Working Through Writer's Block

Sooner or later, the dreaded Writer's Block comes to most authors. Sometimes it's because the well has run dry for any number of possible reasons and sometimes it's merely a case of laziness, making excuses or having received a depressing rejection. I won't bother to say which one I'm most afflicted with. However, there are times when I can work through this block to creativity by writing to an outside prompt and letting the mind run free without judgmental repercussions. Knowing full well that these prompt writings are probably never meant to see print.

So, if you don't mind a little silliness, I'll share a resulting sample of said writer's block therapy. This one comes from my Harley riding background and is slightly edited for better readability on your part. The protagonist, named after the slang term for an illegal drinking establishment, is loosely based on a guy I knew, but I honestly don't think he would recognize himself if he read this.

TO A MUSE

Having been severely encouraged by his new old lady Patricia to acquire a modicum of culture and perhaps broaden his literary interests at the same time, Blind Pig decided to write his memoirs. He perceived himself as the proper expert for this endeavor, seeing as how he was the only one who understood himself.

With apparent delight, Patricia was heard to exclaim, "Oh Pig, darling. I'm so impressed. It's simply wonderful that you are going to write your autobiography."

The Pig had been so caught up in drafting his pending memoirs that he hadn't even considered the words auto and biography. Ambling off to the kitchen for a beer, he contemplated these two words and decided they wouldn't do at all. In the first place, Pig refused to ride in one of them metal cages called an auto, that was for civilians in the straight life. And in the second place, he figured all them auto biographies must have been written by race car drivers, which obviously left him out. Therefore, being a motorcycle enthusiast, he decided to refer to his memoirs as a motor-cy-ography.

Thus having rendered that momentous decision, he proceeded to gather up his writing materials. Lacking the immediate possession of either computer or an old fashioned typewriter, Pig decided to write in longhand. He promptly located the stub of a carpenter pencil and a dried-up ball point pen bearing the logo of his local bail bond agent. Finding no clean paper to write on, Pig commenced to cut up old brown paper grocery bags that he'd forgotten to throw in the trash years ago. As he labored, Pig thought he had now acquired an insight into the demise of the modern writer, seeing as how most grocery stores had gone from paper to plastic, thus depriving the writer of a convenient source of cheap paper material.

All set to begin with carpenter pencil in hand, the Pig suddenly found himself plagued by Writer's Block, which pleased him immensely because he now knew he was on the road to becoming a real writer, otherwise he wouldn't be blocked. In order to break through this barrier, Pig thought about what other writers talked about at times like these and knew what he had to do. Turning to the Z's in the Yellow Pages, he punched in a phone number and waited for someone to answer.

"Hello. This is the zoo. How may I help you?"

"Do you have one of those Bullwinkle things?"

"Excuse me, sir."

"You know, one of those big brown, grass-eating things from the north woods?"

"Oh, you mean a moose?"

"Yeah, can I borrow one for a while?"

"I'm sorry, sir. We only loan our animals out to other zoos, not private individuals."

"Just for a couple of weeks. I'll take good care of him."

The line went dead.

Incensed at his first rejection as an author, Pig retired to the bedroom and commenced rooting through his closet. In quick order, he extracted his black ninja, steal-at-night clothes, several lengths of rope, his night vision goggles and two pair of old sweat socks. As the sun went down, he loaded all his gear into an old pickup he borrowed from an unsuspecting neighbor. He also threw in a case of Jamaican Red Stripe beer, ten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and three Moon Pies in case he got hungry during the coming escapade.

Early the next morning, Pig returned to the house where his new old lady Patricia was waiting on the front porch. In the back of the pickup, he had one dazed, bound, gagged and blindfolded moose. With an apparent perception of the problem, Patricia then proceeded to explain to Blind Pig the difference between the large, antlered, herbivore he had kidnapped from the zoo, i.e. a moose, as opposed to the spiritual inspiration for a writer, i.e. a muse.

Undaunted by this minor mistake, Pig asked if he could keep the moose in the backyard for a few days anyway.

The moose, still gagged by the old sweat socks, had nothing to say about the matter.

And there you have it. Turned out I could write something after all. And yes, Blind Pig, over the years, did go on to have several therapeutic adventures which will also not see print. Well, other than the one above.

You're welcome.

Ride easy 'til we meet again.

Professional Tips– P. D. James

P. D. James © The Times

One of the grand dames of mystery, a mistress of the post-Golden Age following Agatha Christie, P.D. James, has given us her tips for effective writing. A student of putting words on paper, I've shared tips from great authors.

As it turns out, the Baroness James has written at least two sets of tips, as noted by one of our readers, which we've gathered in one place. Important: Click the links in the headings for the full articles and explanations.

Writing Tips I, Mystery

1. Center your mystery
2. Study reality
3. Create compelling characters
4. Research, research, research
5. Follow the 'fair-play rule'
6. Read!
7. … and write
8. Follow a schedule

When working on a story, I daydream a lot, but it's creative daydreaming about the plot, as opposed to dawdling, which the grand dame refers to. There's a story about an actress wannabee who said she wanted to be a famous movie star. "Tell me," said the career counselor. "Do you want to be famous or want to be an actress?" James is saying the same thing: The goal in the front of your mind must be writing the best you can, not fantasizing about fame.

Here again is the Baroness, the inimitable Phyllis Dorothy James, with an update.

Writing Tips II, General

1. You must be born to write
2. Write about what you know
3. Find your own routine
4. Be aware that the business is changing
5. Read, write, and don't daydream!
6. Enjoy your own company
7. Choose a good setting
8. Never go anywhere without a notebook
9. Never talk about a book before it is finished
10. Know when to stop

And so I shall.

P. D. James © The Telegraph

The Immortal Timing of Elmore Leonard

Buddy Hackett said, “Ask me what’s the secret of comedy.”   
Johnny Carson started to say, “What’s the secret of…” and Buddy yelled, “Timing,” very loudly, right in his face. It killed me. Timing is important — Johnny Carson has a throw pillow in his house that has embroidered on it, “It’s All in the Timing.” 

The excerpt above is from How To Play In Traffic by Penn Jillette and Teller, published in 1997 and reportedly now out of print. But, whether or not the book’s out of print, this excerpt deftly demonstrates comedy timing.

Or, perhaps in this case: counter-timing.

Timing isn’t only important in comedy, of course; it’s crucial in many sports, such as archery or running (when should a runner add that final burst of speed, for instance?). And, in my opinion, timing is also often crucial to the success of a story.

In Memoriam

Whether that story’s a suspense, mystery, romance, or even literary, timing often makes as big a difference between “hit” or “miss,” as it does on the archery range. Just the right “oomph” has to come at just the right moment, after a long period of climbing tension, or everything can fall flat and lifeless.

This is one problem I don’t believe the late Elmore Leonard suffered from.

In fact—comedic timing or suspense timing—I think he had a great sense of both. How else could he have turned out a work like Get Shorty?

Frankly, I believe folks will be reading Elmore Leonard for decades, if not centuries to come. And, though the reasons they sight for reading him may change over time, I believe his “timing” will be a major ingredient for his writing’s longevity, perhaps even immortality.

How did he do it? 

A comedian can physically stop speaking, wait a beat or half-beat, then deliver the punch line. But, how does one accomplish the same thing in the written word?

A writer can’t very well write “Stop and wait a beat before reading the next sentence, please.” Yet, Elmore Leonard’s timing was terrific.

I believe Leonard gave us a pretty good hint, four years ago on Criminal Brief, when he wrote: “I’m a believer in white space, the setting off of text (and illustrations) with surrounding ‘emptiness’ to lend readability and visual attraction. William Morrow and HarperCollins charge dearly for white space. …”

He wasn’t necessarily talking about timing when wrote that. But, I strongly suspect his belief in the “white space” had a lot to do with his success in timing.

Think about it:

How often does a comedian wind along on a story, raising the comedic tension — only to suddenly drop into silence for a beat, before delivering a verbal snap-kick that sends the audience reeling?

That silent beat, or half-beat, is timing.

And, in the written word as Elmore Leonard dished it up, I think the printed equivalent was often hidden in the white space he so revered.

If white space, alone, did the trick, of course, I’m sure we’d see far more books with two or three lines of blank space between certain lines. And, that’s not terribly common, even in Elmore Leonard’s work. In fact, thumbing through four of his novels while researching this column, I found that he only did that to denote scene changes — a pretty common practice, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So, how does white space help with timing?

I think the answer is that it works in the interplay of other elements. In that same post on Criminal Brief, Leonard posted his ten tips for writers as follows:

1. Never open a book with weather. 
2. Avoid prologues. 
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said,” he admonished gravely. 
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose." 
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. 
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. 
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. 

Taken together, and in conjunction with a statement he made around the same time: “My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it,” we’re left with a clear understanding of his desire to achieve spare or stripped-down writing.

I took the opportunity to examine this list on a few other sites, and found it interesting, however, that Mr. Leonard made it clear: There is room for compromise.

As he pointed out at one point: these are ten rules that work for him; he’s not suggesting they work for everyone. In one case he explains, “If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.” 

More importantly, he adds: ‘There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, but it's OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks."’

Reading what a character says, translating that into the “the way he talks” and using this to create a visual construct of the character may seem to be asking a lot from the reader. But, in an Elmore Leonard work it seems only natural.

He writes the character so that a reader can hear the cadence of that character’s voice, the “beat” of his words. Sometimes, it’s a staccato beat. At others, it’s a languid throb. But the beat is there! And, injecting abundant white space, which is the natural outcome of spare writing, in just the right way, can then create a gestalt of sorts that results in remarkable literary timing—right there on the page.

Is this idea crazy? 

According to the New York Times, Mr. Leonard said: “The bad guys are the fun guys. … The only people I have trouble with are the so-called normal types. Their language isn’t very colorful, and they don’t talk with any certain sound.” 

Of course, timing has to fit naturally into the voice that’s present, or the slight gear-change required to assure proper timing may signal a ‘heads-up!’ to the reader. This might work on occasion, but I suspect a more subtle manifestation of timing renders a bigger response on the part of the reader. 

And, Elmore Leonard was a master of this.  Perhaps that's why so many of his narrative view points seem to stem from the so-called 'bad guys;' perhaps they provided voices with the requisite cadence for successful timing.

Or, maybe I'm wrong.

One final comment on Mr. Leonard’s timing:

He passed away in his Bloomfield Township, Mich. home on Tuesday. And, the timing of his passing—from the viewpoint of this reader was:

“Too Soon! Oh, far too soon.”

Professional Tips – John Lutz

At Bouchercon in Baltimore, several of us from Criminal Brief were going out to dinner. Along for the ride was a couple I didn't know, so I introduced myself.

John Lutz

If I could have picked any one person to meet, it would have been John Lutz, and here I was with my hand in a frozen clasp and my jaw unflatteringly prolapsing.

Gushing– I detest gushing. I hope I didn't gush. Gushing would have been the ultimate uncool. But I may have prattled on a bit about Nudger, maybe Frank Quinn or the Night series. Maybe a little. Or a lot.

Carving a Place for Himself

John Lutz rose to the top of my favorite American mystery authors long before I began writing and long before I realized how much he was honored by his colleagues. This man manages not only to be a prolific writer– both short stories and novels– but he avoids the death trap of an occasional contractual dud.

Usually writers excel at either characterization or plot. John Lutz handles both with ease. His protagonists are real, they're accessible, they're ordinary people with extraordinary barriers to overcome. Jack Reacher they are not but neither are they Tom Cruise.

Nudge, Nudger

My favorite is Nudger, a gentle PI with a carnivorous ex-wife, crushing debts, an unreliable car and a very reliable girlfriend. Indeed, he has a few very good friends even when, like Danny the doughnut man, they can be too much. Nudger doesn't bounce out of his rut, but he manages to climb up a centimeter at a time. That's good enough for most people.

My favorite novel plot comes from the Fred Carver series. Carver has a bad leg and bad enemies… one of them a corrupt police lieutenant. Carver finds an ingenious way to keep the lieutenant in line.

And premise? Imagine a cameraman taking time lapse photos of an office building and realizes one person doesn't move… all day long. Dum, de-dum, dum.

John Lutz's Top Ten Tips

While I was in South Africa, I received an eMail mentioning John Lutz'stop ten tips for writers. I haven't provided famous author tips in quite some time, so I was pleased to see this. Recently published by The Strand Magazine, I paraphrase here for the purposes of discussion.

What can we learn from John Lutz? Let's recap and study his recommendations.

1. Appeal to a broad range of readers.

   This should be obvious, but clearly many would-be authors miss the point. We've all known writers like that. When others question who their intended market is, they become defensive and talk about artistic merit and avoiding the crush of the mainstream– no problem there.

2. Write characters your readers will enjoy, likable and interesting. Bear in mind the importance of chemistry between characters.

   You'll remember an outstanding plot for a long time, but if you keep coming back to a book, a series, or an author, chances are it's for the characters.

3. Know the ending before beginning. John calls this a 'magnetic north' that keeps the writer from meandering.

   I'm relieved John makes this point. So many of the start-writing-and-see-where-your-story-takes-you school eschew having a fixed plot that I started wondering if I was the odd duck out. I may sketch a scene and then dream up the circumstances surrounding it, but I like to have a goal when I start writing. That doesn't mean an initial target can't be revised, but I have to know the ending first.

4. Build your characters as if you were to act them on stage. In other words, what is the motivation of each? Corollary: How can you make them distinctive?

   John asks what drives a character: respect, love, wealth, power, forgiveness, revenge? Figure that out and turn to method acting. Then give your players distinctive characteristics in looks, speech, and catch phrases.

5. Practise your craft in the same place and time each day. John says this makes it easier to lose yourself in your writing so readers might lose themselves in your work.

   This is where I fall short. I like to work at night because it's quiet where I can think and paint pictures on the dark screen of my mind. Unfortunately crazy people (merchants, schools, government offices) think I should remain available during the day. Ah, the privations and tribulations of an artist!

6. Read chapter endings and beginnings. End each chapter with a question, actual or implied.

   I believe John is suggesting making chapters sort of cliffhangers. In chapter 33, the good guy breaks away from the bad guys who were chasing him and turns onto the mountain road just as the brakes fail… turn the page to chapter 34.

7. Concentrate on the particular. Make the smallest details singular and real.

   This is somewhat related to (4) above. Romance writers recommend employing all five senses when describing, but good genre writers of any stripe should follow suit. Consider an amazing paragraph from Sue Grafton:
   

   As a child, I was raised with the same kind of white bread, which had the following amazing properties: If you mashed it, it instantly reverted to its unbaked state. A loaf of this bread, inadvertently squished at the bottom of a grocery bag, was permanently injured and made very strange-shaped sandwiches. On the plus side, you could roll it into little pellets and flick them across the table at your aunt when she wasn't looking. If one of these bread boogers landed in her hair, she would slap it, irritated, thinking it was a fly. I can still remember the first time I ate a piece of the neighbor's home-made white bread, which seemed as coarse and dry as a cellulose sponge. It smelled like empty beer bottles, and if you gripped it, you couldn't even see the dents your fingers made in the crust.

8. Read dialogue aloud.

   I am a believer in reading not just dialogue, but everything aloud. There's something about the exercise that catches errors and rotten writing like no other tool. And to vary the equation, I sometimes instruct my computer to read to me.

9. Let your writing 'cool off' before re-reading and revising.

   Again, I 'm a believer. Days, weeks, even months later, the brain sees a story in a new light. My reaction is often disgust. Only when I reach a point where I no longer detest what I've written do I begin to think it might be ready for someone else.

10. Double check you're satisfied with the four elements: character, situation, setting, and theme.

    If you're not fully comfortable with your writing, others won't be comfortable either. It all has to fit and work together. Don't 'make do', find a way to make it all work.

11. Pat yourself on the back.

Now you know why John Lutz is a favorite of mine.

Tech Tip– Transparency

Improve your Image

It amazes me how creativity bursts out of many of us in multiple ways, music, painting, sculpture, cooking, even quilting. Many of us like to include art in our blogs and find ourselves frustrated by cantankerous software. When it comes to clip art, you may have noticed some SleuthSayers pictures seem cursed with a white frame or background while others blend into the blog. For anyone with a non-white blog background, this is for you.


Once upon a time, little programs could make unwanted image parts invisible. Unfortunately, they've all but disappeared. I use Photoshop to set backgrounds to transparent, but that's using a steam shovel to shift a dustpan of dirt.

If you're interested (and this is by no means required) in how to do this, here are a few free tools you can use. Although I strive to be cross-platform, I've somewhat emphasized Windows here since Microsoft Paint doesn't support transparency and Mac tends to be more graphically inclined.

	The Gimp			instructions
	GimpShop			instructions
	Paint-dot-net			instructions
	LView Pro			instructions

GIF and PNG

GIF and JPEG formats have very different purposes and you'll often see the wrong format used, especially JPEG. JPEG is intended for blends, subtle tones, and a large color palette such as photographs. GIF is designed for flat-tone images like line drawings, cartoons, and simple 'flat' pictures. There is a third format, PNG, which encompasses both images. To use transparency, you must use GIF or PNG, not JPEG although you can convert a JPEG to the other formats if it's tonally flat.

PowerPoint

Although I avoid PowerPoint, I understand it can be used to make parts of images transparent. Follow this video or these instructions:

1. select menu: Insert Photo > Picture from File
2. click Recolor button
3. click Set Transparent Color
4. click on the background color to disappear
5. right click image
6. click Save as Picture
7. set Format to .PNG
8. specify name and save

Here's to transparency!

Smart Writers and Stupid Writers

All Gaul may have been divided into three parts, as any beginning Latin student knows, but as far as I am concerned, all writers are divided into two groups - smart writers and stupid writers. Alas, I am firmly, and I might add unrepentantly, in the latter group at least when writing fiction. Even mystery fiction.

We all know the smart writers. They plan ahead. They have file cards of characters' personality features, elaborate back stories, and flow charts. Although it may be apocryphal, I rather like the story about Agatha Christie lying in her long British bathtub eating apples, until, the top of the tub lined with cores, she had worked out another of her fiendishly complex plots. That's my idea of a smart writer, one who leaves nothing to chance and has a clear map of where the story is going and who's going to do what to whom.

I find this sort of planning impossible, even though I happen to live with a smart writer. My sportswriter husband was capable, in the old days when dictation was necessary, of dictating a sports story, complete with all punctuation, from a few notes in his reporter's book. I found this astonishing, given my own troubles even with pen, paper, and typewriter. His was a hard act to follow, and perhaps you can understand why I didn't start writing until I was in my thirties.

And then, despite his good example, I turned out to be a thoroughly stupid writer. I get an idea, and because at least the beginnings of beginnings are easy, I plunge in. A character whispers in my ear, and I write down what he or she says. They tend to be obsessives with homicide in mind, although I get a few nice folk who are shocked at evil and want to set the world to rights.

The first few pages go swimmingly. There is really nothing better than starting a story (or a novel) with a flourish. How clever one feels, how creative. But then comes a difficulty, The Plot. While a smart writer would have looked into this little detail early on, the stupid writer trusts to the beneficence of the Muse, who, like all divas and goddesses, has her off days. Story comes to a halt. Writer goes for a walk in winter, a swim in summer, a sleep in the evening. And hopes.

But the Providence, as the Scots used to say, that looks after bairns and drunkards, has a soft spot for stupid writers. Gradually the story unfolds. And this is good, this is interesting. Every morning the stupid writer gets up with a little more material and she has to write if she is going to discover how the story comes out.

Forget all the writerly delays, the websites to check out, the email to answer - how modern technology has expanded the pencil sharpening and paper straightening of yesteryear. But if I want the end of the story, I have to get to work.

I find this salutary, though it may not be the case with every stupid writer. But I really aspired to be a reader, not a writer, and I must confess that if I knew the whole plot, the victim, the murderer, the exact placement of the crucial chase, the romantic moment, etc, etc, I would never sit down at the computer.

I find such smart certainty boring in the nth degree, while discovery is interesting and gets the juices going. I like to be surprised by everything from a character's sexual orientation to the identity of the killer, though I must admit that I left the latter very long in The Lost Diaries of Iris Weed. I reached 260 pages and was still dithering between two plausible candidates, but at least my work day wasn't boring.

Of course, there are disadvantages to being a stupid writer. Certain classic forms of the mystery are a closed book as far as I am concerned. Even thinking about a locked room puzzle gives me a headache and anything involving railroad or train schedules or precise timing is out of the question. Who can think that far ahead?

Plots can take a long time to resolve, too. I started a story called The Great Choreographer years ago and it only fell into shape earlier this spring. I have a suitcase full of money (strictly literary, of course) that offers all sorts of possibilities but has not yet found a good home. A story that I just finished considered two different victims and a couple of different murderous operandi before it reached its final form. This is not efficient.

Still, stupid writing has its advantages. Characters that develop as they go along are, I think, less liable to be easy stereotypes, and if plots take a while to develop, they sometimes provide nice surprises along the lines of 'I didn't think he'd ever do that!'

In any case, I suspect one writes as one must. And if one writes to know what one is thinking, then one always has a good strong motive to get back to the writing desk.