Procrastination or Recharging?

PROCRASTINATION OR RECHARGING? by Debra H. Goldstein

I don’t want to write this blog. In fact, I don’t want to write anything. For that matter, I don’t even want to mark the grocery items on my delivery app so someone in a green t-shirt can restock our larder. Other than attending Mystery in the Midlands, all I’ve been in the mood of doing since we returned from Alaska is playing games on my computer, watching TV, listening to music, and reading.

And reading. 

       And reading.

              And reading.

I can proudly report I’m caught up on my backlog of periodicals and I made a dent in my TBR pile by reading Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain), Poppy Done to Dead (Charlaine Harris), Someday Someday Maybe (Lauren Graham), Black Fedora, Glitter and Glue (Kelly Corrigan), The Hangman (Louise Penny), Kitty Kitty Bang Bang (Sparkle Abbey), Beach Trip (Cathy Holton), Dead Storage (Mary Feliz) and The President is Missing (Bill Clinton and James Patterson), How to Write Pulp Fiction (James Scott Bell), I Know What You Bid Last Summer (Sherry Harris), The Day I Died (Lori Rader-Day), By Cook or By Crook (Maya Corrigan), Relatively Dead (Sheila Connolly), Classified as Murder (Miranda James), Necessary Ends (Tina Whittle), and Tiny Beautiful Things (Cheryl Strayed).

I should be writing.

Instead, I’ve also been keeping up with most of the blogs I need to pre-review, short stories I am asked to critique for the Guppy Emerald’s group, two books that shall remain nameless that I read for blurbing purposes, and reading and writing Facebook posts.

I should be seated in a chair and writing – not watching TV or playing on my computer.

Does meeting friends for lunch, attending charity events, or posting list serv responses and handling tasks for various volunteer organizations count at least for the “seated” part?

When I was a high school debater, we defined “should” as “ought to but not necessarily will.” That’s me – I should be writing, but I’m not necessarily listening to that voice inside my head.

I should be kicking myself for wasting the past month, but I’m not. You know why? Because I think taking a break (though maybe not this long) recharges one’s batteries. The only problem is knowing when to know I’ve recharged enough and have now slipped into procrastination. I think I reached that point today during a spider solitaire game. I got bored. That’s a sure sign that it is time for me to return to writing.

What about you? What brings you back to the task at hand? Or, are you one of those who only talks about writing?

Back to the beginning

by Julie Tollefson

I’ve been thinking a lot about the beginning of my work in progress the last few weeks. I like my characters. The situation I’ve put them in is fraught with suspense. The story is compelling.

At least, it’s all those things to me. But when I take a step back, I wonder: Does it move too fast? Are the characters really as three-dimensional as I imagine them to be? Is all the good stuff I see in my head really there on the page?

In an attempt to get perspective, I pulled three novels I love off my shelves and re-read the first twenty or thirty pages of each to see how the masters set the hook for readers like me.

Still Life, the first in Louise Penny’s Three Pines series, begins with a body, briefly introduces Inspector Gamache, then slips back in time and slows down without losing tension. Readers get to know Three Pines and its residents, victim included, in a gossipy way that reveals enough secrets and simmering feuds to keep readers captivated for 25 pages until Gamache appears again.

In just six pages of The Black Hour, Lori Rader-Day introduces a damaged protagonist (literally—she’s recovering after being shot before the story begins) and sketches a situation rife with drama. Questions draw the reader on: Who shot the main character? Why? How will she cope? What happens next? And, particularly interesting to me, do I even like this character?

Nancy Pickard’s The Virgin of Small Plains begins in the middle of action—a pickup truck’s almost slow-motion slide on icy roads and its driver’s equally slow-motion observation of her bathrobe-clad neighbor traipsing through a roadside graveyard in a blizzard. An odd situation, sure. But then, like Penny, Pickard takes the reader back in time to build a strong sense of place and relationships among characters.

Common to all three? In the beginning, the mystery isn’t so much about the dead body—that’s coming in each—but about the people through whose eyes we see the story unfold. In short, all three books have, as Donald Maass describes in Chapter 5 of his excellent Writing 21st Century Fiction, “standout characters.” (I’ve written about this book before, and I probably will again. I love it that much.)

“Look at those people in your own life about whom you care greatly,” Maass writes on page 76. “Often, they’re people who to the rest of the world appear ordinary.”

That’s it! The characters in all three novels appear ordinary, but their stories are not.

So, uh, how does that help me with my current manuscript?

First, I’m reminded that it’s not necessary to race straight into a murder investigation. The real story often happens on the fringes of the investigation, at a pace that allows the reader to breathe.

I’ll also take another look at my ordinary people—a detective content with his small-town beat, an ambitious college student—and find the extraordinary in them. Plot will keep the story moving, but characters will steal the show.

What qualities do you look for in the beginning of a novel? What keeps you reading?

The Louise Penny Book You've Never Heard Of

Louise Penny is one of the world’s most beloved mystery authors. At the recent Malice Domestic conference, where she won the coveted Agatha Award for Best Mystery, fans flocked to her signing, most carrying her recent best seller, The Beautiful Mystery.

I had brought a book for the signing, too, but it was one that most fans in line had never seen: The Hangman.

The Hangman’s jacket copy begins: “On a cold November morning, a jogger runs through the woods

in the peaceful Quebec village of Three Pines. On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree….”

Does it have the elements of a Three Pines mystery? The sometimes thorny/sometimes tender relationship between Chief Inspector Gamache and his second, Beauvoir? Favorite characters like bookseller/wise woman, Myrna, and innkeeper, Gabri? Check, check, and check.

You’re thinking, Why haven’t I heard of this book?

The Hangman is a novella in the Good Reads series, a program funded in part by Canada’s Office of Literacy and Essential Skills. This program provides high interest novellas by fine authors for adult learners of English or those who are learning to read as adults.

As a reader, I was thrilled to get my hands on a new-to-me book by Louise Penny. As a writer, I was impressed by her ability to tell a story within the limits of a third grade reading level and compressed narrative length. If anything, these constraints highlighted the good bones of the story – the elegant simplicity of the plot, the surprise twists, the brisk but effective characterization. Writing to these requirements would be a good exercise for any writer – to construct a story, using only the most essential narrative material, and see if the story can stand.

Is the story as rich as the other Three Pines novels? The novella length does not allow for deep exploration of emotion and motive, but simple does not mean simplistic. The story still satisfies.

The Hangman may be just the thing to help you get through the wait for the next Three Pines novel. And purchasing The Hangman will raise funds for Good Reads Canada, an organization that enables more people to share the joy of reading.

I’ll lift my teacup to that!