Getting Out of Your Safe Space by Susan Van Kirk

 

While I am told AI will do all our thinking for us down the road, I still pin my hopes on articles I’ve read that explain how to age better and keep your brain working by changing strategies. For example, try doing normal activities with your non-dominant hand. Brush your teeth with your left hand if you’re right-handed. Or mix up your exercise routine because your body gets used to the same old thing and gets lazy. Over my writing years, I’ve taken that advice to challenge my brain in the mysteries I write.

My first Endurance mystery, Three May Keep a Secret, was pretty straight-forward. I chose third- person narrative and a linear plot to write my first book. When the publisher told me it would be two years before book two came out, I decided to try a little exercise in change. I researched novellas, writing an 82-page one about my detective, TJ Sweeney, called The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney. Less a cozy than a police procedural, it pushed a different part of my brain. The plot was linear, but I couldn’t use subplots or have the luxury of 300 pages to develop my characters. I had to learn how to self-publish, and it was a big challenge.

When book two, Marry in Haste, came along, I kept the third-person narrative but added a double plot. My town of Endurance in the early 2000s versus Endurance in the 1800s were the settings. Creating a whole history for the setting’s house and a map of the earlier town, I also had to figure out how to do this double plot so it fit together. That was an exercise in sheets of paper combining plots all over the floor of my house. It worked, but it also really pushed my brain.

Eventually, I got an agent who talked me into writing a trilogy, the Art Center mysteries, which had to be plotted before I even started writing. One plot was hard enough, but three? Not only did this little exercise keep me up at night, it also had a huge change to first-person narrative. I discovered I really liked to write in first-person. I also learned a lot more about character arcs and series arcs. My Endurance mysteries, so far, have simply been one book after another with character arcs, so this second series was a whole new world.

Now, I’ve embarked on a new change in my writing. Back in 2010, I wrote a memoir about my teaching life called The Education of a Teacher (Including Dirty Books and Pointed Looks.) It was creative nonfiction, and I’d never authored a book before. That was sixteen years ago. I published it with a vanity press. It did exceptionally well, selling a few thousand copies. Then, I had the rights reverted a couple of years ago and let the book go out of print.

My new project is to revise this memoir adding a new introduction and a new cover. It’s been fun for my formatter because we haven’t had a deadline and have worked at our own speed. I anticipate it will be out in March or April. My sixteen years of practice have made me a better writer these days. I’m also doing investigative work on my own. This book has fifteen stories from my teaching life, and while some  are hard to believe, I assure you they really happened. The only fiction in “creative nonfiction” are the conversations I had to recreate. Most chapters are centered around a specific student over the thirty-five years I taught in high school. I’m planning a postscript at the end of most chapters to reveal where these former students are now and what happened to them after they left high school. This week, I did a zoom call with a former student who is now working as an engineer at Nvidia. What an amazing story he had to tell!

So, stay tuned. We’ll see if I can pull this one off. I’m having such fun finding these “kids” I knew when they were 16-18 years old. In several cases, I’d never guess the paths their lives have taken. It’s a whole new brain challenge, and I’m up for it.

 

Have you ever moved out of your safe space to try something totally different? Was it a success?