a friend. For a group beginning this month I ordered the title from one of my favorite second-hand sellers. Four years old, this copy was listed as “like new.” When I unwrapped it, and began riffling through the pages, I was convinced the book was brand new, unread. 

 

The easiest way to evaluate the newness of a trade paperback book is the binding and cover. There is no sign the cover was even opened—no fold or crease along the edge of the spine front or back, no wrinkle in the spine, and the tightness of the pages intact.

 

The only sign that the book had been opened was the inscription on the half-title page: “To Molly, Hope you appreciate this book as much as we do. Love to you! David & Marti 1-’17.” Some readers don’t like finding inscriptions or notes on any book they buy, even when they know it’s second hand and likely to come with a few. Not me. I’m curious about where the book has been and who left their reactions and additions hidden among the paragraphs. But in this one I won’t find anything.

 

It looks like Molly didn’t even open the book to check the contents, scan the first page of the first chapter, or read the acknowledgments at the back. Except for the inscription, the book looks and feels pristine. 

 

This kind of discovery of something purchased second hand shouldn’t surprise anyone today—so many books circulate through libraries and online bookstores that we all get brand-new copies occasionally. But this one surprised me because the person who gave it as a gift clearly loved it, and gave it to someone thought to be a kindred spirit.

 

So what book is it? This week I’m beginning a group discussing When Awareness Becomes Natural: A Guide to Cultivating Mindfulness in Everyday Life, by Sayadaw U Tejaniya (from Shambala Publications). 

 

I’ve been trying to recall if I have ever so misjudged a friend with the book or other gift I’ve passed along. Friends and I are quick to share what we like to read (or eat or see on TV), but there are sure to be pockets of surprises for me as well as for them.

 

So, as I ponder this book’s limping arrival in my life, I’ll wonder about Molly and what she disliked on sight about this book. Or if she ever ran into David and Marti and had to tell them no, she didn’t love the book as much as they did. Or did she just say yes, she read it but now she’s forgotten what it was about? This is for all practical purposes a new book but it already has a history--as a brand-new book in a bookstore, as a gift to Molly, as a reject in a second-hand bookstore, and now as my ticket into a zoom book group. I’ll be thinking of Molly and her friends as I read. And I'll be wondering at the irony of her rejecting this book in particular, a book with the theme of mindfulness or awareness of the reality we are immersed in daily.