Running Out of Writing

Some years ago when I worked on the Love is Murder Mystery Readers/Writers Conference, I was lucky enough to meet Lee Child and hear him speak. And while he was charming, funny, and generous with his time, the one thing he said that stuck with me the most was when he mentioned running out of writing.

Lee Child, if you don't know him, writes the best-selling Jack Reacher series (although I hear he is stepping down after the most recently released Reacher book. So sad, but that's another conversation!) 

Now, I have been reading his work since book one and was thrilled to hear him speak about his work and his process. It was fascinating to hear him address his worry that he might not be able to keep going within a book. He stated that with every novel he wrote, he was worried about not having any more story after about page forty. He worried that he would be able to tell his whole tale within those forty pages and that would be the end of the novel. And then what on earth would he hand over to his publisher?

I was struck by that observation on more than one level. First of all, the idea that someone like Lee Child could struggle with writing a novel was surprising. I realize academically that ALL writers struggle. Of course we do; it's part of the job. But to hear this consistent best-selling author come out and his personal fears was just mind-boggling to me. 

Secondly, his statements switched on a light bulb over my head. I had never put the entire concept into words before, but he did it for me. At the back of my head, every time I work on my own books, I worry that I am going to run out of story before I reach the word count required for a full-length novel. It's a legitimate worry, believe me, when one is trying to create a series of incidents and events for characters and wondering if what is winding up on paper, as well as what is still being carried around mentally, will provide not only a coherent story, but a book-length one. Even as I write this, my thoughts are drifting toward my current work in progress, book seven in my series, and I keep thinking, yes, I know how the story ends but do I have enough content before I reach that ending? Do I need more? Am I missing a  scene or two? Am I possibly even missing a character? It can get crazy in here!

Listening to Mr. Child speak about this particular fear was reassuring in its own way. Heck, if he can have worries like that, then maybe I'm not so far off the right path. (On the other hand, the demon in me whispers, if he has worries like that, what makes me think that someone like me could even hope to face down that very same situation? Again, a topic for another piece.)

In the end, Mr. Child said that the only thing to do is to write whatever is in your head, in your heart, and trust in both yourself and the process that there will be more story coming, certainly enough to round out the book.

I have to admit I've been hedging a bit with my newest story. Getting used to my new work hours, learning the job, dealing with a couple of health concerns, all of this has thrown various obstacles into the middle of my path. But I figure, Lee Child tossed me kind of a lifeline when he spoke so frankly about the writing life. The least I can do is hang onto that and keep going,  right?

The Scary List

One of the things I have to do during the course of writing one of my Bridgeton Park Cemetery Books is figure out a bunch of scary things to include in each story. So I run down my running list of things that scare me:

A face behind me in the mirror.

Someone in my house looking out at me while I'm in the yard, even though I know the house is empty.

Any appliance or electrical gadget turning itself on, or off, without assistance. (Speaking of which, my washing machine turned itself on four times in a row the other morning. What's up with that???)

Disembodied voices.

Something moving that shouldn't be moving, while I watch it.

Or coming home and finding things in places they shouldn't be, and knowing no one was around to have moved them.

When I had a dog, having it bark at or react to something I couldn't see. Ditto for the cats.

The more subtle thing of feeling like someone is watching me, or that I'm not alone even though I know that physically I am.

And of course, the real corker: seeing an apparition.

Anyone who reads my books knows that Michael sees apparitions, and Cassie sometimes sees them. However, she is a sensitive and knows when someone dead is around, providing that dead person wants to make contact with her. The fact that both of these characters are psychic can make it tougher for me to write something scary, although at the moment, neither of them is entirely comfortable with what they can do, and that's fine. Actually, if I had any of their abilities, I don't know that I'd ever be entirely comfortable with it, either! 

Thus, I watch all the paranormal reality shows that I do, looking for inspiration and ideas. And even if I don't find either, I usually enjoy myself while I'm doing the research. But I do get ideas and I do learn a lot of things, watching those shows. The abilities some people have are mind-boggling. (I'm looking at you, Amy Allen.) And the things that have happened to some people are nearly unbelievable, except that I believe them, when those people tell their stories.

I hope that with all the research, all the shows, all the information I pick up here and there, that most of what I write is also believable, at least on some level. I know that what I write will be scoffed at and met with disbelief by many, so I am so grateful for those who read my work and buy into the premise, even if it's just for the duration of the story. Because that means that 1) I picked good items from my running list and 2), as a writer, I did my job.

This Writer's Goal (At Least, One of Them)

One of my heroes, Stephen King, once wrote something to the effect that a great pleasure of his was having the opportunity to scare the living daylights (I believe he used a slightly less-polite term) out of his readers. Having been a horror movie aficionado from an early age, he surely realized what he wanted to be able to do with his work even when he was just scribbling stories as a kid.

I wrote my first full-length novel in high school. Oh, I had played around with short stories to start with in grade school, tried for an honest-to-God murder mystery in eighth grade that amounted to 40 pages, typed, at one-and-a-half space between lines, with no margins to speak of because I didn’t know any better, but was a whole lot of fun to put down on paper.

And then I decided to try a full-length kids’ novel. I wasn’t influenced by S.E. Hinton, which may have been a good thing. She might have given me a bout of paralysis, having published successfully at such a young age. But I was heavily influenced at the time by John Knowles, Rudyard Kipling, and Alexandre Dumas. I didn’t worry about them – two of them were already gone from the world, and the other was an adult so there would never be any connection between us.

Clearly, I have never been a fast writer. The book took me three years to produce before it spent my senior year of high school being passed around by my classmates until it wound up in someone’s trunk and I had to track it down. I never came up with a proper title for it; still couldn’t even if I tried today. But I learned a lot while working on it. The story revolved around two friends, two boys in high school, and the evolution of these original characters laid the groundwork for my other two guys, Philip Corts and Jake Holdridge.

And I also learned what one of my writing goals was: I wanted to write something good enough, or at least touching enough, to make a reader cry.

And I had success with my first try. That would be my sister, who always read everything I wrote before anyone else. She cried when she read it and, as strange as it may sound, I was thrilled. To put this in perspective, my sister has a very soft heart and will weep at TV ads if they’re done the right way. But I still considered this a big win and I knew from then on, I’d want to be able to write stories that would have that effect on every reader.

I highly doubt that anyone can write a story that will affect every reader the same way, i.e., draw each and every reader’s tears. Well, there’s Bambi. But that aside, I knew what I wanted to be able to do. I wanted that to be my power of the pen: to make readers cry.

And then I had to figure out how to make a reader cry while reading a book about the paranormal, an even trickier goal since I knew I wanted to write ghost stories. But I believed it could be done. And actually, I believe I may have done it at least one or two times. I had someone who was not my sister tell me that Saving Jake made her tear up in at least two different places. I’ve had people tell me that certain scenes out of the Bridgeton Park Cemetery Series have made them shed a few tears. To tell the truth, I’ve even cried a bit while writing some of those scenes. I know you’ve already seen the Robert Frost quote I love, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

On a related note, the first time I saw the movie "Romancing the Stone," I was struck by the scene where Joan Armstrong (played so well by Kathleen Turner) hands her latest manuscript over to her editor and says “Read it and weep. I always do.” Whoever wrote that part got it absolutely right. I like to think I’m in good company.

Stephen King and I don’t have goals so very different from each other. He wants to scare. I want to draw tears. In the end, we’re both just working to make readers care enough about our characters that we provoke a desired response. I know for sure he’s got it down. I’m still working on it, and I’m okay with that.

The Checklist

Believe it or not, one of my notebooks holds a list of things I consider to be “scary.” I have a list so that I can refer to it while I’m writing my books. Included in this list are things like: seeing the shadow of feet on the other side of a closed door, even if you know you’re the only one in the house; or the face, meaning someone looking at you, whether through a window where it’s impossible (like the second floor) or from the mirror; or someone reaching out through a device like a phone call or a voicemail message from someone dead; or waking up to a specter beside or at the foot of the bed.

Of course, there are a ton more possible scary things: the passenger in the backseat of your car that you just glimpse in the rearview mirror. The footsteps upstairs when you’re alone. The crash in the other room, whether or not you find something on the floor –disturbing- or finding nothing disturbed at all – equally disturbing- when you go to check.

And then there’s touching, and I’m not even talking about something inappropriate. The soft caress across your forehead, the gentle tug on your hair or your clothes. In at least one instance I used an actual slap to the face.

Believe it or not, it’s not necessarily easy to come up with this stuff. Watching paranormal reality shows helps a lot! But sometimes I’ll be looking for just that one kind of disturbing instance, just that one particular thing that will point to supernatural activity, and I struggle to come up with anything. Which is one reason to keep a list. The other is so that I can read it over from time to time and maybe it will help drop a box off a shelf in my head, trigger a story that would be fun to tell.

Sometimes I’ll luck out and the characters will come up with their own hauntings. When I first started writing Cassie, I had no idea she would be able to do what she can do with a picture. I didn’t realize that Michael’s ability would be triggered by Cassie’s presence. As I wrote more and began to realize what these two were actually about, it was amazing for me. I’m still learning about their abilities, just like they are. In my own way, I can’t wait to see what else they can show me, what more they can do. (I don’t think Michael’s too happy about this, but hey, Michael’s not always too happy anyway, so there it is. Sorry, buddy!)

I am currently writing book seven of the Bridgeton Park Cemetery Series and a quick peek at my notebook brought up “imaginary friend” (always a goodie), “the attached entity a person picked up in childhood that never went away”, “coffin plates”, and the word “closet.” Pretty random, but still enough to trigger certain ideas.

What about you? Is there a particular kind of haunt that would bother you the most?

Excuse Me, Are You Reading YOU?

Stephen King once mentioned that sometimes when he’s out getting a cup of coffee and reading a book while he enjoys some leisure time, people are apt to come up and say “I thought you’d be reading one of your own works.” He said he generally replies, “No, because I know how all they turn out at the end.” Good answer.

I would never do it in public, for fear of being thought self-centered, egotistical, or a braggart (all of which may be true but I don’t feel like having that pointed out to me), but I do reread my own work. Sometimes I reread past Bridgeton Park Cemetery books just to get a feel for the voice I use when writing those stories. That may sound insane: after all, it’s my voice. On the other hand, I try to write with a slightly different “accent” when I write other work. I hope there’s a difference in feel between my BPC books and my Corts-Holdridge books (Saving Jake and Missing Persons). I also hope there’s a different feel between my fiction and my non-fiction. I hope. I don’t know that there is. After all, it’s just me sitting at the keyboard.

Maybe it’s a trick of memory, or maybe it’s a streak of insecurity (which I realize could lead very easily to being self-centered, egotistical, and a braggart), but there are times that I need to reread past work because what I’m producing at the moment doesn’t ring exactly true. I don’t worry that my readers might think I have someone ghost-writing my work. I can’t pay for that, and besides, who’d want to?? But I will go over what is currently in my work-in-progress file and realize that the feel of it is a bit off, like a piano that’s just a little bit out of tune. So then I go back to my previous published work to get back to the original, true melody of my characters and their world, if that makes any sense.

I am in awe of those writers who produce book after book in a series and all of it feels cut from the same cloth. That’s amazing. And also a comfort, like a familiar face in a mob of strangers, or curling up in your own bed after having been away for a period of time. I know when I pick up those books, Reacher, God bless him, will always be Reacher. Likewise for Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers and A.X.L. Pendergast. (Cotton Malone and the whole Sigma crew, as well.) That kind of a consistency is an art-form in itself.

My ultimate goal is to imitate my author-heroes, and keep my characters as consistent to themselves as possible, so that my books can be a comfortable and familiar-enough place my readers will want to return to again and again. Without going back and re-tuning my pitch from time to time, I don’t think that will happen.

I wonder if Lee Child re-reads himself. Or does he have a beta reader, an agent, or editor who will say something like, “That doesn’t sound enough like Reacher”? The idea is almost inconceivable to me: the Reacher books are sooo consistent it’s mind-boggling. So are the others that I read. And I think they are all writing far more complex stories than I am. Wow, how do they do that?

Sustaining that consistency has got to be a little bit of a struggle. Over time, our feelings about things may change. Events and incidents and losses happen throughout our lives and surely that can alter our worldviews, maybe enough to affect what we choose to write about, and how we do it. And yet, every series I have listed above has been going on for years and years. Their authors—and their characters—somehow keep plugging along in their own wonderful ways.

I’m oly working on only book seven of my own series, and my characters are young. They are going to grow and change and encounter major upheavals in the course of their adventures. I hope that somehow, though, regardless of what may come, they’ll still be the people that first started out on this journey. And for that, I guess I’m going to have to keep rereading myself.

But still only in private.