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On Write What You Know

Posted on August 11, 2015 by

by Bentley Clark

$Out Of One\'s Head, Relax The Brain" courtesy of thaikrit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net$ Write what you know. This ubiquitous advice is espoused on the first day of writing workshops, classes, and seminars all across the country. Need a story idea? Write what you know.

Story not going as planned? You must not be writing what you know. Won the Edgar Award? Congratulations, you wrote what you know.

As I’ve been polishing a short story for a contest submission, I’ve been trying to figure out what this advice means and whether or not I have successfully put it to work in my own writing.

Aged and experienced writers—whilst sitting in wing-backed chairs at their club, drinking brandy and comparing leather elbow patches—must discuss this advice on a semi-regular basis.
Someone muses about writing and knowledge and they all nod sagely. They jovially pat one another on the back and exchange the secret handshake. Oh, yes. These writers know what it means to write what you know.

Yet, for many of the rest of us, the subtle—and even the overt—meaning of “write what you know” seems open to interpretation. Some opine that the advice should be taken literally: Live in New York; write about living in New York. Grew up poor; write about growing up poor. Others assert the advice is a commandment to write about your truth-with-a-capital-T: Married to an alcoholic; write about the mutually destructive nature of co-dependence. No siblings; write about loneliness and feelings of alienation. No doubt, both approaches have led to great literature.

One of my favorite authors is a lovely, well-coiffed, happily-married, mother-of-two living in Dorset, England. She also happens to write dark psychological thrillers with disturbed main characters who perpetrate garish misdeeds. So, given this paradox, how does “write what you know” come into play in her work? Surely she doesn’t actually know how to kill a person with a scold’s bridle. Not literally anyway. Not the actual mechanics of the task. And I doubt when she was in the planning stages of her book she looked to her diary to consider which of her recently successful murders to mine for her craft. But I bet she knew what it was like to loathe a gossip monger enough to want to murder her. (And what better way to accomplish it, really, than with a scold’s bridle?)

Now, while I admit I live for the vicarious experience of doing something unseemly, something taboo, I also find myself questioning the mind that created the experience for me. With stories that contain even the hint of something untoward, I assume that the writer knows whereof they write and I fear the same.

So, imagine my surprise when a character came galumphing out of the shadows of my imagination about a year ago demanding that his rather grotesque story be told. As soon as he appeared, we had something of a come-to-Jesus-meeting, he and I. I sat him down and informed him that I was not the right person to write his story—I am a nice person from a nice family who doesn’t write about the sort of deeds he had in mind. Rather self-righteously, I also informed him that I couldn’t write his story because I don’t know a single thing about who he is or why he wants to do the things he wants to do.

His solution to the problem of my ignorance was to hound me for months. I would be sitting in the car at a stoplight and he’d tell me all about the career he wanted or about the type of girl he would date. I would be shopping at Target and as I walked past the shoe department, he would pick out the pair of shoes he couldn’t live without. In short, this character of mine was working to ensure I would have no time to myself if I didn’t put his story down on paper.

So, I opened up a new document on my computer and I wrote his story—filled with the things I know: idiosyncrasy, obsession, solitude, and a singular need to capture the world as I see it. My character had already fleshed out (no pun intended) his physical appearance and the comings and goings of his everyday life. The only gap left in my knowledge was the scientific details and consequences of his deed. Easy research.

Now, I can’t say that I have the answer to the definitive meaning of “write what you know.” But I can tell you that by infusing a character with some of my truth-with-a-capital-T, I was able to create a piece that I’m quite proud of. Even at the cost of having to research pig putrefaction.

BentleyClark125 In 2011, Bentley Clark had a conversation with the character she writes about in this article. Click here to go to Anne Riley’s blog to read that exchange.

This article was originally published in the May 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Image “Out Of One\’s Head, Relax The Brain” courtesy of thaikrit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

From Idea to Story II: Climax & Resolution

Posted on August 6, 2015 by

by Chris Eboch

In my article “From Idea to Story: Situation & Complications” I talked about turning an idea into a story by breaking it down into four main parts: situation, complications, climax, and resolution. I covered the first two parts in that post. Now we get to the climax and resolution.

Can She Do It?!

Your character has faced complications through the middle of the story. Finally, at the climax, the main character must succeed or fail. Time is running out. The race is near the end. The girl is about to date another guy. The villain is starting the battle. One way or another, your complications have set up a situation where it’s now or never. However you get there, the climax will be strongest if it is truly the last chance. You lose tension if the reader believes the main character could fail this time, and simply try again tomorrow.

In my new romantic suspense novel, Rattled, the climax comes when the heroine is chained to the floor of a cave by a villain threatening to kill her and her friends. If she can escape, maybe she can stop the bad guys and save her friends. But the penalty for failure is death—the highest stake of all. Short stories, different genres, or novels for younger kids might have lesser stakes, but the situation should still be serious.

Tips

Don’t rush the climax. Take the time to write the scene out in vivid detail, even if the action is happening fast. Think of how movies switch to slow motion, or use multiple shots of the same explosion, in order to give maximum impact to the climax. Use multiple senses and your main character’s thoughts and feelings to pull every bit of emotion out of the scene.
To make the climax feel fast-paced, use mainly short sentences and short paragraphs. The reader’s eyes move more quickly down the page, giving a sense of breathless speed. (This is a useful technique for cliffhanger chapter endings as well.)

Happy Endings

The climax ends with the resolution. You could say that the resolution finishes the climax, but it comes from the situation: it’s how the main character finally meets that original challenge.

In almost all cases the main character should resolve the situation himself. No cavalry to the rescue! Today, even romance novels rarely have the hero saving the heroine; she at least helps out. We’ve been rooting for the main character to succeed, so if someone else steals the climax away from him or her, it robs the story of tension and feels unfair.

Here’s where many beginning children’s writers fail. It’s tempting to have an adult—a parent, grandparent, or teacher, or even a fairy, ghost, or other supernatural creature—step in to save the child or tell him what to do. But kids are inspired by reading about other children who tackle and resolve problems. It helps them believe that they can meet their challenges, too. When adults take over, it shows kids as powerless and dependent on grownups. So regardless of your character’s age, let your main character control the story all the way to the end (though others may assist).

Although your main character should be responsible for the resolution, she doesn’t necessarily have to succeed. She might, instead, realize that her goals have changed. The happy ending then comes from her new understanding of her real needs and wants. Some stories may even have an unhappy ending, where the main character’s failure acts as a warning to readers. This is more common in literary novels than in genre fiction.

Tip

How the main character resolves the situation—whether she succeeds or fails, and what rewards or punishments she receives—will determine the theme. To help focus your theme, ask yourself:

What am I trying to accomplish?
Who am I trying to reach?
Why am I writing this?

Once you know your theme, you know where the story is going and how it must be resolved. For example, a story with the theme “Love conquers all” would have a different resolution than a story with the theme “Love cannot always survive great hardship.”

The next time you have a great idea but can’t figure out what to do with it, see if you have all four parts of the story. If not, see if you can develop that idea into a complete, dramatic story or novel by expanding your idea, complications, climax or resolution, as needed. Then readers will be asking you, “Where did you get that fabulous idea?”

Chris Eboch writes fiction and nonfiction for all ages. In Bandits Peak, a teenage boy meets strangers hiding on the mountains and gets drawn into their crimes, until he risks his life to expose them. The Eyes of Pharaoh is an action-packed mystery set in ancient Egypt. The Genie’s Gift is an Arabian Nights-inspired fantasy adventure. In The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan girl in ninth-century Guatemala rebels against the High Priest who sacrifices anyone challenging his power. Her writing craft books include You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers and Advanced Plotting.

Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or her Amazon page, or check out her writing tips at her Write Like a Pro! blog. Sign up for her Workshop newsletter for classes and critique offers.

Chris also writes novels of suspense and romance for adults under the name Kris Bock; read excerpts at www.krisbock.com.

This article was originally published in the May 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

What the Right Comparison Can Do for Your Story

Posted on August 4, 2015 by

by Kirt Hickman

A picture is worth a thousand words (pardon the cliché, but it’s true). Good fiction draws the reader away from his mundane life and transports him to a world of wonder wholly different from his own. Whether this difference is physical, cultural, psychological, or situational, metaphors and similes can help bring your fictional world to life.

Description

When you use these comparisons, you draw a mental picture that relates an element of your story to something within the reader’s realm of experience. In the following example, several characters in my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder, cross an open expanse of the Moon’s surface.

…the four of them made a dash for the building. They ran side by side. In the Moon’s gravity, they rose slowly with each stride and returned to the ground just as slowly, only to bounce again and again until they reached their destination.

This passage contains a detailed description of how my characters run in low gravity. It tries to invoke an image that will bring my setting to life and show how the Moon is different from Earth. The problem is, I’ve used so many words that by the time the reader gets to the end of the description, he no longer cares about the image. He just wants to get on with the story. Comparing the characters’ motion to something familiar can invoke the desired image more clearly, and with fewer words, than literal description:

…the four of them made a dash for the building, bounding up and down in a ragged line, like so many horses on a merry-go-round.

Taking the merry-go-round out of context, putting it on the Moon, and using it to describe running makes the comparison unexpected. I’ve used a familiar object to show how my setting differs from the reader’s here and now.

Yet I can improve the passage further. The word “building” lacks description. How big is this building? What does it look like? I’ve missed an opportunity to remind the reader that I’ve taken him to another world. In an earlier scene, I described the building like this:

The habitation dome was maybe a hundred meters in diameter with the semi-cylindrical protrusion of the equipment garage on one side, the only obvious entrance to the structure.

Can you picture the building? What if I add this sentence:

From afar, it looked like a giant igloo on a vast stretch of dirty ice.

The comparison solidifies the image. In Worlds Asunder, I refer back to this description in the merry-go-round scene by changing the word “building” to “igloo”:

…the four of them made a dash for the igloo, bounding up and down in a ragged line, like so many horses on a merry-go-round.

Emotion

You can use comparisons to invoke emotion. The following passage describes the wreckage of a crashed space ship:

…the fuselage came into view, jutting skyward from the flat terrain, surrounded by sparkling debris.

Perhaps this invokes an image, but a couple of well-drawn comparisons will enhance the emotional impact.

…the fuselage came into view, jutting skyward from the flat terrain like a solitary tombstone in a garden of glittering metal.

When the fuselage becomes a tombstone in a garden, it forms the emotional image of death. It reminds the reader of something he already knows: a body lies here, probably inside the fuselage. The viewpoint character is approaching a grave.

Viewpoint

Comparisons can express an idea or a character’s viewpoint more effectively than direct narrative.

…a tremendous pop reverberated through the cavernous hangar from the huge doors in front of the cockpit window. The squeal of the unused rollers filtered into the cabin like a scream of protest against this change in military posture…

This passage doesn’t specify what the change in military posture is. Nevertheless, when I use “scream of protest” to describe a simple sound, I don’t have to tell the reader how the viewpoint character feels about the change.

Use Comparisons Carefully

Look for opportunities to use comparisons in your fiction, but don’t overdo it. A well-placed comparison that invokes the right image, at the right time, will enrich your story. But if every paragraph contains one, you’ll force too many unrelated images upon the reader. Your own world will get lost among them.

Beware misused, imprecise, or cliché comparisons. Misused or imprecise comparisons can confuse your reader, and cliché comparisons will have no emotional impact.

Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the February 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

An Interview with E. H. Hackney

Posted on July 30, 2015 by

E. H. “Hack” Hackney is a retired engineer turned fantasy writer who lives on the east slopes of the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico. His articles and essays have appeared in East Mountain Living magazine, Albuquerque the Magazine, East Mountain Telegraph, The Independent, and SouthWest Sage. He published his first novel By the Blood, Book One: Revelation in 2013 under the pen name Geoffrey Ganges. You can find Hack on his websites at EHHackney.com and GeoffreyGanges.com, and on Twitter at @ehhackney and Facebook at E. H. Hackney, writer.

What is your elevator pitch for By the Blood, Book One: Revelation?
Quint is a wizard and healer—and a dwarf, abandoned by his mother as an infant and tortured by his stunted, distorted body. By accident he discovers that the Torg, an ancient enemy of his people, are returning. While he and his apprentice are drawn into a dangerous quest to find the Torg, Quint begins to discover his own history. As the wizard confronts his origins his world is shaken. He doesn’t know that of all the dangers he faces his own heritage may be the most deadly.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
The biggest challenge was creating this world and making it and the characters believable. It is a fantasy, so there’s magic, but I tried to make everything, including the magic, genuine and rooted in nature. My goal was to set it in a real place you would like to visit, populated with characters and creatures you would want to meet.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing it?
Regardless of sales and reviews, writing a book is an achievement. That is a reward in itself. Most rewarding is that a number of readers have enjoyed the book and get what I’m trying to do.

Tell us more about how By the Blood came together.
The seed of the novel was the first chapter of the book, which was to be a short story. When I got into it, I realized there was a great deal more to tell. I didn’t know it would be a trilogy until halfway through the book. It took a year and a half to reach a version I was willing to show my first readers. That’s a long time, but I was writing a book and learning how to write a book at the same time (and still am). A little less than a year passed between sending drafts to my first readers to completing the final version.

Some of my characters surprised me along the way. For example, I didn’t know Quint, my main character, had a lopsided walk until I saw him walking in my mind. That’s one of the reasons I don’t develop extensive character profiles beforehand. I don’t really know the characters until I see them in action and involved with other people, even animals.

The development of the story surprised me, too. Once I realized By the Blood was going to be book length, I developed a complete outline down to brief descriptions of each scene. The first half of the book mostly followed the outline, but the last part changed drastically. I tried writing an outline of the second book of the trilogy and failed. Now I don’t feel like I am inventing the story, but that it is being revealed to me as I write.

How has your experience with nonfiction/technical writing helped with your fiction? What did you have to learn in order to write fantasy?
I was an engineer in a previous life and contributed to many proposals to government agencies. Proposals are page limited, so you need to make your words count. The second thing that carried over from my earlier work is to strive for clarity. Regardless of how brilliant your ideas might be, they will be lost on your readers (or proposal reviewers) if they don’t understand them. The one thing I’m learning now is to trust my instincts. As an engineer I planned and worked with reason and logic. I relied mostly on my technical ability. Now, writing fiction, it is hard for me to trust in my creativity (or that I have any).

What are you most happy with in your writing, and what do you struggle with most?
When I think about By the Blood, there are a number of scenes I still feel very good about. There are some scenes with humor that I had fun writing and I hope people get. What I struggle with most is fear of failure—those times when I ask myself, “Who do I think I am, trying to write a book? Who would ever read this drivel?”

Does music play a part in your creative process?
I feel a kinship between music and writing. Sometimes I can see rhythm and tempo in dialog, or in short or long paragraphs, or short vs. long sentences. I can sometimes see theme and variation, one of the foundations of music, in writing—varying words with similar meanings or changing word order.

Why did you decide to use a pen name?
My full name is Ewing Haywood Hackney. There was no form of that name that sounded like a good author’s name to me, especially for a fantasy. I have used the nickname, Hack, for half a century, but that was no help. Geoffrey Ganges sounded like a good name for a fantasy author. Also, I have started two action-adventure books, a young adult novel and a contemporary morality book, and have written several short stories. If I were to publish in another genre, I would want a different pen name, anyhow.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I am 80,000 words into the first draft of Book Two of By the Blood. I am also working on what might be called a self-help book, about how to live life. It is the closest I have come to writing a journal. I doubt if it will ever be published, but if it is, the subtitle will be “Life lessons from seventy years of dumb decisions, most of which seemed like good ideas at the time.”

KLWagoner150_2 KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.

SouthWest Writers Contest and Conference Deadlines

Posted on July 29, 2015 by

SouthWest Writers has two important deadlines coming up at the end of this week.

Bimonthly Contest

Your Most Unforgettable Character
♦ Essay up to 500 words
Deadline: July 31

Entry fee is $10. Multiple entries will be accepted with $10 payment for each. Prizes: $100 (1st place), $50 (2nd place), and $25 (3rd place). Winners and Honorable Mentions will be announced on the website before the start of the next bimonthly contest, and in the next month’s SWW Newsletter.

For contest rules and information about submitting online and by regular mail, go to our Bimonthly Contest page.

Memoir Conference

Our memoir conference is more than a month away (Saturday, September 12), but the deadline for early bird pricing ends on August 1st. SWW members pay just $99 and nonmembers pay $149 during early registration. On August 2nd, the member/nonmember rate goes up to $119/$169. Full-time students receive the discounted rate of $50 regardless of the deadline.

Plan to attend this all-day conference with speakers that include professional authors, agents, and editors. Registration includes conference presentations, a box lunch, refreshments, and the possibility of a 10-minute pitch session. To learn more, visit our Main Conference page, as well as these related pages:

Agenda
Conference Location
Registration
Speakers & Topics

Image “Pencil Holding Trophy” courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Grammatically Correct: The Secret Life of Pronouns

Posted on July 28, 2015 by

by Dodici Azpadu

The problem with pronouns is them turn up where him least expect those, which case they is confused by who. Any questions?

No errors show up when Microsoft Word’s grammar checker is used on the opening sentence of this article. It’s possible the sentence received a pass because the errors in it crashed the correction function. Enough said about relying on a grammar checker for pronoun errors.

Consider the types of pronouns writers need to use correctly: personal, demonstrative, indefinite, interrogative, possessive, reciprocal, reflexive, and relative. I tell my English 101 students that I don’t care if they know the names of parts of speech, so long as they use words correctly. For writers, however, knowing the parts of speech and how they function is essential to craft. After all, if writers were painters they would know how and when to mix cadmium white and cerulean blue.

In my previous article, “Grammatically Correct: Pronoun Consistency,” I concentrated on pronoun agreement using personal and indefinite pronouns. In this column, I will note a few rules that help writers avoid the vague use of they, it, and you. A frequent error comes in the form of they say or it says constructions.

They predict that Federer will not be in the Australian Open finals this year.

The pronoun they must refer to a specific antecedent, and there is none.

Bloggers predict that Federer will not be in the Australian Open finals this year.

Bloggers is almost as vague as they, but it is a noun.

Writers who use the pronoun it carelessly can also go astray. The clause above—but it is a noun—uses it correctly because it refers back to bloggers. Students frequently use the following faulty construction.

In the essay, it says Romeo was a teenager.

The construction is not simply wordy and vague. The pronoun it has no specific antecedent. A corrected version can be written as:

The essay describes Romeo as a teenager.

The pronoun you should not be used in a general sense to refer to a group. It should be used when the writer directly addresses the reader.

The rule book says you cannot bat out of turn.

Many people speak this way informally, but writers can maintain an informal tone and still write correctly. The tone is not appreciably changed by the correct form:

The rule book says players cannot bat out of turn.

Notice how correct grammar helps writers achieve clarity.

Dodici Azpadu, MFA, PhD is a novelist, short story writer, and poet. Her fiction publications include: Saturday Night in the Prime of Life and Goat Song (Aunt Lute/Spinsters Ink) and subsequently Onlywoman (London, England). Living Room (2010) and Traces of a Woman (2014), both by Neuma Books, are available as ebooks. She’s currently at work on a novel, tentatively titled Living Lies.

Her poetry publications include Wearing the Phantom Out (2013) and Rumi’s Falcon from Neuma Books. Individual poems have appeared in Malpais Review, Adobe Walls, ContraACultura (online), Parnassus, Sinister Wisdom, Latuca, The Rag, and The Burning Bush. Her work has also been anthologized in Centos: A Collage of Poems and Hey Pasean!
Dodici teaches “The Joy of Poetry” and “Craft of Creating Writing” classes through University of New Mexico’s Osher Lifelong Learning.

This article was originally published in the March 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Human Motivations: Fodder for Fiction

Posted on July 23, 2015 by

by Olive Balla

Some say when a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the earth, the air moves on the other side. That’s more than just an ancient saying—it’s physics. Science tells us for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s a law of the universe. We writers make use of that law of cause and effect in establishing motivation for our characters. We pair up needs and desires with the actions taken to fill them. The more needs and desires, the more layers to the plot.

But what catalysts will result in any given human behavior? Why, for example, would one of our characters smash his car into a roadblock? Why does our protagonist wash his hands every fifteen minutes? How can we make the actions of our villains believable?

No problem. Just review the pyramid of human needs as identified by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, fill your shopping cart, and proceed to the checkout counter.

According to Maslow’s theory, we must satisfy the needs at each level of the pyramid before moving up to the next higher level. The catch is that humans may choose to fulfill those needs through positive or negative means. How your characters meet their needs is up to you.

The lowest stratum of the pyramid covers biological and physiological needs such as air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, and sleep. Science tells us that when humans undergo prolonged deprivation of any of these needs, such as might be experienced in a concentration camp, the need for food and sex are the last two drives to go, and then only just before death. The struggle to secure these needs may result in love triangles, jealousy, and theft, to name a few. Or it may result in marriage, a good work ethic, ambition and striving to excel.
The next level deals with safety needs such as security, order, law, limits, and stability. Recognizing that there is safety in numbers, every culture has developed rules by which its inhabitants must live. Even anti-social groups have established ground rules, laws, and norms. Just ask anyone who’s been in prison—or worked in one.
Once we have managed to deal with the first two levels, we can move up the ladder to the next one dealing with the need to belong and love. Humans are a gregarious lot. We need relationships. The family unit was established to meet these first three needs. So were gangs. Like the old Three Dog Night song said, one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
The penultimate level of need includes self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, and prestige. This need may lead to entrepreneurial ambition, and the drive to learn new things. It may also lead to manipulative, controlling behavior, and obsession with money and/or possessions.
At the top of the pyramid are the self-actualization needs. Humans are built with the drive to realize their personal potential: they seek fulfillment, personal growth, and peak experiences. At this level we find altruistic behavior, mentoring, heroism, and religious fervor.

Because humans are creatures of endless complexity, we may fulfill more than one of these levels at a time. For example, the CEO of a charitable non-profit may not only be fulfilling his need for self-actualization, but for wealth and status. And the school bully (or even the physically violent parent) might be fulfilling the need for dominance and control.

Psychology tells us every human behavior has at its root the goal of survival. And that doesn’t apply only to physical survival. Humans do strange or even horrible things to survive emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and socially. Find someone suffering pain from the loss of any given need, and you’ll find someone willing to do almost anything to find relief from that pain or fear. Enter self-medicating behaviors such as alcoholism and other substance use and abuse in an effort to reach and then maintain what science calls homeostasis, or balance.

According to New York’s Gotham Writer’s Workshop, every character must have a desire he struggles to fulfill. The grandness of that desire is not as important as how badly the character wants it. It could be anything as mundane as the desire to quit smoking. Or it could be as dark as the desire to get rid of a rival. The absence of desire makes for flat characters.

So, look over Maslow’s amalgamation of human needs and drives. Choose one or more, spoon in a dollop of desire, and you’ll have the makings of a deep, multi-faceted character worthy of your writing time.

Olive Balla, author of suspense novel An Arm and a Leg, is mother of 3, grandmother to 13, great-grandmother of 4, a retired educator, and part-time professional musician. Having been everything from secretary at a used car dealership, a university student, and a high school Spanish teacher, Balla states her characters are, in part, amalgamations of people she’s met. Living with her husband Victor in the Albuquerque area, she spends her spare time in a small woodworking shop designing and building everything from breadboxes and wine racks, to a porch bench. Visit her website at omballa.com.

This article was originally published in the June 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

The Joy of Interviewing

Posted on July 21, 2015 by

by Sherri Burr

In my article “5 Steps to Master the Art of Interviewing” I discussed how to set up, prepare, and conduct interviews. I also urged writers to write up the results immediately and share them with the subject. For today’s article, I focus on the joy of interviewing.

To maintain a writing life for the long haul, writers need to receive pleasure from the process. The more gratification we obtain from our work, the easier it is to overcome the pain of rejection and keep writing daily, monthly, and yearly. The writers I admire the most are still putting fingertips to keyboards into their eighties.

When I interviewed legendary author Max Evans in 2012, he was still writing at 87. Evans was working on a book about director Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch and The Getaway) and interviewing folks who worked with Peckinpah to gain information for his biopic. The day we had lunch, he was trying to reach Ali McGraw to set up an interview to discuss her collaboration with Peckinpah on The Getaway. Evans’ face was filled with delight as he discussed his planned attack for interviewing McGraw.

I have felt such bliss numerous times while preparing for or actually interviewing someone. In November 2011, I flew to Los Angeles to question actor Giancarlo Esposito who is known most recently for playing Gus on Breaking Bad. As sometimes happens, several attempts to interview Esposito had fallen through. For several years, I tried to obtain him for my television show ARTS TALK that I film during the semester so that my Entertainment Law students can interact with the talent they may someday represent. I finally obtained a date from him in early November 2011, only for my students to be disappointed when he had to cancel to film an episode of the hit television series Once Upon a Time.

At the end of November 2011, Esposito and I agreed to meet at his yoga studio during a block of time after he had completed a workout and before his meeting on a forthcoming film project. We drove around searching for a Starbucks and stumbled upon a gluten-free pastry shop where we were the only two customers. One of my students, Justine Hines (who was an Esposito fan), had prepared 20 questions, several of which dealt with the role of Gus. Since this was an extremely bad character that killed people, I asked Esposito about preparing for, playing, and ending a role like Gus.

Esposito said he agreed to play Gus because he “shows the devastation of meth in the West. I let roles speak to me and draw on their organic nature. Gus was unpredictable. Gus was graceful, caring, and polite. He cared about people. He ran a business, an illegal business. He took care to choose people with integrity. That went to the success of Gus.”

The director called in Esposito to inform him that he was killing off Gus at the end of Season Four. The six writers said they were sorry to see Gus go. They told Esposito, “We love to write for you.” Esposito said that is one of the highest compliments that a writer can give an actor.

Esposito found leaving Gus to be hard. He had to take time to shake off Gus. Sometimes he would catch himself walking like Gus and speaking like Gus. Indeed, he wanted to tell Gus to leave him alone. He finally accepted that excising Gus was like a journey and that he needed to compartmentalize the character from his soul.

As I listened to Esposito discuss this character, I was enthralled to be in his presence. To be a writer conducting an interview is to be a witness to the creative processes of others. Most writers craft work in an environment populated by one. When we interview, it allows the extroverted part of our nature, however small or large it may be, to surface and interact with others.

Take time to conduct interviews. It enhances and brings joy to your work and life.

Sherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.

This article was originally published in the June 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

An Interview with Author Patricia Smith Wood

Posted on July 17, 2015 by

Patricia Smith Wood began writing in earnest after retiring from a successful business career—and only after giving herself permission to call herself a writer. Her mystery novels are a weaving of creativity, research, and the knowledge she gained as the daughter of a police officer/FBI agent, as well as her own experience working for the FBI. Patricia’s first mystery, The Easter Egg Murder (Aakenbaaken & Kent, 2013), was a 2013 NM/AZ Book Awards Finalist in two categories: Best Mystery and Best First Book. Murder on Sagebrush Lane (Aakenbaaken & Kent), her second novel in the series, was published in March 2015. The third, Murder on Frequency, is in the works. Visit her at her website: PatriciaSmithWood.com.

What is your elevator pitch for Murder on Sagebrush Lane?
“Harrie McKinsey finds a small child sitting in a flower bed, pajamas smeared with blood. The search for the child’s parents involves Harrie in a grisly murder investigation, a second murder, an attempted kidnapping, stolen top-secret data, and a killer who intends to make her his final victim.”

How is this book different from the first book in the series, The Easter Egg Murder?
The Easter Egg Murder was loosely based on a real, half-century-old unsolved murder in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I wanted to fictionalize it so I could solve it without getting myself in trouble. Murder on Sagebrush Lane started with one tiny thing I’d read about years ago, and from that I created a story to go with it. Along the way, I incorporated another tidbit I accidentally came across while researching, but there was no attempt to tell a fictionalized version of a true story in the second book.

What makes your Harrie McKinsey Mystery series unique from other cozy mysteries?
I don’t think there is another cozy series whose protagonist is an editor. That simply started as a device—a way to get her involved in solving a mystery. As it turns out, it also gives her free time in other stories to pursue her new hobby of solving crimes.

Which character in the series have you enjoyed writing the most?
I have the most fun with non-recurring characters. It’s satisfying to create someone who is obnoxious yet vulnerable (as I did with Winnie Devlin in Murder on Sagebrush Lane) or a deeply private and complex character like Senator Philip Lawrence (from The Easter Egg Murder.)

What are the challenges of writing a novel series?
When I finished the draft of the first one, I had no intention of making it a series. During my first successful meeting with an agent (and I use that term somewhat loosely because the “success” was only that she asked to see the first 50 pages!), I was caught by surprise when she asked if it was a series. My mind did a double flip, and I found myself saying, “Oh, yes. It definitely is!” So that became the challenge. How do I carry on with some of these people I’d just created, when I hadn’t planned to do so?

What are your strengths as a writer, and what do you do to overcome your weaknesses?
That’s a hard question. I’ll tell you what my critique group says. They like the way I portray my male characters. They claim it sounds like guys actually talking and how they would act. As for weaknesses, I have many, but keeping a rein on overusing some words comes to mind as a biggie. I do a lot of “find” and “replace” when I discover 386 occurrences of a word like “sometimes” or “someplace.”

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
I started out giving Harrie McKinsey the characteristic of slightly prophetic dreams. In the second book, that comes out briefly in the beginning, but doesn’t run through the rest of the story. I don’t know if that will be a factor in the third one or not. I’m sure Harrie will tell me if it is!

What do you want to be known for as an author?
I’d be happy to have a reputation for giving the reader a tight, quick-paced story that leaves them wanting more when they finish.

Is there something you know now about the writing journey that you wish you had known when you first started?
I wish I’d truly known, in my bones, that I didn’t have to have all the answers before I started. I came to realize that “starting” was really the beginning of “learning” how to do it. Without ever starting, you can’t possibly learn the steps along the way. It’s so true that the only way to improve is to simply sit yourself down and start—no matter how bad you may think it is. You can only get better by actually “doing” it! And by the way, I made this monumental discovery when I attended my first SouthWest Writers meeting. I “got permission” from the people there to call myself a writer because I was actually writing. That was my first big step in learning how to improve.

What is the greatest tool in a writer’s arsenal?
A really good, compatible critique group. There’s nothing like surrounding yourself with people who will give you the unvarnished truth, and yet encourage you by pointing out the good things you’re doing. When you have people like that, whose opinions you value and trust, you can do amazing things. I’m confident that’s why The Easter Egg Murder was a finalist in the 2013 NM/AZ Book Awards in the categories of Best Mystery and Best First Book.

What is your writing routine like?
I hate deadlines, but I do my best work when the pressure is on to produce. And often that pressure comes from my critique group. I’m a “panster” so I sit down (often the night before a critique group meeting when I’m expected to bring something to read) and I produce. I let the characters tell me what’s going on in the next chapter. You’d hardly call it a routine, but it seems to work for me.

Why did you choose Aakenbaaken & Kent to be your publisher?
Largely because they were the first ones to ask me! I wish there had been a vigorous competition amongst the five top New York houses to snap me up, but alas, that was not the case. They also came highly recommended to me by an award-winning writer, whose opinion I trusted. I’ve been well treated, and they’ve helped me tremendously.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m working on the third book in the Harrie McKinsey Mystery series. Because I’m an amateur radio operator, my fellow hams have asked when I intend to include something about that hobby in the books. So the next book will have a touch of “ham” flavor. It’s called Murder on Frequency.

What advice do you have for writers who are still striving for publication?
I’d have to say, if it’s your dream to be published, don’t give up. In today’s world of books there are so many ways to achieve your goal. But always (and I can’t stress this too much)—ALWAYS—make sure that what you submit is clean, professional, highly edited, and free of typos and slop. If you end up publishing it yourself, you’ll have half the battle done if you’ve made sure it’s truly ready before you let it out of your hands.

On Finding a Reason to Join the Crowd

Posted on July 14, 2015 by

by Bentley Clark

$Out Of One\'s Head, Relax The Brain" courtesy of thaikrit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net$

I attended my first SouthWest Writers Saturday meeting a couple of months ago. By the time I got there, all the seats were taken, so I stood in a back corner of the room. I began meet-and-greet by circling the room, smiling at people and idling near interesting conversations. When I gathered the nerve, I made a beeline for the most densely populated part of the room with every intention of adding my perspective to some rousing debate. But by the time I made my way into the hub, my heart was racing, my palms were sweating and I felt as though my expression had gone wild eyed and maniacal. I beat a retreat to the food table, grabbed coffee and a cookie, and tucked myself back into the corner from whence I came.

Standing there terrified and praying that the crowd wouldn’t turn on me like an angry mob of rabid zombies—have I mentioned that my anxiety is both wildly irrational and excessively creative?—I wondered why I seemed to be the only writer completely paralyzed by her own introverted nature. Goodness knows, I can’t have been the only introvert in the room. And yet, if there were others, they were so graceful in maneuvering their way around that particular obstacle that no one was the wiser.

Dusting cookie crumbs from my shirt, I wondered what motivates introverted writers to behave so against the grain of their nature in situations such as this. Myself, I am hard-pressed to think of more than two things that I value enough artistically to push through the hyperventilation and flop sweat to have a discussion with complete strangers. Then I remembered a lovely encounter my husband and I had on a recent weekend in Santa Fe.

We were having a quiet breakfast at Bishop’s Lodge. The restaurant was empty, but for ourselves and a well-dressed older woman contentedly dining alone. At the end of our meal, as we rose from the table and moved to push in our seats, the woman politely motioned us over to her table. My husband and I were taken aback and a bit incredulous. She just wanted to thank us, she said, for our genteelness and consideration. She appreciated that we didn’t talk on our cell phones during the meal or make her an unwilling participant in our conversation by talking too loudly. She told us it was refreshing to have a peaceful breakfast out and to be able to hear herself think. Or, more accurately, to have a peaceful breakfast out and to be able to concentrate on editing.

As it turned out, she had been editing the galley of her novel while dining. When I asked her about the progress of her editing, she smiled courteously and mildly cursed the “find and replace” function of her editor’s word processing program. But when I asked her about her novel, she transformed from a quiet, unassuming diner to a passionate artist and enthusiastic salesperson. While she maintained her impeccable decorum in discussing her novel, her eyes lit up, her vocabulary became peppered with hyperbole and she leaned in so close to us that she nearly put her elbow in her eggs. The novel she was editing was the first in a series that married theology, spirituality and history. And while this combination isn’t my usual fare, her exuberance made me want to run out and buy the first copy to hit the bookshelves.

I clutched my Styrofoam coffee cup to my chest and willed myself to breathe deeply, and thought about the impetus for her transformation from mild-mannered Lone Diner, valuing quiet and solitude, to enthralling Intense Writer, discussing theology with strangers. Quite simply, I had asked her about a piece of work that she believed in, that she had worked on for years and that she now wanted to share with others. Discussing and promoting her book were so important to her that there was nothing else she could have done in that moment but passionately broach taboo subjects with two random fellow diners.

If this level of enthusiasm and passion for writing is at the heart of the conversation and buzz at our Saturday meetings, I am simply awestruck. Awestruck and humbled. Awestruck, humbled, and determined to find that piece of work that will propel me into the throng with wild abandon, leaving my introversion in the corner with a cookie.

BentleyClark125 Though it has virtually nothing to do with this article, Bentley Clark wonders if zombies can get rabies. Opine and give her a piece of your mind in the comments below.

This article was originally published in the April 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Image “Out Of One\’s Head, Relax The Brain” courtesy of thaikrit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net