Allowing the well to re-fill: the weeks following Crimebake 2015

I belong to a professional group called Sisters in Crime. It's more than a cute play on words. The organization was started in the 1980's to raise awareness that male mystery writers made more money than their female peers. That's a simple version of a more detailed origin story, but you get the drift.

Every year, SinC ("Sin-cee") as we call it, hosts a conference for crime writers of both genders. We call it Crimebake. Writers come from all over to attend workshops on craft, figure out whodunit with a mock crime scene set up in one of the hotel's conference rooms and we also go to network, meet agents, pitch agents and well, have a ton o' fun.

Elizabeth George shares her wisdom on a panel at the 2015 Crimebake: 

"If your story has lost steam, you've shown your hand too soon.

The keynote speaker and special guest this year was Elizabeth George, author of the Detective Lynley novels, which have also been produced by PBS into a nice series. I haven't seen those yet, but I have one from Netflix waiting for my Home-Alone self to get wrapped in a shawl, pour a glass of wine and settle in for ninety-minutes of fun. That's tonight.

Fake crime scene at 2014 Crimebake

Ms. George has written over twenty Lynley novels, so I'm going to say she knows what she's doing. And one thing she shared with us over lunch one day during Crimebake was: at some point in your writing, you have to pause and let your creative well re-fill. "I had finished a novel," Ms. George said, "and I told my editor I didn't know if I had another book in me. She told me to let my well fill up again."

A light moment at Crimebake. Hallie Ephron and Elizabeth George on a panel.

So weeks later, I'm back from the conference and although I got home a bit dejected (the agent I have been working with for a year had some feedback I didn't want to hear), I am allowing myself some time to enjoy the holiday while I catch up on some administrative work.  I had a great Thanksgiving with my husband and son, and now I'm home alone for five days. What will I do to fill that creative well?


I've already scheduled in 5 days of yoga, which is tremendously calming and restoring. I will set a reasonable daily writing goal. I'm thinking of taking the advice of fellow Maine writer Kaitlyn Dunnett. She writes an entire scene in a day rather than quitting after meeting a pre-set word count. That latter thing is what's getting me in trouble with my novel in progress. I finish writing my 1000 words then stop. When I pick up later, in a new scene, that last one seems incomplete. Old dog, new trick. I can do it.

Paella for one, coming up!

I'll cook every day. I'm finishing up a curried winter vegetable soup and the remaining 4 days I'll focus on light, clean and healthy food. I'll read up a storm. My bedside book is Elizabeth George's second Lynley novel, Payment in Blood. My downstairs book is Maine writer Gerry Boyle's Deadline, the very first in his Jack McMorrow series. Both are great reads.

Maine writer Gerry Boyle talk on a panel about sidekicks in mysteries

And let's not forget Christmas preparations! I've got the tree and it's partially decorated. Needs smaller ornaments. If it stops raining, I'll put up some lights around the front door. And I haven't even started shopping yet. Deep breath, and exhale!

(Sorry the photos are fuzzy....tech deprived).

Getting over stage fright: focus on the task, not the fear

Tonight I'm reading aloud at the fourth annual Halloween reading series created by Maine writer Katy Silva, author of The Monstrum Chronicles. The story I'm reading is the only short story I've written, and even though it'll be the third year I'm attending this event, I don't seem inspired to write something new. I have gotten fond of Hunger and the Baby, based on an incident that took place in Brooklyn, New York in 1940 when my husband was a young boy.

What's it like to read aloud in front of an audience? It can be terrifying. What if I mess up? What if no one laughs when I want them to? What if I read too fast? What if I read past my allotted 20 minutes? Will the world end? In a word, no. People are so kind and receptive and they say nice things. It's quite an experience.

Great advice I read this week in an older book called Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want by Barbara Sher. I am a self-help junkie, and that's okay. Sher outlines two types of fear that can hold you back from taking action toward what you want in life. I want to be a writer. I am a writer. But I want to get my mystery novels finished and published.

 Fear number 1 is Stage Fright, which is merely energy that will dissipate once you begin reading. Okay, I've read aloud before and she's right. The second type of fear is Survivor Fear, which comes from not having your needs met as a child. This is simplifying a bit. I recommend the book. But the Survivor Fear can be assuaged if you give yourself all the validation and support you didn't get when you were young.  That can take some time!

But Sher says there are things you can do immediately: Prepare and Lower Your Standards (for now). I used to resist reading the story, rehearsing if you will. Why? Because I'm weird that way. But today I gave it a run-through for my husband, who laughs at all the parts I hope are funny. He also encourages me to take my time and be more dramatic. Me, be MORE dramatic? Huzzah!

As for the Lower Your Standards part, Sher wrote this in 1979. It's a precursor to what writer Annie Lamott made famous in Bird by Bird. Lamott says to give yourself permission to write a "shitty first draft," a piece no one else will see. Sher says the same thing, only 20 years earlier. That part helps a lot with my actual writing.

Focus on the task, not on the fear. Barbara Sher knows her stuff. 

So I think I'm prepared for tonight, except my printer won't work, so I can't tweak some changes I'd like to make. But I'll get through and have some fun in the bargain.

Buy 'em by the bagful! It's used book sale season.

The fourth weekend of June is a very special time in Mid-Coast Maine: it's the three-day extravaganza, blow-out used book sale in Brunswick, sponsored by one of the best libraries I've ever been to, Curtis Memorial. This year it will be held on Friday, June 26; Saturday, June 27 and Sunday on June 28. Check out the link below for time and details.

Photo: from Curtis Memorial


Touted as the biggest sale of its kind in Northern New England, the Curtis Memorial Sale takes place Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with books being re-stocked all weekend long. Can't get there at the crack of dawn on Friday? (There are people who line up early to get in right at 10 a.m.). Straggle in any time. On Sunday, when things are winding down, you can fill a grocery bag for three bucks. That's right. Things might be picked over by then, but I have come away on Sunday many a time with absolute treasures. 

So what does this have to do with mysteries and Maine?

The Maine part is obvious. But the  mystery novel category, one of 45 carefully sorted categories the sale offers, is one of the biggest. For $3 hardcover and $2 soft/trade, you can stock up on all the titles and authors you've missed the year before. And there is occasionally a really old/rare book you can snatch up. I found one last year entitled Shadow Kills (Beaufort Books, 1985), written by Rodman Philbrick of Kittery. His early protagonist was a cop-turned-mystery-writer Jack Dawkins, confined to a wheelchair after a work-related accident. If you love Boston, you'll love these books.

These are contemporaries of the Spenser novels and you'll delight in a Boston before the Big Dig, where Jack recalls eating drunken late-night breakfasts at the Hayes-Bickford and drinking at The Hillbilly Ranch. I even remember this Boston. I ended up meeting Rod Philbrick after I reviewed one of the Jack Dawkins novels for Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance's Maine in Print newspaper. Rod wrote me a letter (yes, this was pre-email) to thank me for the kind review. I brought him up to MWPA to lead a workshop on writing suspense. He's still at it, but not with Jack Dawkins, whom he let go because it was difficult to get Jack out of trouble while in a wheelchair. (That's my best memory of what Rod once told me.) He went on to write the very popular Young Adult novel Freak the Mighty.

Wow, did I get off on a tangent! But I'm passionate about these sales. They happen all over Maine and the country, so ask at your local library or do a simple Google search and plug in "used book sales."

My husband and I are planning on getting there tomorrow early to get a head start. I also collect old cookbooks and have gotten a few gems there too.

Here's the link: /http://www.curtislibrary.com/annual-book-sale

And Maine writers Kate Flora and Lea Wait wrote about other types of happenings at local libraries. Read their blog post here: http://mainecrimewriters.com/kates-posts/spending-a-maine-summer-in-the-library

Mystery: How do I find a community?

Happy Monday! It's finally summer in Maine, and it's a cool one. Woke up to 57 degrees this morning.  And I just violated Elmore Leonard's writing advice: "Never start with the weather." Well, god-luv-ya, Elmore, but when you live in a place like Maine, you wake up and start with the weather. Just sayin'.

I usually try to write first, immediately after meditation. But this morning I decided to do some admin work. I was delighted to see in my Inbox a great blog post by Maureen Milliken. Maureen is the proud author of Cold Hard News, just published, and she blogged for Maine Crime Writers about how to get published. "Preparation, hard work, tenacity" are the triple gems she prescribes, but there is something more important: joining the writing community. 

Photo: Maureen Milliken at her book launch party in June

Maureen speaks:

One thing became clear when I became serious about getting to work on my mystery novel several years ago: I had no flipping idea what I was doing. So I joined the Mystery Writers of America (a couple years later I also joined the awesome Sisters in Crime). I signed up for CrimeBake, the conference held every November in Dedham, Mass., and sponsored by those two organizations.
I didn’t sign up thinking that I would network, so much as that I’d sop up information that would point me in the right direction.
I was right about the information. I learned more about what was needed and expected to write a book and get it published at that conference and from those organizations than I knew existed. But the really cool thing was I started meeting people. People who were doing the same thing I was.

Here is the link to Maureen's blog post;

http://mainecrimewriters.com/maureens-posts/whats-the-magic-bullet-to-getting-published-join-the-community
Kate again:

My personal frustration has been that I've been working on my own mysteries for so long, and had such a long hiatus when I went back to work and raised three teens, that the writing community I worked so hard to build up seemed to disintegrate. So I'm back doing exactly what Maureen Milliken suggests. I re-joined Sisters in Crime, which has a very active sub-group called Guppies, for we, the Great Unpublished. I will re-join Mystery Writers of America and I've begun attending overnight conferences, something I could never afford to do when I was parenting. (My kids are all grown now, and are doing great, my best supportive network!).

Photo: Gerry Boyle chairs a panel at MWPA's Crimewave Conference, April, 2015
From left to right: Gerry Boyle, Gayle Lynds, Paul Doiron and Lea Wait


If want to join this great Maine writing community, here is the place to begin: Maine Writers and Publishers' Alliance. Celebrating 40 years this summer, MWPA is your first stop when you write, whether it be poetry, mystery, non-fiction, essay, memoir, it doesn't matter. MWPA offers this much-needed sense of belonging to something greater than your own inner ramblings . From their website:

Founded in 1975, the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization that works to enrich the literary life and culture of Maine. We are the only statewide organization solely devoted to supporting and promoting Maine’s writers, publishers, booksellers, and literary professionals. The MWPA has a membership of more than 1,600.
Our goals include: promoting an appreciation of Maine literature; creating a network of writers, readers, and publishers; creating opportunities for writers to improve writing and marketing skills; and informing members and the public of Maine literary and publishing news.

 

This Wednesday, June 26, 2015, MWPA will put on another "Gather," a get-together of writers in different locations all over Maine. I will host one in Waterville at Maine Brews (1 Post Office Square) at 6 p.m. Do join us!

Email me at kateconewrites@gmail.com or check out the other locations at the MWPA website:

www.mainewriters.org

I'm not sure where two months have gone, but I've been spending it doing a lot of hoping that spring would come. And it has, sort of. Here in central Maine, it's been gray or wet or both for over a week (but who's counting?). Good news is there are daffodils about to bloom in the yard and the snow is just about all but gone.

Where am I in the mystery novel process? I finished and sent in two proposals for series mysteries in the traditional genre. Think Agatha Christie. One of those has come back with some editing suggestions, and I'm pretty excited to have the attention of an agent. We'll see how it goes.

One tool I am finding really helpful is K.M. Weiland's explanation of Scene Structure. This graph was done by Christine Frazier, keeper of Better Novel Project, who reviewed Weiland's book. Better Novel Project is a great blog I highly recommend. According to best-selling author Weiland, who also has a great blog called Helping Writers Become Authors, a scene is compose of the scene and the sequel.

The scene starts with the protagonist's goal, followed by this goal coming up against a type of conflict or opposition, followed by a disaster, which could be obstruction of the goal, an injury or a hollow victory. Essential to the scene is its sequel: protagonist's reaction, (panic? fury?), a dilemma (analyze, review, plan) and the decision to take action or not to take action. Weiland spells it out beautifully, so I suggest you high tail it over to her blog or get her book, Structuring Your Novel. If you need the visual, again, see Ms. Frazier's post How to Deconstruct a Scene like K.M. Weiland.

How am I using this graph? I am such a visual learner, that this one tool, even though I don't feel I have to follow it to the letter, reminds me of what my character should do in a scene in order to keep readers interested and build a good story. And it helped push through the panic that set in after getting the email about the edits. Some of the suggestions meant re-writing entire scenes and getting rid of a few others. Gah! But after I paced around the kitchen table about a gazillion times, I went up to my writing room, set up the graph on a little stand I found at Staples so it would be staring me in the face and plowed into the manuscript. So far so good. And get on over to Better Novel Project and Helping Writers Become Authors.

Hear your characters speak: the value of giving a public reading

Will this Maine winter ever end? I've given up asking and have surrendered to the ever-present and ever-growing banks of white that surround and envelope our yard, stream from an upstairs balcony outside our bedroom and provides a white "lawn" on our deck where birds too big for the feeder land and peck at the seed I throw out.

This Saturday, February 28th, I will take part in a reading series I helped co-found over two years ago with Portland writer E.J. Fechenda. LIT: Readings & Libations allows emerging writers, meaning those who may or may not yet be published, read aloud for fifteen minutes from a piece of fiction.

E.J. and I found each other on the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (MWPA) Facebook page.  This happy coincidence -- E.J. queried the MWPA crowd about whether anyone wanted to start such a reading series at the same time I was itching to do just that -- has given me and other writers the great gift of hearing our characters speak aloud, not just to the four walls of our writing rooms when we might practice,  but in a venue where people show up to hear us read.

The practice we get at public  speaking is minor compared to the rich experience, for  me, of hearing my  four Irish characters speak in their brogues. I don't even study Irish language, and even as I'm reading I'm thinking I'm botching it. But as the minutes tick by, I forget myself and my inner editor and keep reading, and hearing.

When I leave the dais, I can barely recall what piece I read. I only know that Brother Joe, Maggie, Orla and Eamon are alive, they get angry, hungry and cold. They plot their escape and ponder their future. For fifteen minutes, I give birth. Then I join the crowd of listeners and order a beer and witness the other writers doing the same.

LIT is a free and open to the public event, so I encourage you to come to Bull Feeney's pub on Fore Street in Portland at 4 p.m. on February 28th to help us celebrate the art of writing...and reading.

New Year Ruminations

New year of blogging? Well, we're way past my making a New Year's resolution, now aren't we?

Aw well. Since my last post of December 8th, I worked like a fiend on finishing my beer book, while being present for my family for Christmas and having a crazy great time, meeting my January 2d deadline for said beer book, and getting my sick husband on a plane to Italy with 17 college kids. Happy to report he was no longer contagious by that time, he just needed my presence in Boston to see him gleefully board a plane and leave his cares and woes behind in Waterville for an entire month.

What cares? What woes? Today, on my way home from a lunch date in Brunswick, the car blew up (pretty much literally) and I managed to pull over where an 18-wheeler wouldn't ride up over me and crush me to death, wait for AAA to change a tire down the highway and finally get to me before darkness came. Silver lining? I could start a new novel with that imagery. If I throw in darkness, a snowstorm and a serial killer truck driver who stops to "help," I've even got Steven King beat (not really, but I can dream).

Being home alone for a month is an opportunity to be or become comfortable being in your own skin. I wear yoga clothes most of the time, unless I absolutely have to go out and wear what I call "grown-up clothes:" jeans, sweater, clogs. I have a loose schedule for meditating, journaling, writing, and tying up loose ends with the beer book. For instance, this weekend, I will be naming/renaming over 100 or 200 images so the editor knows whose in the photo or to what brewery the logo belongs. It's a bit boring and tedious, but it will get the book DONE.

In the mystery realm, I have been working on a book proposal for a cozy mystery series. These books can often be sold based on a proposal and three sample chapters. It's not as easy as it might sound. And you usually must have an agent on board to guide you through the process. But I've got that and I've been "playing" with my fiction for the first time in a very long time. Maybe for the first time, in fact.

And I'm back to reading voraciously. I finished South of Broad by Pat Conroy, a great novel. He's such a good writer. I learned a lot about taking my time and lingering just long enough to get the sense of place so important to this book. It takes place in Charleston, SC, one of my favorite cities.

The other book I finally finished, because I gave myself permission to read, was Maisie Dobbs. Set in post WWI London, Maisie is an educated former front line nurse who sets up a detective agency after the war. The writing is very good, the sense of London at that time is great and her tragedy, which unwinds til the last page, is well handled. Just the right amount of tension til the end. This is a series and I'll be reading more.

I'll end here. More later, as they say. Happy New Year to all, and I'm hoping for a book deal in the coming months.