Pencils down

             Among the common laments of struggling writers is the problem of getting started.  Writing that first sentence, paragraph, chapter.  Personally, I like that part.  If all I had to do was start a project, my batting average would soar.  The difficulty for me is starting something good.  That’s a whole n’other kettle of fish.  And a consistent ravager of averages.

            There’s an opposite problem, which is knowing when to stop.  Both these issues are

dealt with by Issac Newton, who basically said getting something moving takes some effort, though stopping it can be even harder, or actually impossible, without the intervention of an opposing force. 

            Technically, the best treatment for this affliction is to have thought out the structure of your book in advance.  If you have a beginning, a middle and an end, presumably you’ll know when it’s time to stop.  This gets us into the tiresome debate over who’s a pantser and who’s an outliner.  If you believe the beleaguered panelists at a writers conference, we’re either one or the other.  Of course, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, though when it comes to wrapping up a mystery novel, it’s pretty helpful to have a destination in mind as you’re writing along. 

Another trope of the writing commentariat is E.L. Doctrow’s bit, "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  That’s a lovely bit of poetry, but the most likely outcome of this approach is hitting a tree, or running over your next-door neighbor.  Employing a purely Doctrowian strategy, you might find yourself driving from Oxford, Mississippi to the Upper Peninsula, and not have a clue about how to find your way back.  If all that driving is a stand-in for work product, that means you‘ll be throwing out a lot of pages, and this I find

inexcusably wasteful.   I’m more in Reed Farrel Coleman’s camp, who says something like, “I know how to get started, and where I want to end up, and then I figure out how to get there along the way.”

There are believable reports from the conference stage of writers who find their plots revealing themselves as they write, with the finale popping into view at just the right moment, that is, when they’ve reached about 100 thousand words and everything suddenly makes a lot of sense.  I know this happens, and for some, it’s the only way it can happen, but I suspect their genius lies in the subconscious, which has been ably managing navigation while the driver is at the wheel wearing out her pants.

Newton did stipulate that the force needed to arrest motion is external, but this needn‘t apply to automobiles (which have brakes) or disciplined, experienced writers itching to write “Finis”.  Though in support of Newton’s proviso, we also have editors, armed with book contracts, underpinned by production costs and sales forecasts. I worked for a publisher once, and I got to say, “We love your book.  Please cut forty pages.”  I think this always made for a better novel, and importantly, one we could afford to print. 

Have you ever had a big chunk of writing get gobbled up by the computer, and been forced to recreate it all from scratch?  And then somehow come across the original pages?  In my case, the reincarnated version was always better, though some nice bits were invariably lost.  I copy these down and squirrel them away for future use.    

This might give you the idea that you can always improve your book if you have the time to constantly fiddle.  Though there’s a subset of the sin of overwriting, which is over rewriting.  In woodworking and car mechanics, two pursuits that have a lot in common with banging out novels, this is called “Fixing it till it breaks.”  It’s the delusion of perfectionists that refining will always elevate the product, not knowing when they’ve crossed into

sabotaging the messiness that actually creates something fresh and notable.  Whether inflicted by a heavy-handed editor, or ones internal arbiter, it amounts to a crime against art. It's not just about when to stop, but how you do it.

By far my favorite form of ending is one that really isn’t.  The reader thinks he’s idling around in a denouement, when all of a sudden he’s back in the soup.  Or a final twist pulls it all into a more satisfying conclusion (e.g. Presumed Innocent, my personal crime writing GOAT.)  James Cameron, undoubtedly inspired by Rasputin, built about five climaxes into the original Terminator, which my young son at the time renamed The Determinedator.  This technique is a lot of fun, but not that easy to pull off without seeming contrived.  I admire the writers who do.

Our most recent terrier, who died having outlived all his successors, always looked like he was eager to get on to the next thing.  He didn’t know what it was, but he was sure it was going to be great.  He might have been possessed by eternal optimism or just some fundamental drive; it wasn’t exactly joy, but certainly the sublime fulfillment that comes from never being entirely fulfilled. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timmy the Greek

As mentioned once before, during the pandemic, I began sketching cartoons. Eventually, I became addicted and couldn’t stop.

Not everyone loves ’em. My friend Thrush claims he hates them, they’re obscene he says, they’re unfunny. But he dislikes all animation and cartoons, so perhaps I shouldn’t read too much into it.

But that is a problem… I can’t always tell if something’s funny or not, and I definitely lean toward dark humor, less a product of Covid than wicked imagination. Are they any good? I don’t know, I’m an amateur, not a pro, but they’re fun and I’m improving.

What I do know is that a great many cartoons of today either aren’t amusing or rely upon a 5^th grader’s sense of humor. On the flip side, it must be tricky to come up with a funny comic every day or even once a week.

Because of the coronavirus, the majority of my efforts were either medically tied or came from wandering, peripatetic thoughts. Virtually none related to crime. This past week corrected that. What can be more criminal than mobsters having a pleasant chat in a warehouse?

The Interrogation

Influences

Dick Tracy’s Chester Gould suggested the stylized geometry, angular lines, the period, and zoot suits. I debated a 3-D look, but decided against it. Squat characters found at any number of sources finished the cast. The warehouse setting is like a fourth character, silent but menacing. So step back into the dark as we bid hello and goodbye to Timmy the Greek.

Funny or not? Dish it out. I may not have a career in cartooning after all.

The Way I Do It

The other day, as I sat here wondering what to post for my SleuthSayers column, I received an emailed request from an editor for an interview about the way I write short stories. I agreed, he sent me the questions to answer, and one of them was How often do you revise and edit your work? The day after, before writing more of the piece--or do you complete the work, then go into revision mode?

I dutifully responded to that question (and to the others), and only afterward did it occur to me how good a question it was, because I know a number of writers who approach editing and rewriting in many different ways. And--full disclosure, here--I also realized that this was handy fodder for a SleuthSayers post.

Another thought that struck me was something I heard years ago: A good teacher doesn't say, "This is the way you do it." A good teacher says, "This is the way I do it."

So . . . (though I'm no longer a teacher) what do I do, with regard to writing and revising a manuscript?

The whole process, for me, happens in three steps:

Step 1: Planning. I get an idea and--since I'm an outliner--I put the whole story together in my head, start to finish, mostly visualizing separate scenes. It might change a bit later, during the actual writing, but I have to have the entire story, including an ending, in mind before the writing begins. And yes, I know that's not the only way to create a story. But it's what works for me.

Step 2: Writing. I write (type) the first draft of the story, from beginning to end, in all its rough and unedited glory. During that draft, I sometimes substitute letters or abbreviations for characters' names--H for husband, W for wife, N for neighbor, V for villain, and so on--and insert brief notes in certain places like "come up with with a reason for this" or "add detail," or "add background," etc. In other words, I write down the flow of the story, all the way through, and leave out anything that might slow me down.  

So no, I do not "edit as I go."

NOTE: I know many, many writers who do. They write, let's say, an opening to a story, and when that's done, they carefully edit that opening, making sure that section of the story is as perfect as they can make it--and only then do they go on to the next section. They write a few pages of, let's say, the middle of the story, and then edit that part, again making it as perfect as it can be. Then they write the next part, and edit and revise that. And on and on, all the way to the ending. The result is, when those writers are done writing the story, voila!--the story's finished. I mean, completely finished--there's no need to edit or rewrite further. They're ready to send that story out into the world and have it make something of itself.

Step 3: Editing. When I've finished writing my rough draft, I go back to the beginning and edit the entire story.

       3a: I often use a triage approach. By that I mean, I might address the most important things first, like plot holes, continuity problems, timeline differences, weaknesses in structure, etc. I also, during this "step," try to plug the needed information into the place-holders I had put in during the first draft: explanations, clarifications, background details, names of characters, whatever.

        3b: Then I move on to matters of style: strengthening sentences and paragraphs; correcting errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.; making the dialogue snappier, weeding out unneeded words, and finding and fixing really minor issues like typos, backward apostrophes, and so forth. During this step I read and re-read the story, trying to do it through the eyes of a reader and not a writer. The last thing I do here is run the whole thing through SpellCheck and then read it one more time, looking for things SpellCheck won't catch, like typing "doe snot" when what I meant was "does not."

         3c: Finally, I take a hard look at the formatting of the whole manuscript. Spacing, margins, indentations, italics, scene break designations, fonts, page numbering, other header information, etc.

I should point out, here, that I actually have two reasons for doing all this the way I do, rather than "editing as I go."

Reason #1: Doing that info-dump first draft gives me the feeling that I've put a safety net in place. I like having the whole framework down on paper (well, on my hard drive) before I start editing anything. That probably goes back to being a plotter instead of a pantser. I need that reassurance. And having that ending securely in place, even though I might change it later, keeps me from wandering off the path during the middle of the story. 

Reason #2: I sometimes, during the rewriting stage, I think of new things that might change and improve the flow, or even the outcome, of the story. If I edited each section "as I went," these later changes in the plot would probably require me to go back and change things earlier in the story to make my later changes work. I might need to add all kinds of foreshadowing info. If so, I would be forced to completely re-edit sections that I'd already spent a lot of time editing. That's extra work. I don't want to have to go back and add and decorate another room on the bottom floor of the house I'm building when I have already begun building the second and third floors on top of it.

One final note: I don't do multiple drafts of a story. I write a first draft and save it with the story name as the file name, and when it's done and I start editing it, I type the edits directly into the first draft. So when I finish, I have one and only one file of the story. And these days, I usually don't print the story out at all. Everything--the writing, the editing, and the submitting to a market--is done electronically. I do, however, have an automatic backup of everything, both on- and off-site. I should also mention that I'm one of those odd people who actually enjoys the rewriting and the polishing of a manuscript. I know lots of people hate that part of writing. What can I say?

 

So, good or bad, that's my process. How do you do it? Do you edit as you go? Edit every page before starting the next? Write a certain number of pages or words a day? Stop writing with a cliffhanger so you'll be inspired to continue the next day?

Whatever it is, if it works, great. Do whatever's best for you. And vive la difference!

Luke Nickle Fights AI

 

A Resurrection of Poe and Baudelaire

On September 9, David Edgerley Gates wrote "The Tell-Tale Heart", about Edgar Allan Poe's creating "dread through a very calculated use of echoes and repetition, foreshadowing and false narratives. What he’s struggling to write, in effect, is psychological horror. Even though that term, or even the concept, didn’t exist at the time."  (LINK)

I'm not sure that the concept of deliberately creating dread through various means wasn't around in Poe's time is entirely true - there were a lot of Regency Gothic Novels (which Jane Austen made splendid fun of in Northanger Abbey):  1764's The Castle of Ontranto (Horace Walpole), 

“and then the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a hermit’s cowl. “Angels of peace protect me!” cried Frederic, recoiling. “Deserve their protection!” said the spectre.”
― Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

1796's The Monk (Matthew Gregory Lewis), 1794's The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radclyffe), 

“You speak like a heroine,” said Montoni contemptuously, “we shall see if you can suffer like one.”

― Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

and many more which centered around decay,  corruption, sex, dark romance, supernatural forces, wickedness, innocence, and a whole lot of gore.  

But going back to Poe - he was a poet before he was ever a prose writer, and it shows.  Which is undoubtedly the reason why Charles Baudelaire (considered by many to be the modern French poet, and the French poet of modernity) was obsessed with him.

“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

"In...1847, I came upon a few fragments of Edgar Allan Poe, and felt a strange sort of shock…[.] I discovered, believe me if you will, poems and stories that I had already thought of, but of which I had only a vague, confused and disorganised idea, and which Poe had managed to pull together and perfect...." (Source)

 And Baudelaire promptly dropped (almost) everything, and spent his most productive years (1856-1865) translating Poe’s works into French. Now he wasn't the first to translate Poe, but he was the one who made Poe's work sing in French. (Baudelaire's Translations at Gutenberg Press for free.) And his translations became the standard throughout Europe.

First note: Despite his obsession with Poe, when Baudelaire named his poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal -- Flowers of Evil in English -- it was in homage of Nathaniel Hawthorne's highly appropriate Rappaccini's Daughter. (Link here to read on-line)

Second note: In Memoirs of a Drudge, James Thurber reminisces about working at the Riviera edition of the Chicago Tribune in Southern France. (And why didn't my guidance counselor ever tell me about this job?) Anyway, there were regular printers' strikes, and after one of them, the whole press room, half-tanked, got on a train for Cannes. Promptly another argument broke out, this time over which was better, the original or the French translation of Poe's The Raven? And would a real raven be more likely to say, "Jamais plus" or "Nevermore"? "He returned with the claim that our fellow-passenger to a man were passionately on the side of Jamais plus." Betcha the translation was Baudelaire's... 

Another person whom Poe influenced was, of course, H. P. Lovecraft. 

In my early teens, I read most of Poe, most of Lovecraft, and got warped accordingly.  (I'm in good company:  Apparently, so did Stephen King.)  I still say that two of the scariest stories I've ever read are Lovecraft's "The Picture in the House" and "The Shadow Out of Time".  

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King

Shirley Jackson must have had a very good memory.  From The Lottery to The Haunting of Hill House to (my favorite) We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Jackson was one of the great horror / thriller writers.  

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

        ― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

True horror stories are mostly about language, aren't they?  

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...”  ― Stephen King

"Ye get a hankerin'..."  

"I'm going to let my boy in!"

"Whose hand was I holding?"

BTW, Two other horror stories that will scare the sleep from your eyes are ""'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" (M. R. James) and, of course, "The Monkey's Paw" (W. W. Jacobs).  

By Way of Introduction

Back in July Joseph Walker wrote a piece on an interesting subject: Which book would you choose to introduce a new reader to a favorite author?  Not which is the best novel, or which is your favorite, but which book should a reader start with?

Here is my take on it.  I will start with two where I agree with Joe.

Agatha Christie.  And Then There Were None.  As Joe suggests, anyone who thinks Christie=Cozy has never read this book.  It actually leans toward horror as you realize that 1) all the characters are nasty ranging to evil, and 2) all are doomed.  It is a masterpiece.

Sue Grafton. A is for Alibi.  Along with Sara Paretsky and Marcia Muller, with this novel Grafton birthed a thousand female private eyes.  Few are as good as Kinsey Milhone.  Grafton said she wrote this book to kill off an ex-husband, which may explain some of the passion in it. 

Next we move on to authors I love but from whom I selected a different book than Joe.

Rex Stout.  The Doorbell Rang.  Is it his best?  Maybe. It is certainly my favorite.  The book lifted both Stout and Nero Wolfe to a new level with the sheer audacity of the concept. At a time when half the politicians in the country were terrified of J. Edgar Hoover our heroes announce: "On behalf of a client we're going to push his nose in. Just a routine chore, but he's touchy and will try to stop us. So futile."  The nose was a metaphor, by the way. The plot is not his strongest, but plot is not why we reread this guy's books.   The dialog and characterization (a bottle of milk comes to mind) are unforgettable.

Donald E. Westlake. The Hot Rock.  Joe chose Drowned Hopes and I admit that what I call the middle- period Dortmunder books are wonderfully complex, but why not start where it all began?  John Dortmunder is an incredibly unlucky (don't call him incompetent!) thief and in this book he has to steal an emerald, then free the associate who got caught with it, then break into the place it was hidden it, etc. etc.  As one character says "I have heard of the habitual criminal but never the habitual crime." Hilarious.

Richard Stark. Butcher's Moon.  Stark=Westlake, although Westlake said the Stark books only used part of the keyboard.  Dortmunder is in effect the reverse of Parker and in this novel we see a bit of the thief's philosophy.  Gangsters catch Parker's associate and threaten to dismember him if our antihero won't play along.  He does, but not for the reasons you might expect.  A very gory introduction to the amoral thief.

Lawrence Block. Eight Million Ways to Die.  Joe picked When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, a choice I fully understand, but I would jump back one novel.  To my mind, these two, plus the last book in the series  A Drop of the Hard Stuff, (published 25 years later!), form a trilogy and are the strongest of the novels.  Together they show ex-cop, sometime-private eye Matt Scudder at the end of his drinking days, the beginning of his sobriety, and at the difficult first anniversary.  

I would include Ed McBain except, truth to tell, I have trouble telling the books apart in my memory.  My favorites are the ones where minor character Fat Ollie Weeks - good detective and lousy human being - starts on a remarkable journey of self-discovery.

Moving on to authors Joe did not include...

Thomas Perry. Dance For The Dead.  Ooh, this was a hard one.  To my mind his best novel, and my favorite, is Island, a hilarious book about con artists who accidentally create a sort of utopia.  But it is not a fair introduction to Perry's work since most of his work is much more grim.  Naturally I turned to his series about Jane Whitefield who is a sort of anti-detective: she doesn't reveal criminals, she hides them "not if the police are gonna put you in jail, but if the police are gonna find your head in a dumpster." The first book is not quite up to par, but by number two he nailed it.

Dick Francis. Reflex.  This was an easy choice.  It is a good example of Francis's formula while showing how a writer can create magic with a formula.  Philip Nore is a jockey, grimly struggling with the fact that his career is almost over.  When he  reluctantly agrees to investigate a mystery in his own family he discovers a past he didn't know he had, and the possibility of a future he never imagined.

Tony Hillerman. Skinwalkers. Hillerman wrote three novels about older, modern-thinking Navaho Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn.  Then he wrote three about younger, more traditional Officer Jim Chee.  The legend says that a fan asked him why he had changed the name of the character, since she saw no other difference between the two, and that led Hillerman to writing this book, the first of many in which the two men work together.  I find that hard to believe because Skinwalkers feels like he was building up to it since his first novel. And the ending... wow.

G.M. Ford. Who the Hell is Wanda Fuca? Jerry Ford (not that one) wrote a series of terrific novels about Leo Waterman, a Seattle private eye whose secret weapon is a team of homeless people (they can spy anywhere because no one ever notices them). His masterpiece is Cast in Stone, but start with the first book. Witty and gritty in equal measures.

Elmore Leonard. Bandits.  Truth to tell I have the same problem with Leonard as I have with McBain.  I enjoy his books but have trouble telling them a part a year after reading them.  But the ex-nun in this book is a standout in his vast collection of scheming crooks and reluctant heroes.

S.J. Rozan. China Plaid.  Most of Rozan's books feature young Lydia Chin and older Bill Smith, both New York private eyes and semi-partners. .  Half of them are narrated by her and half by him.  All are a delight. Start at the beginning.

Mixing Urban Legends and Crime Stories

Coming up with anthology themes isn't always so easy. Ideally a good theme is at least a little different from what's already been done (unless readers are clamoring for more of a theme you've already used--hey, it happens). In our field, a theme also needs to work well with crimes/mysteries, of course. And most important, (at least for me), the theme should be fun. Something that will excite writers and readers.

When Donna Andrews, Marcia Talley, and I came up with what ended up being the theme of our newest anthology, we knew we'd hit the trifecta. Crime stories with graveyards, ghosts, and monsters--mixed in with human baddies? Yes, please! The result became Hooked on Urban Legends--and Murder! It was released last week by Wildside Press.

Urban legends easily lend themselves to being used by crime writers because so many urban legends involve creepy things. The Hook legend is a perfect example. You remember the tale, right? A guy and girl go parking, and while they're steaming up the car windows, a news alert comes on the radio. A deranged man with a stainless steel hook for a hand has escaped from the asylum for the criminally insane that is right in their town. The couple break apart. The guy floors it and drives the girl home. Because he's a gentleman, he gets out of the car, walks around to her side to open her door for her, only to find ... a bloody stainless steel hook hanging on the car door handle!

That classic story has crime built in. But not all of them do. The legend of the Phantom Hitchhiker is a good example. One variation is that a guy is driving down a dark foggy road at night when he spots a teenage girl walking. Knowing it's not safe for her to be out on a night like that, he offers to drive her home. She accepts. The next day, he realizes she left her jacket in his car, so he drives back to the girl's house to return the jacket. But when an old woman answers the door, her eyes widen. It turns out her daughter was wearing a jacket just like that on another foggy night thirty years ago--when the girl died in a car crash on the same road the driver found her on.

These types of spooky tales--stories people swear happened to a friend of a friend of a friend--are perfect starting points for coming up with crime stories. When we put out our call for stories, we told the authors they could riff off actual urban legends or come up with their own. In the end, we have an anthology with a good mix of each. 

All the authors' names are listed on the back cover, but in case you can't read them clearly, they are: Donna Andrews, Ellen Byerrum, Ginny Fite, Barb Goffman (yes, me), Shari Held, Kathryn Holland, Smita Harish Jain, Meghan Lewis, Jane Limprecht, Alan Orloff, Pat Remick, KM Rockwood, Daphne Silver, Shannon Taft, Marcia Talley, Robin Templeton, and fellow SleuthSayer Joseph S. Walker. 

The back cover

My story in the book is "Into the Woods." I riffed off the Bigfoot legend, though my fabled creature is a foxsquatch--an eight-foot-tall vulpine creature that supposedly lives in the woods. Women and girls are his favorite meals, which is why this town forbids females from ever going into the forest. But one day, two rogue librarians sneak into the woods ...

Four of the authors with stories in the book have crafted essays that Art Taylor is running on his First Two Pages blog. Two weeks ago, he ran an essay by Pat Remick about the opening to her story "Screaming Jenny," based on a real urban legend set in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Last week, he ran an essay by Shannon Taft about the beginning of her story "The Cave Man," which is a legend she built from scratch. Another essay should be running today and the last one, next Tuesday. You can find them on Art's blog here: https://arttaylorwriter.com/the-first-two-pages/.

The book is available in ebook and trade paperback formats from lots of online bookstores, including indie bookshop.org. 

Donna, Marcia, and I are going to be hosting a Zoom one weekday evening in October with as many of the anthology authors as can make it. The authors will talk about their stories and maybe offer tips for writing short stories too. The event is still in the planning stages. I'll share more details when I post again in three weeks. 

In the meanwhile, enjoy Spooky Season--and make sure to always check your backseat before getting into a car. You never know when a deranged killer will be hiding back there ... waiting for you.