So You Want To Write Mysteries . . .

By Mark W. Danielson

It’s been a while since I’ve addressed writing so here is a frank discussion on the subject.  Those of us who write murder mysteries have at some point all been asked the same question – where do we get our [warped] ideas?  The question seems reasonable enough, but the answer is far from simple.  Rather than speak for anyone else or say “I don’t know”, I must first state for the record that I had a wonderful childhood, my parents are still married after sixty four years, I have never done drugs or committed any acts of violence, nor do I have any plans to do either.  I have a graduate degree, have painted all my life, and had written non-fiction for many years before discovering fiction in the late eighties.  And so began my endless drafts of mystery and suspense novels that killed off people with traits I didn’t much care for.  Yup, that’s the beauty in novels – the ability to plug ’em and plant ’em at will.  Oh, what a stress reliever it is.

One of the more notable author/artistic traits is the power of observation.  We tend to hear and see things that others may not, and then transfer these details into a scene from a book.  Background noises, indistinct whispers, a clunking shoe, television, even a sneeze can all play important roles in a story.  Intentional or not, many storylines are stolen from one’s memory.

The power of perception is an essential sleuth requirement.  One must be able to understand multiple points of view in order to create believable characters.  This means we must get inside the criminal mind as much as those defenders of good.  Personally, I like to people watch, read, or watch news accounts that border on fiction with their sensationalism.  I happened to have been in LA when another car chase came on the TV.  LA car chases are so routine they are hardly worth my time, but this one was entertaining as Robin Hood tossed money from the car as he drove through neighborhoods with six police cars behind him.  Yes, sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.  I hear the culprit was the bank manager’s boyfriend.  Go figure.

There are plenty of whacked out people in this world, and while the percentage of nut cases may remain the same, their numbers climb proportionally with population growth.  Newspaper and magazines can stir volumes of sinister characters and complex plots.  Just don’t get too carried away.  Every plots must be plausible.

Any author will tell you that you can’t write if you don’t read.  You don’t read other authors to emulate them, though.  Instead, you do it to get a sense of their pacing and character development.  Reading within your genre also gives a sense of what is topical and publishable.  In a society of requiring instant gratification, news, and texting, it is unlikely that Hemingway or Michener could get published.  Today’s audience simply doesn’t have the patience for their writing style. 

Scripting requires perseverance.  Unless you are a celebrity or some quirk of fate happens your way, the odds of publishing anything in a timely manner is remote.  I know far too many excellent authors who will remain unknown because most readers buy with name recognition.  Because of this, book stores tend to limit their books to known authors and publishers.  Of course, this stacks the deck against new authors, but if your novel is good enough, it may still hit the chart one day.    

If you write to get rich, you’re probably better off investing in lottery tickets.  Computers, internet, paper, ink, queries, editors, proof readers, promoters, all cost money.  Unless you are an established author, publishers won’t be sending money your way because they simply don’t have it.  Expect to spend whatever advance you receive promoting your work.  Sadly, you won’t see another dime until your sales have worked off your advancement.  I don’t recommend giving up your day job until you have stashed away a couple million.      

For those who are married or live with significant others, know that creative writing is a solitary task.  It’s probably easy to tell when I’m writing because I am thinking more about the plot than what’s going on around me.  When I finally sit down to write, I find myself in a different zone.  Stephen King likes to write with rock music blaring.  For me, silence is golden as I download my subconscious thoughts into a Word document.  If the dog barks or phone rings, I flinch.  Because of this and my preference to stay married, I tend to write more while on the road so I’m not ignoring the person most important to me. 

Writing is my passion.  It is something I need to do.  I strongly encourage others to put their thoughts down as well, and if you happen to make a few bucks along the way, consider it gravy.

Literary Friendships

By Jaden Terrell

I thought I'd share with you an email I got today from Lee Lofland's Writer's Police Academy. Lee's been sending out a lot of interesting and informative posts, and today's was especially notable to me. It's about 11 famous--and infamous--literary friendships. You can read it here.

Some of the famous friendships are J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Percy Bysse Shelly and Lord Byron, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Some of the friendships endured, while others fell prey to personal or professional jealousy. All have something valuable to teach.

When it comes to literary friendships, I've been blessed. Not only have I met many kind and generous online friends (like those of you at Murderous Musings, DorothyL, and Murder Must Advertise), but I've had the long-time support of the Quill and Dagger Writer's Guild. Then there are the friends I've met through Sisters in Crime, SEMWA, MWA and the Music City Romance Writers. Maybe it's the genre--stories I've heard from writers in other genres lead me to think mystery and thriller writers are an exceptionally friendly and supportive bunch, and I've met very few exceptions to this rule.

This is good, because writing is a tough field. Not in the same way being a crab fisherman is tough, but tough in the sense that the opportunities for rejection are limitless. Rejections from agents, poor sales, bad reviews...even if you've written the best book in the history of the world, someone, somewhere will hate it. Don't believe me? Go to Amazon.com and check out the one-star reviews for The Diary of Anne Frank, A Separate Peace, To Kill a Mockingbird, and even the Bible.

This makes the friendship and encouragement of other writers doubly important. It's easy to get caught up in the write-promote-write-promote treadmill and forget to thank all the writers who have helped and continue to help along the way. So, to all of my online and offline writing friends, thanks for everything.

Scene About Nashville, circa 1963

By Chester Campbell

I read an article that said Ernest Hemingway wrote A Moveable Feast after going through notes he had accumulated during his time in Paris 30 years earlier. I wish I had been that meticulous during my early days. Or even later ones. Notes from my newspaper days ended up in the trash bin after I wrote the stories.

I have found one period in which my activities are well chronicled for posterity, if old Pos is ever interested. It’s the years 1963 through 1969, during which I was editor of Nashville Magazine, a slick paper monthly. I wrote many articles for the publication, though quite a few didn’t carry my by-line. But each issue included a feature at the front of the book titled “Scene About Town.” I modeled it after The New Yorker’s “The Talk of the Town,” which back then included mostly short, often humorous or whimsical vignettes about life and events that took place in the city.

My monthly musings about people and places and what went on around town bring back memories of how life was lived in those days. Looking back over a few issues, I’d forgotten how nice the perks were for a magazine editor. I was invited to all manner of dinners and parties and meetings. While attending, I picked up a variety of little tidbits to put in my column.

At a United Givers Fund (now United Way) luncheon, a voluble advertising guy commented:

“Talk about your all-time salesman, I nominate the man who sold restaurants on putting parsley on every plate. Created a whole industry out of nothing. He should be sought out and recognized with a medal.”

I constantly had visits from strange people who would wind up in the magazine’s pages. Like the young lady named Sue Silber, who wrote poetry and observed her fellowman with a humorous perspective. At concerts, she watched as much as she listened.

“Audience-watching,” she said, “is a delightful sport in itself. Most audiences can be classified into various categories. First, there are the tappers. “This classification can be further divided into the foot-tappers, the finger-tappers, and the hand-tappers. And then the last two can be further categorized as to what they tap.

“Some finger-tappers tap their chin–or chins, some their cheek, some their thigh, some tap their knee, some their program, some their cigarette pack, and some women tap their purse. Then there are, as it were, the back-seat conductors. These wave their hands in time to the music, sometimes quite broadly. Occasionally they even go so far as to use a rolled-up program for a baton. The musicians–foolish men–ignore these geniuses in favor of their own conductor.”

The pages revealed other such dramatic events as a cocktail party The Oertel Brewing Company held to announce its new “real draft beer” in cans. My comment: “This was akin to producing the real Jane Mansfield in a trenchcoat.”

I wrote about such things as traveling up the Cumberland River on a barge towboat, sitting in on a recording session at RCA’s now-historic Music Row studio, working backstage at a theatrical production, and watching them make Goo Goos at Standard Candy Company.

It was an interesting time to be a writer.