Have you been taken in?

My book continues at a snail's pace. I'm in a section I really can't rush because I'm introducing together the villain of the piece to the reader, but my heroine sees him only as her long-time mentor. So the description and dialog here need to imply a lot to the reader without making them think the heroine is excruciatingly dumb because she doesn't notice his evil, manipulative nature.

This struggle of course leads me to self-analysis--which is where nearly all my struggles, whether real or fictional, seem to lead me. I began thinking about people who've pulled the stocking cap down over my mascara and I have to admit there are too many. Well, one is really too many, because we'd all like to be wise students of human nature and spot the bad pennies. But we don't. In a way I think it testifies to basic goodness. Those who are pretty decent folks tend to expect the same of others, so they occasionally get surprised by the dastardly.

I'm asking you, and I'd really like to know, if you've been manipulated by anyone, how, and how did you "escape" their influence?

Larceny and violence in the writer's soul.

I'd forgotten how long it had been since I posted, until I got an email from Peggy from high school saying she'd been reading this blog. I figured I'd better get on with it so there's something new here to read.

April was an amazing, filled-full month, complete with a writers conference up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I was part of an intermediate fiction mentoring group, and they were very helpful with their critique of my first 20 pages. That's all they got to see. They missed the good parts with the body in the warehouse, another body in the heroine's car (unless I change that), and blood dripping from the ceiling. Fun, huh?

Actually, going to the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference is always wonderful. Lots of big trees, woodpeckers, squirrels, mountain air--and Christians, which I like. But because I'm not writing for Christians, there were times when I felt like a back slider. People talked about their projects, such as devotionals, Christian novels, etc. Then they'd ask, "What do YOU write."

"Right now, a murder mystery for the secular market. The heroine is a recovering alcoholic attorney whose clients keep getting killed off." But the folks at my tables during meals had lots of great encouragement for me. We quiet Christians--we understand larceny and violence. The sin nature is a great source for novels.

There are deep pools of hatred and murder, envy and irritability, and tons of sloth in me. Lots of good material to work with.

Hello, dark world

I have been lost in the throes of my manuscript world. It's a darker and dirtier place than I'm used to, so I've been doing a bit of research to flesh it out, since I don't tend to hang out on the mean streets. I've been researching permit laws for carrying concealed weapons, Alcoholics Anonymous (lovely people there), some courtroom procedures, and I am about to visit my first pawn shop . I've learned enough that when a friend sent out an email about old ads we'd never see nowadays, I emailed him back and told him that a Colt .45 cost ten times as much now as it did in that ad.

I am a rather easily overlooked type of person. Nothing extravagant or amazing about me on the surface. A small, domestic looking person, in fact, with my gray hair and baby face. So when I start talking about concealed carries and the cost of a nice little matte black Colt, it doesn't quite fit. And that's one of the things that makes research so darned much fun.

manuscripts are like children

I've concluded (nearly just this second) that working on a manuscript is much like parenting. You love the kid, you laugh a lot, you cry here and there, and you'll be dang glad when they are safely out there. I know I always like sending something off to an editor (articles at this point). It's unsure if they'll buy it, but it's so nice to get it out the door, or in the usual case, into the email. I recently got a very nice, personal rejection on a piece. The editor took a brief moment to tell me why the piece didn't quite fit them, although they liked it.

(For those of you who haven't been sending things to editors, the fact is, most editors don't bother to respond at all. So it's truly lovely when someone gives you a personal word.)

To stick with the parenting metaphor, it was sort of like sending your child to camp and getting them back after a week. You aren't done yet and you need to send them out again and again as they grow. And after a while, they only come back to say hello, with a smile (and, in the case of the manuscripts, with checks in hand).

My book is a perennial teenager--causing much angst, as well as fun. It's a lot of work and frustration, it is energizing and at times depressing. And I will be SO glad when it's finally out there, in print, where somebody can buy it.

Affirmed--I AM a writer

There's just nothing like a check to affirm that you're really a writer. I recently received payment for an article that was published a few months ago. You know you are a writer when you sit down and write, or when someone reads your stuff and "gets it," or when you see the pages mounting up, and you know you've worked hard on them and they actually are worth reading. (Granted, some people are deluded about this last detail.) But when someone actually pays you for it, it's bliss.

Being paid stirred me up so much that I went back through my files to see what else might be worth sending out. I took a couple to my critique group (faithful ladies, what would I do without you guys?), and was told one was perfect and the other needed a new ending.

Back to the Writers Market Guide--only to be reminded once more how few publications handle short humor. But I found one in Canada that was perfect for this article--at least I hope so, because I sent it off to them. Now we wait. Waiting is the worst part of being a writer.

More on plot outlines

I use the narrative plot outline to jump from scene to scene, to bring out the basic story but without the dialog or details I'll insert in the actual writing of my novel. Since I've already written out several pages of the book, my outline includes those scenes and some notes for planned scenes.

Though this is a partial outline that I have to finish in the days ahead, I learned a lot from it. I could see where I needed to bring in more about one of the characters I've mentioned but not had a scene with. I need him to be on the page earlier. I also need to introduce another character who, although not apparently a key player, will provide the key to action later on.

I can see where I've been thin on info my reader will need, and I can see where I have already thought through some issues pretty thoroughly.

The outline gives me sort of a birds-eye view of my story. From there I can see where I need more peaks and valleys for excitement, and where I need to slow the action to pick up on a side issue I'm dealing with.

So forget any phobias about outlining you may have picked up in grade school and give yourself that aerial view of your novel. It's not a horrible administrative-type task--it's just another way to tell your story to yourself before you embellish it for the reading public.

Outlines and other planning issues

I finally broke down a while back and spent a whole day doing a narrative plot outline for my book. I got about two-thirds of the way through my story, and have yet to finish that outline, but it still helps an amazing amount.

For those of you who haven't been exposed to what this outline is, it's not like those horrible topical outlines we had to do in grade school (did you have to do that?). I once had a science teacher who outlined the whole book, day by day, on the black board. What do you think I learned in her class? I learned that Tommy S. could make his belly bulge out like a pregnant lady. That's about it.

A narrative plot outline is writing up a summary of the story in present tense. I will give you an example or two from mine, but I am not claiming I'm an expert. This is just the way that works for me.

The opening of the outline for my latest book reads: "Cody Caulfield, recovering alcoholic and attorney to losers, find herself with a case that's turning messy. She and her faithful sidekick Janet Engles watch petty criminal Nate Diggerson walk out of the courtroom a free man, thanks to their efforts. But his freedom is short lived."

Later on, I have a section that reads "On the phone Montgomery states that he and his boss had no need to do in Nate, because they've already retrieved anything of value he'd taken. Montgomery warns Cody to butt out or alcoholism won't be her only health problem."

What I learned from writing the plot outline is fodder for another post.