What's taking so long? Finishing that elusive work in progress

Up front I can say I don't have an answer to that question, "What's taking so long?" I have one finished novel in a closet and even discovered recently that it was successfully saved to a floppy disc (yes) then to a flash drive.

My second novel in that same series has been in progress for years. My youngest daughter reads Slate and once sent me an article that so touched me that I have it pinned on a bulletin bar inside the same closet where my manuscript resides. At least I can see it each time I open that door.

Author Susanna Daniel wrote an article in Slate in July, 2010 titled, "What Took You So Long? The quiet hell of 10 years of novel writing."

The article begins:

There is surely a word—in German, most likely—that means the state of active non-accomplishment. Not just the failure to reach a specific goal, but ongoing, daily failure with no end in sight. Stunted ambition. Disappointed potential. Frustrated and sad and lonely and hopeless and sick to death of one's self.

Whatever it's called, this is what leads people to abandon their goals—people do it every day. And I understand that decision, because I lived in this state of active non-accomplishment for many years.

At the time she wrote it, her first novel had been accepted for publication. By now it's been out there for a few years. She cites another writer who took his time and lost hope: Junot Diaz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, also took 10 years to complete it. Neither Daniel or Diaz worked on that novel all that time. They put them down for long stretches of time, to have a child or enter a graduate program. But they answered that siren's call, which usually for me comes in the middle of the night, the call to come back and finish your story. Your characters are waiting for you.

I visited my daughter Meg the summer she gave me the What Took You so Long? piece. We were watching TV and talking. I said, "I feel like I have so much to say and no one is listening to me." 

She was 20 years old at the time, and I was floored by what she said in response: "Mom, that's what writers do. They write all the things in their heads that no one is listening to."

That was four years ago. I've been helped tremendously by bloggers and other writers I've met when I decided to go for it. Procrastination is a problem. Less a problem than a detour is the non-fiction craft beer book I'm writing. For that project, I am grateful, as it may mean income coming in from my writing. It'll be at least a year til I see it, but it should flow in and help out.

I work on writing every day, and setting up this blog helps. I either write here or in my other, food/beer-related blog or even in the novel.

Daniel ends her piece with this:

After I wrote the last sentence, I printed the whole mess and got out my red pen, and the relief of having a complete draft was overwhelming. I had more writing energy than I'd had in years. At this point, no matter that the sky was falling in publishing-land, I was certain that I would see my book in print.


I'm keeping the faith that this will also happen to me. Finishing even a first draft is the biggest event, and I know I can do it. I even have the last scene written. It's finding the balance between the fiction projects, the beer book and blogging and some freelance articles that have come trickling in. But the most important thing is to push past fear and doubt and start clacking away at the keys.

Read Susanna Daniel's touching piece here:


http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/07/what_took_you_so_long.html

Show Your Work: Advice from Austin Kleon

One of the worst things that happens to me when I sit down to write is the perfection problem. Fingers hang over the keys: a, s, d, f and on the right, j, k, l and semi-colon (which some famous writer says never to use....it only shows you're pompous). There they hang, fearful of producing drivel. But not writing hurts. If I get up without getting something on the screen, I feel like I've failed myself.

Enter Austin Kleon, author of Share Like an Artist and the more recent Show Your Work. I'm reading the latter, underlining like crazy, nuggets like: Send out a daily dispatch. No matter where you are in your work, pick a small piece of it that you can get "out there," meaning online. "Writers like Twitter," and indeed, I find myself posting short pieces, or a link to this blog on Twitter with a hashtag of #amwriting, which seems to get me some followers. It works.

I have a long way to go, and I'm not entirely comfortable in sharing my actual fiction, but I'm getting something about my process or progress on the non-fiction beer book, out into the Twittersphere every day. Some of my followers are e-book publishers or people hoping to help me market a book, but I'm "meeting" other writers, many of them with helpful blogs, who get me writing more and more.

And writing something every day has been my goal for a very long time. It's getting a lot easier as I practice at it.

Writing in the seasons, write what you know

Artist's Way author Julia Cameron urges us to write "Morning Pages," three pages of stream of consciousness blather (my word) or whatever is on your mind right after you get up. I do the pages after I meditate and have a cup of coffee, and I always note at the head of the first page: Date, time, temperature and weather.

Today, for instance, it was sunny and warm for a mid-October early morning. I reported on how many of our trees are now leaf-less, that the chickadees and nuthatches are back at the feeder after a summer hiatus and the warm quality of the air, color of the sky. Why do I do this? I have no idea. Part of me thinks after I'm gone to the big mystery novel in the sky, that my kids might like to read what I've written.

But I've discovered over the past few years that those entries can help while writing. Say for instance your murder happens in November, as it does in my work in progress, and I'm writing those scenes in the middle of the summer, which I was. What's it like in November in Portland, Maine?  Cold. But it's August and I'm staying at a cottage on Bailey Island and the weather is idyllic and I'm in an island rapture. I can fake it, from memory. But if I have some files that describe exactly what I'm noticing with all five senses firing on a given date in a given month I can go back and use that description/sense in my current out-of-season document.

The next trick will be filing those jottings into computer files. We'll see. I can pluck a journal from the closet in my yoga room, stick my finger in and find my description of the weather. Or I can find an entry where I was feeling an emotion so intensely, I can use that too. It's all grist for the mill, as Ram Dass once said. It's all good.

Give me Liberty, or give me Liberty Craft Brewing

Give me Liberty, or give me Liberty Craft Brewing



My interview with Guy Hews, owner/brewer at Maine's newest nano-brewery!

A Body in the Beer Vat: How my non-fiction book about beer changed the setting for my novel

Way back in 1995, while I was researching and writing my first travel guide to New England brewpubs, I was also working on a mystery novel. The setting for the novel was a restaurant based on The Rusty Scupper in Acton, Massachusetts. I and my four siblings had worked there for a period of years in the late '70's through the mid '80's, and it was a fun, lively place.

My first novel, which is finished and sitting in a stationary box in my study closet, was set there. Griffin Kane and her brother Riley work at The Refectory, named for the dining hall in a monastery. Why? The owner is Brother Joe, a former monk who leaves the holy life for reasons unknown and opens an eatery in this small town outside Boston.

Griffin and Riley take off for Maine to attend their college reunion and Riley is arrested there for the murder of his former girlfriend. The crime had been unsolved until this time, 10 years later. Griffin sets out to prove Riley's innocence. That one is called Like Tears Over a Cheek (Tears) from a line in Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and is based on a true crime that has yet to be solved.

I had researched The Writer's Market and sent out Tears and got nice rejection letters, which I saved and read from time to time. When I connected with a literary agent, she was interested in my series, but feared if she sent out Tears to her usual suspect editors, and they'd already rejected my effort, she'd lose credibility. "Finish the book you're working on, we'll sell it as the first in the series, then we'll sell Tears as the second."

That sounded like it made sense. She added, "And since you're beer book will be published soon, why don't you change the restaurant into a brewpub? That brings your beer expertise into the novel."

That also  made sense. Hence in the second novel, No One to Bury, the book that has yet to have a "The End" tacked on, the setting is indeed a brewpub. And it's called The Vatican, because Brother Joe has an ax to grind with the Church and he knows  the name will drive the Archdiocese crazy.

In this book, Brother Joe's boyhood friend is found dead in the mash tun, where Griffin is brewing a new batch of beer. Who killed Eamon Collins? Again, Griffin Kane will find the killer. I even have a tag line: "She's a failure at law, he's a failure at religion. Together they solve a series of murders that shake a small Maine city."

Setting changes again: I dragged No One to Bury kicking and screaming through my MFA program, where I do believe I became a much better writer. And I developed these Irish characters, Joe, Eamon, Maggie and Orla, who had grown up in an industrial school, suffered horrors there, and attempt a life of normalcy in the  U.S., where Joe has opened the brewpub.

But by this time, I'd lived in Maine for 20 years and I was hemming and hawing about feeling at loose ends about where to place it. One of my professors said, "Just set it in Portland." So I sadly said my goodbyes to my hometown in MA and located the brewpub in Portland, Maine. Where? Where else? In a former church: Saint Dominic's on State Street, now the home of the Maine Irish Heritage Center.

I visited the Center one 96 degree day, and the people there loved the idea. So I toured the church, which has been de-commissioned, and got the layout in my head. That is now the "resting place" of No One to Bury. 

By the way, that agent worked with me for a year, for which I was very grateful. But I went through a divorce, went back to work in the legal field and let my writing go for a time. I'm back at it, writing a second beer travel guide (hello, deadline!) and finishing No One to Bury.

I'm happy with this setting. I love Portland, and it looks like the rest of the world is falling in love with it too, judging by how many foodie types are writing about the city, not to mention the beer lovers.

And just for kicks, you can check out the first beer book, What's  Brewing in New England, at my Amazon page: www.amazon.com/author/katecone

Creating a new series brings little mysteries, and apples

Have you heard of Nanowrimo? Short for National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) where participants write a 50,000 word novel in the months of November and April.

This past April, while wallowing in my non-fiction book about New England craft beer, I wanted to get back to fiction. But I didn't want to get mired in my work in progress (WIP), a novel called No One to Bury, whose characters I've been writing since 1986. No typo's. Yes, it's been that long.

I had just had an email exchange with a friend, an older woman who has an edge to her personality and to her life. I thought, "What if I created a character who was a "nice" version of this woman. Not too nice, not too edgy. I jumped into my April Nanowrimo writing, "Murder on Cabbage Island," featuring Patsy Mason, owner and chief cook and bottle-washer of Coastal Lobster Bakes.



I continued working on the beer book, and wrote an average of 350 words a day in the new mystery. Writing daily was my goal, as well as fleshing out a "cozy" mystery novel. I ended up with 31 new pages, a new novel, and a new series character/protagonist. "Cold case, meet hot chowdah," was my tag line, and I still crack up when I read it.

Okay, here's where real life likes to come knocking: I discovered that there is already a mystery series set in Maine with a protagonist whose job is putting on clambakes I'd chosen that "job" because we were going to celebrate my husband's upcoming "odometer" birthday with a lobster bake on Cabbage Island, off Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I was worried about the event: would everyone get to the boat on time? Would we get home before dark? Dumb stuff. So I decided to make our upcoming event into a mystery about a cold case involving the disappearance thirty years before of Patsy's younger sister.

I have a legal background, and didn't want to get embroiled in a fight about whether I'd plagarized this other clambake series. So I talked to my husband about it one day, and decided: apples. That's the answer. She doesn't have to do lobster bakes. She can be a Pomologist, an expert about apples.

Real life again: Walking our dog Henry the other day, I came on an old apple tree amidst the maples in a little woods on our property line. There were dozens of yellow apples on the ground with many still on the tree. I gathered some and brought them in the house. I'd just heard an interview with Rowan Jacobsen on Radio Boston (www.wbur.org/radioboston) about heirloom apples and how people were growing them again. I grew up in apple country in Littleton, Massachusetts. That area is Johnny Appleseed country, so apples were a big part of my childhood.

"My" yellow apples weren't pretty, but Mr. Jacobsen had explained that many types of apples were quite ugly and not meant for eating, necessarily. As a title examiner, I knew that there were a few farms on our road and that our land had most likely been part of one. So today we drove up to Cayford Orchards in Skowhegan, Maine. I brought my homely apples with me and asked the young farmer about them.

"They could be Tolman Sweets," he said. "Are they ready now?"
"Ready?" I asked "There on the tree and on the ground." I had no idea what he meant, but got it later.
"The spots on these apples are caused by a fungus we call "Spotty Blotch."
Ahhh. So these apples are meant to be prettier. One mystery solved. "Is it possible to bring the tree back?"
At this point, my husband, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and who thinks apples grow in the supermarket, starts to grimace. "Oh, no," I hear him think, "not another project of Kate's."
"How would I do that?" I ignore the grimace
And the nice 7th generation Cayford farmer told me about pruning. When I got home, I consulted the U. Maine Cooperative Extension service, which had a short paper on "Renovating old apple trees." And it isn't that bad of a project, even though they try to warn you that it might be.

I smiled while reading about my Tolman Sweets, a very old apple that may have been first grown in Dorchester, MA before 1700. They are a cider apple and cooking apple, and no mystery, very sweet.

And I smiled even more when I realized that I was not wasting a beautiful October afternoon doing research on apples. My new series character will still know a thing or two about cooking lobster, but her real expertise is all things apples. Murder of the Apple of my Eye? Murder with MacIntosh?

Get cooking: without a stove?

Get cooking: without a stove?



The only mystery involved here is how measurements can go so awry!