Trouble in Taos--a book review

Trouble in Taos: Or the Lowdown, Dirtiest, Boring Gunfighter
by Headley Hauser
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't usually read Westerns. No wait . . . that's not accurate. I never read Westerns. But this one was recommended to me by someone in whom I have the utmost confidence, so I read it. And I'm glad I did; I  enjoyed every word.

It's the story of Slimy Beach, an unlikely gunfighter whose day job is digging holes for outhouses, and is told by his extremely long-lived best friend many years after Slimy's demise. Slimy's not a glamorous hero, despite the juxtaposition of this story against a romantic dime-novel version of Slimy's life. He's short, smells bad, and is, as the title says, "boring." But it's his very unheroic nature that makes this book a fun read. The narrator has a very limited view of the world, but the story is filled with references to historical people and events that only add to the reader's enjoyment.

It's written with humor as dry as a Taos winter. It's a very quick, entertaining read. I recommend it highly as a perfect beach book--though preferably not for a slimy beach.

This is the first in a promised series from Headley Hauser--the so-called genre series. I look forward to reading whatever genre comes next!

Trouble in Taos by Headley Hauser is available as an e-book on Amazon.com

Top Ten Ways to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Procrastinate

Procrastination is one of my greatest talents, so I thought I would share some terrific methods to avoid writing, editing, or any other work you know you must do, but would really rather not.

10. Housework. Even with the kids grown and gone, there's still an awful lot of housework to do. I don't actually do any of it, mind you, but I think about it a lot. A big job like that requires a plan. 

9. Email. I belong to a bunch of authors' lists, and get dozens of emails from other writers each day. Reading all those messages and following their links could take me a week, if I pace myself properly.

8. Facebook. There are far more authors out there than I can keep track of by email. The ones I don't hear from directly, I'll find on Facebook. If I really need to procrastinate, I'll post comments on their walls, then check back every twenty minutes to see if anyone "liked" what I said! 

7. Chatting on the phone with my son. He's an actor in New York which means he needs someone to help him fill the time when he should be learning his lines. A mother's work is never done.

6. Texting with my daughter. We can keep a conversation going for hours, or until our cell batteries die. If she's not available, I'll just poke her on Facebook. (She's also a writer. Need I say more?) 

5.Training the dog. We have a puppy--he's a mutt, but such a cutie. We've been taking him to obedience school, but he can still be a handful, especially as he's gotten bigger. He needs his training every day, or he'll never pass his Canine Good Citizen test. Of course, he can always take the test again later. 

4. Clearing off Tivo.

It doesn't clear itself, you know! Well, actually it does, but if I let it do that, I might lose some long-lost adaptation of a Jane Austen novel picked up by my wish list. As a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, I would consider that quite a monstrous thing indeed!

3. Digging up ancestors. Well, not literally. My mom gave me a subscription to Ancestry.com to learn more about our forebears. But it's a never-ending chain. There are always more ancestors to discover. Upside? I've located several distant cousins whom I now track on email and Facebook!

2. Talking with my husband. A good marriage requires work, so we'll often sit around and talk about the work we plan to do when we're through sitting around talking to each other. Yup. He's a writer, too.

1. Making up Top Ten lists. 

Phew! That was exhausting.

. . . I believe I'll take a nap. 

(This originally appeared in the December 2011 issue of Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, a publication of the Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC.)

When Should the Body Drop?

Nope--not talking about middle-aged spread here. This is about when the reader of a traditional murder mystery expects to come across the first victim.

Since authors are told to begin their novels in media res, literally "in the middle of things," some believe that in a traditional mystery the body should appear in the first chapter. Nothing can be a stronger hook for a reader than that, they argue. And it is a truth universally acknowledged that a reader in possession of a new book must be in want of a strong hook to keep them reading.

But is it always necessary to kill someone off in chapter one? Many don't think so. I just read a Carolyn Hart mystery where the body doesn't appear until page 81. It didn't feel like it took too long to get there. As she shows us, there are other ways to hook readers than by killing off a character.

In one typical story arc, we meet all the people in the closed community, learn about their mutual anger and distrust. Then the most hated character is found dead about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through and everyone is a potential suspect. Think Murder on the Orient Express. This only works if the reader is fully engaged by the setting and characters as Christie enables us to be.

A twist on this is that a popular character is the one to die, making the act more heinous and finding the culprit more imperative. But either way, we have to come to know the characters before we can feel strongly about the murder.

In another typical story arc, a body is found early on and there is one obvious suspect who, of course, turns out to be innocent and would have been railroaded were it not for the protagonist's tireless investigation. This sort takes less time to get to the murder, and the bulk of the story is unraveling who really dunnit.

There are even some where the dirty deed is accomplished before the story opens. This story line can pick up with the victim's funeral, or even later with someone being (wrongfully) charged with the crime. It's harder for readers to have a strong feeling about the victim with this story arc, so the author needs to make us care more about the innocent person who's behind bars.

If you think about it, you've probably read each of these stories many times. Yet, each time it's different because of new characters, setting, and plot details.

I think I'm like most readers who choose traditional mysteries for their characters and the puzzle. For a first book in a series, I like to learn about the setting and become invested in the main characters. I know I'm reading a mystery, and eventually one of these folks is bound to drop dead. Sometimes figuring out who the victim will be is as much fun as figuring out who dunnit.

What do you think? When do you like to see the body drop?

“Why doesn’t every writers group put together an anthology?”

The question took me by surprise. I was standing on the second floor of the Plaza Hotel in New York City the evening before the opening of Book Expo 2010, when literary agent Gareth Esersky inquired, shaking her head. I was there representing the Bethlehem Writers Group in accepting two Next Generation Indie Book Awards--Best Anthology and Best Short Fiction--for our anthology, A Christmas Sampler: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales (available from IndieBound, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble).

My flippant answer was that there are laws against homicide.

If I hadn’t been so surprised by the question, I might have given a more thoughtful response. After considering the matter a bit, I think the answer is that putting together an anthology requires a great deal of dedication and patience, a variety of talents, and hard work by every member of the group. It isn't easy.

Authors of A Christmas Sampler
Standing: Emily P. W. Murphy, Paul Weidknecht, Will Wright,
Cindy Kelly, Ralph Hieb, Carol L. Wright, Courtney Annicchiarico
Seated: Jeff Baird, Carol A. Hanzl Birkas, Jo Ann Schaffer,
Sally Wyman Paradysz

Our group had already beaten the odds by thriving for over three years. Many writers groups find it hard to sustain a compatible and dedicated membership for such a long period of time. Our group included writers of various genres and levels of experience--hazardous to a group’s long-term success according to conventional wisdom. We were at various stages of life--from recent college grad to retired--and our personalities didn't always mesh well, but we'd found ways to reach accommodation. Through our biweekly meetings and group challenges, we'd established a rapport, a friendship, and a group identity. We were a family of writers. Publishing an anthology didn’t look like such a big leap for us . . . until we got started.

We decided to go for it in the summer of 2008, setting a publication goal of September, 2009. We thought we had plenty of time. Our first task was selecting a theme. But how do you create an anthology that incorporates children’s stories, sardonic satire, paranormal, fantasy, literary fiction, mystery, memoir, light romance, and more? 

Ultimately our location in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, nicknamed “Christmas City, USA,” gave us the direction we needed. We would compile Christmas stories. With that decided, we went to work writing our stories, each following his or her own muse. 

We brought early drafts of our stories to group meetings. Some went for a sentimental approach.

“Too schmaltzy,” one member complained.  

“But it’s a Christmas book,” the author argued. “It’s supposed to be sweet.”

“That doesn’t mean it has to be saccharine,” the first lobbed back.

When another author brought a cynical Santa story, and a third offered a vampire tale, our children’s writers must have wondered whether their stories would make the cut.

Somehow, by early spring of 2009, we had twenty-three stories of various lengths that the group voted to include in the anthology—with every author represented.

Then came the task of finding a title for such an eclectic collection. After about a hundred suggestions, we finally settled on A Christmas Sampler: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales. (And we all knew which ones were strange.)

We celebrated our accomplishment, not realizing that the hardest work still laid ahead, requiring talents most writers don’t possess. These included copyediting, layout, cover design, bookkeeping, and the author’s least favorite: marketing. At times it seemed overwhelming.

We were lucky that two of our members had publishing experience. One did copyediting, while the other had the artistic talents, and the required software, to create our cover and do our layout. (She even made the quilt in the background on our cover.) Time was short, and there was more to do than we realized. Tempers frayed as we tried to learn new skills and create a professional-looking product. After a lot of hard work, trial and error, doing and re-doing, we sent our files to the printer in June. By the middle of August, we held the book in our hands.

We sent copies out for reviews, but learned that many places required a review copy three months ahead of the publication date or payment of a fee. We were too late and too broke by that point to get pre-publication reviews. Undaunted, we determined to create our own buzz.

With the help of friends in newspaper publishing we put together a marketing plan, press releases, and promotional materials. We started to see some interest through online retailers, but we had gone with print-on-demand, and found it next to impossible to get our book into the chain stores, even though our group then held its meetings at a Barnes and Noble.

Undeterred, our authors spread out, setting up dozens of book signings at libraries and independent bookstores. We became our own distributors, dealing with deliveries, invoices, and discounts, but we didn’t get any returns. With many authors we could be in several places at once. One indie bookstore had us back for three signings in our first holiday season. And we knew that a Christmas book was something we could continue to market year after year.

We entered two contests, the Indie Book Awards, where we won for best anthology and best short fiction, and the DIY book awards where we won honorable mention in the anthology category. It was a delight to update our cover to include our gold award seal.

Since then we have continued to come together for our regular meetings, and welcomed new members into our group.  For some of our members, publication in A Christmas Sampler satisfied their writing goals, and they have moved on to other pursuits. For others, however, the anthology was just a step in their writing careers. Will Wright, has a fantasy novel and short stories published on Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=will+wright). Carol Birkas has published a children’s book that her daughter illustrated. Several others have full-length manuscripts that they are ready to shop to agents. Still more have added short stories, articles, contest wins, and writing awards to their credits.

As a group we have expanded our endeavors to include publication of a literary magazine, BethlehemWriters Roundtable, to enhance our platform and offer members and nonmembers an opportunity to publish short stories. Continuing our goal of encouraging writers both locally and beyond, we are offering a Short Story Award with cash prizes and offers of publication for the winners. 

The publication process was stressful, but what might have torn some groups apart, drew us together. In 2010 we once again launched a group effort to promote our book at book signings and author events, and repeatedly heard another surprising question: “When is your next book coming out?”

At first the idea sounded more like a punishment than an opportunity, but time has passed. They say that parents have their children two or more years apart because it takes that long to forget the pains of sleepless nights and endless diaper changes. It has taken us three years to decide that our anthology needs a younger sibling. Having forgotten the pain and remembering most of the joys of the past, we are currently developing a new anthology—this one is for any time of year. It is tentatively entitled Seasonal Pursuits: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Tales, and has an anticipated publication in the fall of 2012.  Like many second-time parents, we’re doing things a little differently, and hopefully even better this time around.

Now in the 2011 holiday season, we’re again enjoying book signings while meeting deadlines for submissions for our new anthology. We’re very busy, but perhaps that’s part of why we’re still here. Our authors are continually engaged.

At this point, we don’t know how many “children” we’ll choose to have, but we expect to enjoy them all, and hope that readers will, too. 

(A version of this blog entry was originally published on savvyauthors.com)

A Dialogue on Dialogue

"What are the keys to writing good dialogue?" I asked a writer friend.

"Well, as you well know, I am an avid reader and the author of several yet-to-be-published books, and I know about such things from writing many manuscripts starting when I was only seven years old growing up in Saskatchewan. It makes sense that you would ask me, your Facebook friend, and a person who, while raising seventeen cats, still has time to write every day. One thing you should always do is put a character's back story into your dialogue. It tells the reader about your character and is much livelier than including it in narrative."

"So I see."

"And ending sentences with a preposition, once totally taboo, is something you can use dialogue for."

"I thought we used dialogue to relate what characters said."

"That reminds me. Never use 'said' for tagging your dialogue. The English language is full of much more interesting words to use for a dialogue tag. Try ranted, exclaimed, reposted, averred, proclaimed, and so on. 'Said' will just disappear so that the reader will only focus on what the characters are saying instead of on your creative way of expressing it."

"Okay. I can do that," I said. "How can I make my dialogue sound natural?"

"Well, uh, part of your, um, problem could be that when people are talking in, uh, real life, sometimes they . . . pause . . . or, uh, su-su-su-stammer, or, um, re-reach for just the right . . . turn of phrase . . . and, um, writers sometimes leave this out and make their dialogue, uh, unnatural. By putting it into your dialogue, you'll, uh, make the reader feel like . . . he or she . . . is reading what a real person is, um, saying."

"Isn't that a little hard to read?"

"Really, Sam? Isn't it clear, Sam? Which reminds me, Sam, that making your dialogue personal by mentioning the other character's name over and over again, lets you know who's talking. You understand don't you, Sam?"

"My name's Carol."

"And do not use contractions. I could not be clearer. I would like to think you will follow my advice. I cannot imagine that you are unable to understand why. This is not email, you know. It is formal writing."

"I'll try to remember that."

"Nother whay to mike somethin' sound jes' raht, is to use spellin' that'll tell the reedah the kinda accent yer kerkter haz."

"Hunh?"

"And always write in complete sentences. Never use a single word or two as a response. It shows a disrespect for the reader."

"How?"

"Trust me. Writing dialogue is easy. Why when I write dialogue I always try to make sure that the speaker, or in this case the character who is represented on the page by the author as having spoken, gives lengthy and thorough responses to all questions posed. Thereby, they can expound upon the important issues that surround the matter at hand, whatever that might be in the context of the story the author is attempting to tell. There is a reason that Shakespeare used the soliloquy. It was so that an individual character could command the stage, singularly and alone, for all to see, to talk, perchance to muse, upon a subject without interruption from anyone else. Being able to hold the floor with other characters on stage, or in the room, so to speak, or on the page, is even more important, for any character who is worth writing about should be able to go on and on and on and on and on and on. After all, that is the way people actually talk, never allowing for interruption until they have expressed a complete, well-designed, and gracefully executed barrage of language with or without meaning. Such is the way of the world, and it is in this manner that you should write your dialogue. Otherwise it lacks verisimilitude, which is a word, you, as a writer, should know means having a quality of realism, or of being true to reality."

"I don't think people really converse that way."

"Think not? My bad. But I'm just too sick to care. Because my dialogue is always surge, you, my reader peeps, no matter when you read my work, will know that I am awesome, because I always use the latest language fads to appear hep and up to date."

"Hep?"

"And don't forget to repeat yourself. You shouldn't forget to repeat yourself. People do it all the time. For emphasis, or to be sure they understand. To be sure they understand what's been said. People do it all the time. You should repeat yourself."

"Doesn't that make it a bit tedious?"

"Such palaver. You will also want your dialogue to limn a protagonist with whom your reader can colligate. Write dialogue that imbues the character with perspicacity and sagacity."

"I don't know what half those words mean. Should my readers have a dictionary close at hand, or should I just include a glossary?"

"If you follow all of these rules, you, too, might be able to write several unpublished manuscripts with dialogue as good as mine."

"Thanks," I said. I think I'm sorry I asked.

A Cozy by Any Other Name . . .

For a while now, I have been happily telling people that I am writing a cozy mystery. My story meets all the usual criteria: a puzzle to solve, an amateur detective (i.e. not a police officer, private detective, medical examiner, or other professional), a small town setting, a lack of gore and violence, no explicit sex, and an emphasis on plot and character instead of action. I thought I was pretty safe with declaring "cozy" to be my subgenre.

But recently I have been in touch with other authors who have set me straight. "Cozy," they tell me, is no longer the word-of-choice to describe what I am writing. Cozies get a bad rap for being simplistic fluff. Writers of other mystery genres quietly look down on cozies, I'm told, while writers of literary novels look down on mysteries. In order to retain a more respectable position in the hierarchy, cozy writers, they tell me, should claim to write "traditional" mysteries.

Traditional vs. Cozy. What's the difference?

At a recent writers conference, an editor said that her house publishes traditional mysteries, but not cozies. Where, I asked her, does she draw the line between the two? She wasn't able to articulate it. So I have made an effort to compile a list of criteria most often cited as distinguishing one from the other.

• I have heard that a cozy is almost always a part of a series, while a traditional mystery may be, but might not. (Isn't that the same thing?)
• Some say that a cozy must include a craft, recipes, talking animals or the like, while others say that while such books are definitely cozy, those elements are not required for a book to fall into the cozy category. (Dame Agatha did not include any of the above, yet she is considered the mother of the genre.)
• A cozy, some argue, has a female protagonist, while a tradition mystery can have either a male or female protagonist. (Is it me, or is that just sexist?)
• It is said that the protagonist in a cozy must be likable, whereas the protagonist in a traditional mystery might be more damaged. (Don't all protagonists need flaws?)
• The mood in a cozy, some suggest, is more apt to be light-hearted than in a traditional mystery. (Simplistic fluff? Hardly true of the cozies I've read.)

I seems that most of these distinctions are in shades of grey, rather than real differences. Perhaps there is no real line between the two, and this labeling has little to do with what we write. Both involve amateur detectives working on a puzzle, usually in a closed community. Both have to play fair with the reader, avoiding the deus ex machina ending. Both are supposed to have Good win against Evil in the end. So why call them by different names?

I am told, one must be very careful about how one describes one's work. For instance, a writer told me that "amateur detective" is no longer the favored term; I should call my protagonist an "accidental sleuth." I guess that sounds more traditional.

My work has no recipes, crafts, or talking pets (but I read those that do). My non-professional female protagonist is curious, intelligent, and a bit damaged. It is set in a small town with, I hope, a cast of interesting characters. I don't write humor, but it has its lighter moments. I hope it will be a series.

So what am I writing?

A traditional cozy.

What do you think? Is there a difference between a "traditional" and a "cozy" mystery, or are these distinctions without a difference?

An Interview with Jessie Crockett

The title of Jessie Crockett's debut novel with Mainly Murder Press, Live Free or Die, is the state motto of New Hampshire, and her book embodies all that we've come to expect of a good New England cozy mystery. The protagonist is the widowed postmistress of tiny Winslow Falls, NH. In her day job, she hears all the town's gossip, which helps her solve a mystery in her other life--as a volunteer firefighter suddenly in charge of an investigation of a spate of unexplained fires. In the ashes of the latest, she found the body of one of the town's most beloved citizens. When a tall, red-bearded, state fire investigator arrives to help unravel the mystery, sparks of another sort fly. 
Her book is available at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound, among other outlets.  I'm happy to welcome Jessie to my blog today.

CLW: Hi Jessie. Having grown up in New England, and having spent a lot of time in New Hampshire, I really enjoyed the setting for your book. How did you make it seem so believable?

JC: I've lived in New Hampshire since I was a young child. My parents and all my extended family are from Maine so my own experience is centered around New England. I think it also comes down to the fact that I was very shy until I became an adult.  Shy people tend to be hyper-aware of their surroundings. And they are natural observers because they are usually on the outside of what is happening.

CLW: Your protagonist, Gwen Fifield, is the town’s widowed postmistress and a member of the volunteer fire department. What a combination. Is she based on anyone you know?

JC: My husband and I bought a home in a very small New Hampshire village sixteen years ago. The first person I met in town was the postmistress.  She was kind, helpful and friendly. I came to value not only her friendship but the everyday things she did to grease the social wheels of our tiny community. The time finally arrived a few years ago for her to retire. The long string of temporary replacement postmistresses we were sent did not fill her shoes. I was heartbroken and decided the only way to get my beloved postmistress back was to make one up. Gwen's best qualities, those of wisdom and community-mindedness, are very much shared by the real life postmistress from my village. The rest of the story, faithless husbands, difficult sisters, and arguments with local law enforcement, are entirely from my imagination. 

CLW: You have a large cast of characters, all with a variety of motives that keep us guessing throughout the book. How did you keep them all straight as you plotted your mystery?

JC: I'm glad to hear I kept you guessing! Keeping my characters and their motives straight never gives me any trouble. When I am writing I feel like I am in the story. I can see and hear the characters. When things are going well, writing about them feels like transcribing a memory instead of like I am making things up. If I don't feel that way I stop because I realize I am off course. That being said, what I do have trouble with is the order of events. I know everyone and why they do what they do, I just don't always remember when they do it.  

I write in scenes and when I was writing Live Free or Die I used one sticky note for each scene. My office has a flat chair rail running all the way around it. I used it as a timeline for the scenes and would rearrange them on it until everything was finally in the right order. Some of the sticky notes completely lost their stick from being repositioned so many times. I would find myself with plot holes created by actions out of order and clues Gwen could not possibly have found when she did. I even had her live one day twice and then skip another by accident. Now I have a giant sheet of glass mounted to my office wall and I write on it with different colored markers which seems to be working at least as well as the sticky notes.

CLW: The romance between Gwen and the state fire investigator, Hugh Larsen, is especially endearing.  We’d love to see more of him, too. Are you planning a series?

JC: I am writing a series. The second is underway right now and I plan to have it completed by April 1. I don't have a release date yet, but I what I do know is the title: Body of Water. The community will face flooding as well as interest from a large corporation wanting to set up shop in Winslow Falls. Gwen and Hugh will be back along with Augusta, Clive, Winston, and Ray, as well as a bunch of new faces around the village.

CLW: What drew you to writing a traditional mystery? Have you written in other genres?

JC: The first chapter book I ever read was The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore. I was so proud of reading a book that seemed so grown-up I think I automatically associated mysteries with pleasure. I love to read in many genres but at this point I prefer to write mysteries. I like the structure of it and the commitment to the reader to stay within the rules while misdirecting their attention. I also like that most mysteries can be counted on to provide a story with a satisfying ending. So much of day to day life remains undone. There is always more laundry to do, more meals to cook, more loose clapboards to nail back onto the house. Usually, in a mystery, at the end you feel it is complete.

CLW: What was the hardest part of writing your mystery?

JC:  First drafts are my biggest challenge. I've heard a lot of other writers talk about how much they hate editing and going through all the drafts necessary to polish work. I prefer rewriting. I feel like I can fix a mess. What is harder, for me, is to make one in the first place. The first one third to one half of the manuscript is the worst. Once I've gotten through that, I start to know what the story really is about and then I sail on through to the end. It's a lot like knitting. The first several rows of any project are hard to hold onto and don't look at all like what the piece will become. You stop and start and maybe even change needles as you get a feel for what works for this particular project and what doesn't. But before long you catch the rhythm and everything becomes a pleasure. 

CLW: Can you tell us how you found your publisher?

JC: I belong to The Guppies, which is the internet chapter of the Sisters in Crime. The Guppies main function is to provide information and support for, as yet, unpublished mystery writers. Someone in the group sent out an email mentioning Mainly Murder Press being open to submissions. I sent in Live Free or Die and was published nine months later.

CLW: Was there anything about the publishing process that surprised you?

JC: Belonging to groups like The Guppies and Sisters in Crime really helped to prepare me for what the process of being published would actually entail so I wasn't really surprised by much other than my own reaction to the realization I was about to join the ranks of the published. I floated around on a cloud of pure joy for months. 

CLW: Now that your book is out, do you have any advice for emerging writers?  

    

JC: Have fun. Enjoy the process of discovering how you work best and the voice you like to use to tell your stories. If you want to move from being pre-published to professional you need to behave like a professional. This means understanding that professionals in the industry, such as agents and editors, know their markets and are not rejecting you personally if they are not interested in your work. If you want to succeed I suggest you limit feelings of bitterness and self pity to one fifteen-minute session weekly. I like Friday mornings between 6 and 6:15. I usually forget and then I have to stay in a positive frame of mind for another week. I also love the advice my husband gave me the day I had received my eighth rejections in seven days: Chin up, pen down.

CLW: Great advice. Thanks for joining us today, and best of luck with your writing career. 

If you enjoy a good New England cozy mystery, be sure to pick up a copy of Jessie's book Live Free or Die. 

Deciding to write

How much of becoming a writer is due to choice?

I have known many writers who have told me that they had no choice in the matter. They HAD to write. It was what they were born to do--and without it they would suffer severe psychic or physical pains. I listen to them and wonder why I don't feel that way.

I have always been a writer. I did a little creative writing when I was young, but when I went to college, I chose to major in political science. It required that I write a lot, but for term papers and essay exams. After college I went to law school where clear, concise writing was essential. But neither college nor law school required me to do any creative writing. Research, analysis, and critical thinking were the skills that I honed.

After law school, I did a stint as a law book editor, acquiring a more discriminating eye and sharper scalpel. Then, as a practicing attorney, every day required that I do a lot of writing: correspondence, pleadings, briefs. Next I joined academia. As a professor and pre-law advisor, I have written lectures, articles, speeches, and even a book.

Apparently writing is part of my DNA--or at least a part of my everyday life. Perhaps I never feel the requirement to write simply because I am always writing something.

But writing fiction is something I have taken up relatively recently. So is fiction writing a choice or calling?

It is probably a bit of each. I love reading really good fiction. Being carried off by the written word into another reality that stays with you long after closing the book is an experience I have loved since childhood. The challenge of creating that experience for others appeals to me in ways that writing nonfiction never could.

And it is a challenge. Every page, every paragraph, every word dares me to make my writing better. I get out my scalpel and my editor's eye and try to sculpt the words in ways I never did with nonfiction. Academic writing is a skill; fiction writing is an art.

So, for me, writing fiction is a choice--a choice of how to answer my calling.

How about you? If you write, is it a choice or a calling?

The long-form critique

I wrote my first "novel" when I joined National Novel Writing Month in 2006. The challenge was to write fifty-thousand words in the thirty days of November. Somehow, despite work and family and holiday interruptions, I made it. Before December first arrived, I passed the 50K mark, but I had not completed my story. After a short break for the holidays, however, I returned to my manuscript and finished it the following February to the cheers of friends and family. It was awful, but the first draft was done. Then I set it aside.

Since then I participated in NaNoWriMo three more times, "winning" all but once. But I never went back to that first Nano-novel. Well, that's not exactly true. I edited and rewrote several of the early chapters and brought them to my writers group for a critique. I honed and sharpened until I was reasonably happy with them, but I never got past about chapter five . . . until now.

This year, my writers group has started a new sub-group: our long-form critique group. We review up to one-hundred pages from two authors each month. Every member of the subgroup is expected to give each submission a careful, close edit, looking not just for word choice and quality of description, but for character growth, story arc, use of setting, consistency of voice, and the myriad other things that distinguish a manuscript from a publishable work.

It is a grueling process both for the reviewer and the reviewed. The reviewer knows that he or she must focus intently to understand what is working in the manuscript, and try to find suggestions for how to fix what is not. The person whose work is under review needs to sit for an hour and a half and listen to how far short their wonderful gift to literature still falls, and how much work they still have to do.

And they hear it all. "I don't like your main character." "People don't talk that way." "I wouldn't have read past page ten if I didn't have to." These are real comments from our first two months of long-form meetings. We lay it all out: the scary, blunt, harsh-sounding, and--we hope--helpful comments. One who has been through it looks at those of us who have not and says simply, "Be afraid. Be very afraid!"

March is my month to go. I have dusted off that first Nano-novel, and am trying to edit it past the first five chapters. Believe me, beyond here, there be dragons. Since one of the time-honored tenets of NaNoWriMo is to "turn off your internal editor" and write with all your might, an awful lot of bad writing sneaks into those fifty-thousand words.

So February has been MyNoEdMo--My Novel Editing Month. Working under the deadline of March 1 to submit my one-hundred pages has me editing with all my might. And while I look forward to getting some feedback, and learning what more I need to do to make it a marketable piece of fiction, I would be kidding you if I didn't admit that I am very afraid.

How wonderful to be part of a writers group!

It is a truth universally acknowledged . . . that writing is a solitary activity. But does that mean it has to be lonely?

I think most authors would agree that at times it must. But we also need a little help from our friends. In my case, much of that help comes from my family; my husband, daughter, and brother are all writers. But as wonderful as these people are, they love me, so when I ask their opinion of a passage, they are unlikely to tell me it stinks.

My writers group is not always so diplomatic. I was struggling with the opening for my new Gracie McIntyre mystery. For some reason, I find that to be one of the hardest parts of the novel to get right. I had written and scrapped several attempts, and finally had a chapter that I thought would do the trick . . . until I took it to a meeting of the Bethlehem Writers Group.

"It's death, Carol!" one member said.

Really? Death?

Okay, it's a mystery, but that wasn't quite what I was going for. I was hoping for a great hook, or perhaps a chapter with a lot of potential. But no. It was just plain bad.

I had to laugh. That particular member never pulls her punches, but if my skin is too thin to handle that, then perhaps I'm in the wrong business. And isn't it better that I found out then?

I scrapped that chapter, of course, and took a completely new tack, starting the novel in a different place altogether. No one who reads the book will ever know how bad it might have been. Of course, if it had stayed that bad, no one would read the book at all!

So thank you members of the Bethlehem Writers Group for your support, your insight, your editorial judgment . . . and even your bluntness!