If you were just beginning...

I'm planning an October panel discussion of published authors, as a prelude to "NaNoWriMo" (National Novel Writing Month). The goal is to be as useful as possible to people who are going to begin (many for the first time) writing a novel. The format will be that a moderator will ask the authors 5 or 6 questions, letting each author take a few minutes to reply to each one.

Possible questions:

What is your writing schedule?

Where do you write and what tools, machinery, music do you have there?

How do you begin - story boarding, outlining, character sketches...?

Think back to when you were beginning. What did you need to know? What was interesting, what was inspiring, what helped?

What else should I ask?

We Are Not Alone...

The online universe is still expanding. There were many wonderful mystery blogs going strong when Write On Mystery was set up. Indeed, we couldn’t even go with our first three choices for blog name!

Here is just ONE of the mystery blog lists I came across: http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/Mystery_Novels#google1

My first real experience with a mystery blog was with the Ladykillers, top Mystery Book Blog 2010. http://www.theladykillers.typepad.com/ This is an impressive blog, with author photos, links to websites, appearances, advance promotion of upcoming blog topics, and guest bloggers. Very nice that you don’t have to be a member to comment. They get several responses to most of their entries.

Another attractive blog, http://mysterysuspence.blogspot.com/2011/07/mystery-crime-fiction-blog-carnival_31.html, has been around since 2009. This one focuses on reviews. They have over 400 members, and interviews with the likes of Jan Burke and L. J. Sellers.

A Canadian contribution to the sub-genre is http://mysterymavencdn.blogspot.com/. They use lots of photos, including latest book cover of the blogger.

The Cozy Mystery List blog comes up often when using Google. It’s a simpler format, focused on the cozy sub-genre of mysteries. http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/

Using the theory that we are all one big supportive community, I encourage you to check out these blogs, and find more wonderful ones. Post there if you like, and if appropriate plug Write On Mystery.

Defining Success

How do you define your success?

Success is defined in the dictionary as: degree or measure of succeding; favourable or desired outcome. As writers we define success as a contracted book but there are more ways for us to count our successes.

One of the ways I count my success is writing one hundred words a day. They have to be new words so when I do editing I still have to write my hundred words a day. Now you might say that's not much of a challenge but I usually don't stop at a hundred words. I get two or three pages done each day, more on days I don't go to work but if all I get is two pages every day for seven days, then I have fourteen pages or a chapter every week. At the end of the year, I've written fifty-two chapters. Whoo! Whoo! for me.

Accountability is another way to measure success. Another group has word count Wednesday. Now that means that every Wednesday you post your success. Now many words have you written? Have you entered a contest? Have you submitted to an editor or an agent? In othe words, what have you actually done for your writing career for that week.

In another writing group we have success bracelets. Now what sister doesn't want a lovely bracelet with each step of her writing career symbolized by a charm? I'm typing this article and looking at the way my charm bracelet reflects the light. It's a wonderful measure of success.

I hope I've given you some ideas that you can incorporate into defining your success as a writer.

Series entries

I just finished the new Sookie Stackhouse short story in Home Improvement: Undead Edition (edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner). The short stories in the Sookie Stackhouse series have been interesting. Some have depicted pivotal events (such as Sookie being informed of her cousin's death), others have seemed as if they might lead to whole new and amazing story lines (such as Sookie sleeping with a shape-changing fairy - which seems to have had no consequences, at least so far...does anyone know what gestation period would be likely?), this story may have introduced a new ongoing character, or added another complication for Sookie if anyone searches her land. If we gained new insight into any character, it may have been J.B.!

In Dark and Stormy Knights (edited by P.N. Elrod) the new Harry Dresden story by Jim Butcher is fun, introduces a new character who may be a player in the series future, and shows us a side of Harry that we already know, but that we love. I have to say that my favorite short story of the last few years was "The Warrior" by Jim Butcher published in Mean Streets. Lovely entry in the series, character growth for Harry, and a different view of the series (and the world) for the reader!

The latest Jim Butcher novel, Ghost Story, is an interesting series entry. Some entries in series are game changers, others circle back to the status quo, and some seem like second halves of the story told in the previous book. Ghost Story seemed to me to be the second half of Changes, and the two together are a game changer in the series. Changes raised some disturbing ethical questions about Harry. In Ghost Story some of the questions raised are answered, and the story (the entire series) can move forward in a new direction. Nicely done! This is not the book that one should use as an introduction to the series, but it is essential for those who follow Harry Dresden.

The series entry I'm anxiously awaiting is the "Ivan" book in the Vorkosigan saga. If anyone is interested in a taste of the Lois McMaster Bujold series, there are links to free "samples" from the series in the Baen Free Library:

The Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella "The Mountains of Mourning"

http://www.webscription.net/p-622-the-mountains-of-mourning.aspx

and one of the prime entry-point books for the Vorkosigan series, The Warrior's Apprentice.

http://www.webscription.net/p-1290-warriors-apprentice.aspx

Dog days and holidays

A week by the sea – not a thought spared for writing, even emails – and there’s a curious lightness to my being, a certain liberty from all things cerebral that is enlightening and emancipating.

A more enterprising would-be writer would count a holiday as a break to really get down to some serious writing. Not me. I’d rather relish the things that live and play outside my head, rather than the characters that inhabit it daily, crying out for dialogue, action, plot.

So, I’ve come home. They haven’t. They’ve been away, too, God knows where, and at this point I don’t really care. It’s hot, the AC isn’t strong enough, my desk sits in direct sunlight. An added fan brings some relief, yet still my hot brain doesn’t want to write. I’m still on a beach. My toes are in the sand, my head under a straw hat. My heart is still cooling itself in the ocean. I no more want to sweat it out with a passel of words that need re-arranging and rewriting than do the proverbial flight to the moon.

My characters all live in England. It’s November there, it’s rainy a lot of the time, and there’s angst and a few murders to be solved. They’re all wearing wool suits and good stout shoes and it’s cold. There’s fog, drizzle and each home, office or building they enter and inhabit is damp, moldy, and without central heat. All in all, it’s a world away from our hot summer. A bit of cold damp is highly appealing right now, but how to get there? How to recapture the presence and personalities of those characters that were carefully produced and assembled in my head? I’ve missed their foibles and strengths, curiosity and courage, but I’m reluctant, in these dog days of our brief summer, to plunge into their world again.

Those experts are right: One must write every single day, otherwise you risk losing your momentum, your flow, your initiative. Seems mine went out with the tide and didn’t return.

But write I must, heat or no heat. The people in my head seem to be returning, even as I plunk away here at the keyboard, and they’re beginning to hammer at the door to my overheated creativity. They want out again. They want to get back to work. They tell me they were at the seaside, too, walking the beach, dining out, gazing at stars, breathing that energizing sea air. They enjoyed the break from the November rain, they say. Now it’s time to get back to solving those appalling murders. Fun is fun, but justice is far more important, they say. So get over it and get back to it.

The dog days, at least for now, seem to be over. So are my holidays.

Seat of Pants to Chair for Long Periods of Time

The question circulated amongst us here of how we keep ourselves motivated to write during the summer. As a Canadian, now living in the mountains in Central California, the end of winter lifts the heart. It's cold and it snows here. That surprises people.

When summer comes, doors and windows fly open. We move laptops out to the deck and shed clothes until we're down to only one layer.

Much of the last few months as summer settled in with one nice day after another, I've been working with Jodie Renner, an editor specializing in mystery and thriller fiction, whom I met at the Left Coast Crime Conference in Santa Fe this March.

We engaged to work with one another over my second murder mystery, Rip-Off, featuring Detective Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department.

I've worked as a free lance editor over my years of wordsmithing. When anyone hands you their precious manuscript, there is the hope that you will hand it back, gushing, "Oh, it's perfect. I've alerted the awards committee. I wouldn't change a single word. You genius, you."

I admit it. Me too. And, of course, it wasn't perfect, and she suggested many changes. I bristled at some, sulked for half a day, and then did what she suggested.

I've kept at it while my friends went swimming, picked cherries, had picnics and parties, organized expeditions driving into Los Angeles to concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and the Santa Monica Pier.

I kept at it even when it felt like picking over the bones of road kill because, first of all, I was paying her. She asked questions that made me think. She was encouraging just enough to drive me through a second and third revision of a chapter. Occasional compliments made me preen with self-satisfaction, until the next page when she wanted to delete a section. I thought of offering her a knife to chisel the words from my breast instead.

It became a collaboration. So much time is spent alone, seat of pants pressed to chair for long periods of time. I've had a partner, someone who knew my story as well as I did.

Now our partnership has come to an end, and my manuscript is immeasurably improved. As you all know, it's only the beginning of the next phase.

And it's still August.