Write What You Love

by Joyce

Everyone's heard the old piece of writing advice, only write what you know.

Hogwash. Or if you prefer something stronger, bullshit.

If I sat down to write a book, or short story, or even an article, and only wrote what I know, it would be terribly boring. I'd have to write about a middle-aged woman living in the suburbs with a husband and two grown sons, whose days consist of checking email, reading blogs, writing, cleaning, cooking, and on occasion, cleaning up cat puke. Not exactly a compelling story.

A better piece of advice is to write what you love.

What are your passions? Let's say you love boats and water. Your nearest body of water is a tiny creek a mile away, and owning any kind of boat, let alone a large one would require hitting the Powerball jackpot. But in your daydreams you can feel the warm ocean breeze on your face as you glide over the sparkling turquoise water. You look stunning in your white capris and striped navy and white tank. Or if you're a man, you look just like Tom Selleck in his Magnum days. Personally, I'd look stunning in the capris and Tom would be standing beside me. Or better yet, behind me. His hands touch my shoulders. He turns me around to face him... Oops. Sorry. Got carried away there.

Ahem. Back to my point.

In your real life, the above would never happen. You don't know a thing about boats or boating. If you stick to the only write what you know theory, you shouldn't write it. But if you really think about it, how many successful writers follow that principle? I counted zero. Zero. Most writers incorporate what they know with what they love, or at the very least, things that interest them. After all, anything can be researched.

Do you think Nancy Martin is a bad girl with mobsters for relatives? Wrong. Nancy's a nice, happily married woman, and as far as I know, there are no mobsters in her family. Nancy is a Pittsburgher, so she's combined that real-life setting with her penchant for creating interesting characters and situations.

Do you think Jennie Bentley remodels houses with a hunky guy named Derek? Not that I know of. Unless that's her husband's name. I'm pretty sure she's never found bones buried in her basement, or been locked in a tunnel room with a corpse. Jennie has a background in real estate and combines her knowledge of houses with her vivid imagination.

And what about Wilfred Bereswill? His protagonist is a female. Even though Will looks fabulous in a dress (yes, I had to bring that up again!), he's not a woman. I'm sure his wife will verify this. Will uses his environmental engineering background to come up with fascinating terrorists and worst-case scenarios.

I could go on and on.

Think about your favorite authors. How do they write what they love? How do they combine that with what they know?

How do you do that in your own writing?

Be sure to come back tomorrow when we're joined by guest blogger Kate Douglas, who will be giving us all advice on never giving up. Kate is the author of the paranormal romance, DemonFire, the first in a new series.

Random Thoughts & Thanks

By Paula Matter

Just when I was appreciating the fact that I don't have to blog until April, having Kelli Stanley here yesterday prompted this post.

I haven't met Kelli yet, but I'm sure looking forward to it when it happens. I friended her through Facebook probably because she's the friend of a friend of friend. Or some such. I really don't remember.

Thing is it wasn't until after friending her that I learned what a very cool, delightful person she is. I joined her Facebook fan page mainly because she had NOT invited me to do so. It really ticks me off when I get those e-mails. I mean, how --

No. Keep this post positive.

I got to thinking this morning how incredibly wonderful and supportive the mystery community is. Yeah, I'm sure sci-fi and romance and etc. are great, but I don't belong there, so...

This is a shout-out to all of the people who have helped me with my writing in one way or another the past several months. Hell, some of them have been helping me for MUCH longer than that. You know who you are.

In no particular order, I'd like to publicly thank the following folks. And, please, dear Lord, don't let me leave someone out. It'll be easy to do, so I apologize now. I'm sure more names will come to me as soon as I hit send. I'll try to update during the day. Key word being "try."

Susan Meier
Annette Dashofy
Nancy Martin
Hallie Ephron
Jan Brogan
S.J. Rozan
Donnell Bell
Lucienne Diver
Janet Reid (who still owes me $20 for the Patrick Lee shout-out last Saturday)
Kristen Weber
Linda Landrigan
Keith Kahla
Roberta Isleib

Might as well stop at lucky 13. I always was a rebel.

Now, back to work. All of us. Especially me. With all of those people behind me, I'd better not slack off. Some of them know where I live...

WRITERS AND OTHER PEOPLE

by Gina Sestak

I've speculated in prior posts about the difference between writers and other people. There is, of course, the obvious one: writers write. Other people may talk about writing, but they don't really do it.

Beyond that basic fact there are other distinctions. Writers enjoy words. We like to talk and read about word origins, and to debate usage and grammar in our critique groups. We like the way words sound, and how they look upon the page. We like our silly typos - in the midst of a horrific torture scene, I found myself repeatedly typing "gingernails" instead of "fingernails."

But other aspects of the writing life are more problematic. In a prior post, I mentioned standing by my dying aunt's bedside, unable to stop myself from mentally translating everything that happened into sentences. Those sentences formed the basis for my essay, Breathe Out, that won a PennWriters non-fiction prize one year. I think it captured the experience of what happens when a family gives up hope, authorizes the breathing machine to be turned off, then spends those agonizing bedside hours waiting for someone to die. I'm proud of the piece, but I felt like a ghoul while writing it.

This past August I spent a week and a half in Shadyside Hospital having gallbladder surgery. There were complications so, in addition to the extended stay, I got this lovely huge incision scar that makes my abdomen look as if it had been designed by Tom Savini. I don't want to talk about that now, though -- maybe in a future post. Now I want to talk about my roommate.

Ellie [not her real name] came into the hospital about mid-way through my stay. She's a 93-year old woman who needed emergency surgery and who, after the first day or so, began to speak almost non-stop. I'm not sure who she was talking to. Clearly not to me. I should point out that I love to eavesdrop, which is another trait that distinguishes writers from other people. Other people get annoyed about having to listen to someone else ramble. I get fascinated. She didn't tell stories, exactly. Whoever she was talking to already knew the substance of the conversation. She got belligerent. She challenged the unseen hearer, and used language that I wouldn't have expected a church-going woman of her age to even know. As one of the staff members put it, Ellie has a mouth like a trucker, although most truckers I know don't cuss half as much.

The staff kept offering to move me, or move her, and seemed confused that I kept turning them down. I wanted to listen!

I should mention that the hospital employees - nurses, aides (now known as "patient care technicians"), dietary, housekeeping, and other personnel - were very patient and kind to Ellie, even when she called them names and made inappropriate remarks. Watching their reactions was fascinating.

So I've listed a few things that distinguish writers from other people. What other traits can you think of?

Authors with Influence

By Annette Dashofy

Last week, one of my critique buddies posed a question to me. She asked me what author has most influenced me. Or something to that effect.

I’ve given it some thought and I still can’t narrow it down.

For one thing, I have one list of authors who influenced me as a READER and another who influenced me as a WRITER..

Looking back, my favorite authors were an eclectic bunch. I loved F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck. I also loved Zane Gray westerns. At some point, I discovered Phyllis Whitney and Mary Higgins Clark and that was the big transition for me into suspense and crime fiction.

When I try to determine which author most influences me as a writer, narrowing it down is impossible! Laura Lippman, Lisa Scottoline, MJ Rose are high up on the list. And of course, Nancy Martin! But Robert Parker is on the list, too, along with Daphne Du Maurier and Jodi Piccoult. Most recently, I’ve become captivated with the writing style of Chris Grabenstein.
And to prove that my tastes remain eclectic, I’m deeply enamored with the wordsmithing of Tom Robbins and Hunter S. Thompson.

I guess, if pressured to pick just ONE author who has, over the years, had the deepest influence on me I would have to choose…drum roll, please…


























Walter Farley.

As a kid, I checked out every single one of his books from the library. If the library didn’t have one, I saved my pennies and bought it. Just a few years ago, I stumbled across a paperback version of The Black Stallion at a flea market and snatched it up. I’ve even suggested that my own veterinary mysteries might appeal to grown-ups who read Walter Farley as a kid. So far, that claim hasn’t gotten me a publishing contract, but I steadfastly maintain that it’s true.

So now that I’ve pondered and deliberated and come up with ONE author who has most influenced me, it’s your turn. And if you can’t narrow it down to one, I’ll accept lists. What author has most influenced YOU? As a reader or a writer. Or both.

Toolbar

By Martha Reed

Recently, at work, I’ve been asked to learn some new graphic design software. One of the neat features of this application is a graphics toolbar with icons that represent different features of the program. The scissors icon obviously cuts and pastes. A magnifying glass is the zoom. There’s even a magic wand that lets you erase mistakes without having to start over from scratch. Which made me wonder, on this beautiful October day: if writers have a toolbar, which tools are you using? I can list some of mine:

Drafting – This icon probably looks like an old fashioned Olivetti typewriter or a surfer on a board in front of a hungry shark depending on where you are in relation to your publisher’s deadline.

Outlining – This is a remarkable tool, and I just learned how to use it properly from a mini-SinC PGH workshop hosted by Nancy Martin. This is not the outlining you learned in high school! Outlining can actually enhance what you already know or suspect about your story and it doesn’t create an unnecessary constraint which was my original fear and why I wouldn’t use it. I’ve discovered that if you’re not outlining as some part of the process you’re probably wasting a lot of time. Find a resource and learn this tool. A couple of years ago Vicky Thompson presented a workshop and her entire discussion was outlining. I should have listened then, but you learn what you need to know when you need to know it. This icon should be a body chalked on a sidewalk.

The 3 R’s (Research, Research, Research) – Hopefully, as a writer, you were gifted with a curious mind. Writers also need to develop fearlessness so they can ask impertinent questions. Luckily, our professional reputation precedes us and most people are pretty tolerant. If not, I fall back on using my imitation of the village idiot and sometimes that gets me through the tough spots like when I have to ask the Ontario Park Police what it’s like to find a body floating in the water and they ask: Why? This icon is an open book.

Foreshadowing – Although this tool sounds gothic, it actually underlines drama. Dropping small bits of foreshadowing in your story enhances the eventual big payoff. Done properly, the reader will realize: ‘Oh, crap! I should have seen that one coming’. I see this icon as something spooky like the image of a ghost or a tombstone and I think using this tool is why Laura Lippman cleaned house with What The Dead Know at award ceremonies this year.

Verisimilitude – Oddly enough, even though this word sounds like a wand curse from one of the Harry Potter’s it actually means ‘the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood or probability’. This is important because it keeps our loyal readers from hurling our latest book against the distant wall. I also call this tool: Plausibility. If the story isn’t plausible the reader will lose faith and the author will end up cursed. Since vampires are so popular right now, let’s make this icon a stake and a hammer.

Are there any tools I’ve missed for our Writer’s Toolbar? I’m always willing to learn and that icon is a mule.

Thriller!

by Joyce

Over the last couple of days, our local chapter of Sisters in Crime has been having an ongoing conversation on our listserv about thrillers. We started out talking about one thriller in particular that was getting a lot of buzz in the industry, then we got onto the topic of thrillers in general. Some of the chat spilled over into my critique group meeting last night. It's been interesting, and I thought it might make a good blog topic.

So, what exactly is a thriller? It seems like an easy question, but if you ask ten people, you'll probably get more than one answer. It used to be that thrillers were "spy books" or similar books with catastrophic consequences on a global scale, but now the genre covers a lot more than that. There are now serial killer thrillers, domestic thrillers, police thrillers, etc. Some books are labeled thrillers that in the past would have just been called mysteries.

If you walk into any Walmart or Target store, most of the books you see are thrillers. I'm sure there will always be a market for these books, but won't it get to the point where readers are looking for something different? And what can the authors of these books do to distinguish their story from the thousands of others on the market? Some do it by stretching the limits of what has always been acceptable, like using serial killers for protagonists. Some are using graphic torture scenes. Others are writing sex scenes that not only border on erotica, they are erotica.

In my opinion, the best thing an author can do to distinguish their book from all the others is good writing and great characters. If I don't care about what happens to a character, I'm not going to care about anything else. Plot can only take a book so far. I want to think about the characters long after I finish a book.

What does everyone else think? Are some books going too far to be different? How should a writer distinguish their book from all the others?

WRITERS AND OTHER PEOPLE

by Gina Sestak

[Another digression from my posts about prior jobs.]

There is a fundamental difference between writers and other people, I've been told. That difference is that writers write. By "write," I don't just mean the act of putting pen to paper or fingertip to key. I mean the magical alchemy by which we transmute human experience and ideas into words.

For me, this usually involves translating whatever I'm experiencing into nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives while it's still in progress. No matter what is happening around me, be it flower petals wafting on a zephyr or a distracted driver trying to merge into my car, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm crafting sentences to describe what's going on.

This isn't always a good thing. When I stood beside my aunt's deathbed putting words to family tragedy I felt like a ghoul. But those sentences formed the core of my essay "Breathe Out" that won second place for non-fiction in Pennwriters' 2004 contest.

I was thinking about this last week when I had the flu. You have to understand, I had it bad. Vomiting, diarrhea, chills. Three days without eating. Too little energy to feed the cats. [Don't worry. They had dry food available.] Part of me was thinking, "Am I going to die?" while another part, the writer part, was putting the sensations into words.

I'm not going to record that graphic description of my symptoms here, but I suspect I'll use it somewhere. I've often wondered whether Anne Rice was sick while she was writing "The Tale of the Body Thief." [!!SPOILER ALERT!!] In that book, Anne Rice's protagonist Lestat (a vampire) is tricked into trading bodies temporarily with a human, only to discover that the human body is infected with a disease meant to kill it, thereby allowing the human trader to retain Lestat's vampire body. Anne Rice gives us detailed descriptions of being ill from the perspective of someone who hasn't had so much as a cold in centuries. Another part of the same book made me wonder whether or not Anne Rice had recently acquired a dog.

Does everybody else do this, too? Do you find yourself in traffic, in nature, or in bed(!) putting everything you experience into words? Please let me know.

Will the Real Jennie Bentley Please Stand Up...?

by Jennie Bentley

I’ve always had a pretty healthy self image, I think. At least I used to believe so. But I’ll freely admit I’m starting to feel a little schizophrenic.

It all started when I began negotiating with my editor at Penguin-Putnam about generating a series of cozies for them. (The first, FATAL FIXER-UPPER, will be released in November. It’s about a home renovator, and it has those cutesy tips for Do-It-Yourself projects in the back. It also has two cats, a hot handyman, missing heirlooms and a few dead bodies. But more about that later.)

We had established that I was qualified to write the books, that I wanted to write the books, that I was willing to write the books for what they were willing to pay me... and then my editor said, "Oh, by the way... we’d like you to use a pseudonym."

Hunh.

Now, it wasn’t like it was unexpected. I have an unusual first name. People mispronounce it all the time, and nobody would be able to remember how to spell it, so Google wouldn’t have any idea how to find me. (I’m going on the assumption that sooner or later, someone would have to use Google to find "those really fun DIY Home Renovation books that that woman writes... you know the ones I mean, with the cats and the hot handyman... what’s her name again?") My last name is Irish, courtesy of the love of my life, whom I married a while back, and it’s also easy to misspell. The juxtaposition of the two is interesting, to say the least. Not best-selling author material, though. At least not according to Penguin, who suggested I come up with something different.

Hence, Jennie Bentley. Bentley because it’s close to my first name and Jennie because... well, really just because I thought they sounded good together. (The runner-up, in case you were wondering, was Crafton. I had just visited Pittsburgh when the name-issue was brought up to me, and I thought Crafton would be an appropriate name for someone who writes home renovation mysteries. Someone suggested Charisma as a first name, and but for the grace of God, I might be writing this as Charisma Crafton. My editor stepped in and said that Jennie Bentley sounded more approachable, and if I’d been in New York at that time, I would have kissed her.)

So here I am, pretending to be someone named Jennie, and let me tell you, it’s freaky. People think that’s who I am. They email me, saying things like, "Hi, Jennie! I saw your profile on Crimespace," or "Jennie, I was visiting the ITW Debut Authors page, and discovered your series," or – alternatively – "Jennie has just thrown a sheep at you. Throw a sheep at Jennie!" (That’d be Facebook, in case you were wondering.) I just know that one of these days I’ll be walking across a hotel lobby somewhere, and somebody’ll yell, "Hey, Jennie, hold the elevator!" and I’ll let it shut in their face just because I don’t realize that they’re talking to me.

I know that there are benefits to using a pseudonym, and the misspelling nightmare is just one of them. Dean James’s fans no longer have to wade through pages of hits on a certain 1950s teen idol to find out about his books, and during the time Rhonda Pollero wrote her books as Kasey Roberts, it was that much harder for the recently paroled to find her. (She has a sizable fan base among the prison population, I’m told. Poor girl.) And of course there’s the reason my agent brought up: "If the series bombs, the Bookscan numbers won’t go against your name, sweetie."

Of all the excuses, that may be the best one yet.

So what about you? If you’re a writer, do you use a pseudonym? Would you choose to, if you weren’t required? Why, or why not? And if you’re not a writer, what do you think of the whole idea? Do you care what your favorite writer is named? Would you read a book, or not read it, based on the name of the author?

And while you’re at it, why don’t you help me figure out who this Jennie Bentley chick is, who has taken over my computer. Because I’m sure she isn’t me. Pretty sure. I mean... she’s not me, right?

Right?!