Donna Andrews

My plans for Shelob

Yes, Maria, I do plan to banish her before Friday.  That's why the long-handled spider-dislodging brush was so close at hand.  I'm well aware how many of my friends hate communing with six- and eight-legged critters.

Overweening ambition

This afternoon, as I left the house to go to the dentist, I encountered the largest spider I've ever seen outside of Shelob (and Shelob was safely up on screen with Frodo waving a sword at her).  My resident spider had built a yard-wide web across the front walk and was sitting in the middle of it, waiting.  Maybe it's my imagination--okay it's definitely my imagination--but I could have sworn I saw her rubbing several sets of legs together with anticipation and saying, in her tiny silken voice, "Yippee!  If I snare that, I can eat all winter!"

I went back in the house, got the long-handled brush I keep for cleaning spider webs out from under the eaves, and spoiled all her fun.  She retreated into the holly tree that had anchored one end of the web.  Knowing how diligent spiders are--she had to have built the whole enormous web this morning, since I think I'd have noticed if it was there when I ambled in last night--I was half expecting to find it rewoven on my return, but so far there's no sign of it.  She's probably up in the tree brooding on the injustices of the world and plotting her revenge.

I could always sneak out the back door.

On writers' groups

Another thing I've recommended (at least I hope I did) to my friend who's taking up writing late in life: writers' groups.  [Majestic rose there just for the hell of it.  What's beautiful doesn't have to be useful, right?]

I don't recommended them without caveats; they're not a panacea, and some of them do more harm than good, but if you're making a serious effort to write, improve your writing, and get it published, nothing beats hanging out with people pursuing the same goals.  Properly used, the right writing group can help you stay motivated; it can help you learn to write better, and it can even help you get published.

Note some of the words in the above paragraph:  "properly used" and "the right writing group" and also "help."  I could deconstruct the above paragraph at greater length to illustrate some dos and don'ts about writers groups, and since it's my blog, I think I will.  Though possibly not in one sitting.

Some of this is what I tried to say to a guy in the bar at Bouchercon--not that I randomly walk up to people in bars, even at mystery conventions, to inflict writing advice on them, but as I recall it, he did ask me was I in a writers' group and what the deal was with writers' groups anyway?  And I gave it a shot, until I realized that he was less interested in hearing why I thought writers' groups could be useful than in telling me why I was all wrong on the subject and writers' groups were a dangerous and horrible thing.  Okay, valid opinion, especially if you went into a writer's group with that attitude on your shoulder.  So I stopped trying.  Probably frustrated his desire to get a good barroom argument going, but it's not a subject that lends itself to argument.  Discussion, yes; but not argument.  So anyone who thinks writers' groups never work for anyone under any circumstances might as well quit reading now, because you're only going to get annoyed.  I won't argue with you.  So there.

Getting back to the thesis...that one of the best things you can do for yourself as a writer is to hang out with other writers.  You don't actually need to join a writers' group to do this.  Go to conventions and conferences.  Attend seminars.  Take classes.  Join writers' organizations and if you can't attend the meetings, at least keep up with the newsletter and participate in the online discussion.  The important thing is to start spending time with people who are as serious as you are about writing.

The serious part is important.  I've known people who spend a lot of time doing the Hemingway thing, hanging around in bars (or coffee houses, or online) talking about writing.  Valid thing to do; writing's a solitary vice, and when writers come up for air we often want to hang out with each other and talk about craft.  But it only counts as a writerly thing to do if you've written something first.  If you're hanging out talking about writing, and the angst you feel because you don't have time to write, maybe you're more in love with the idea of being a writer than with writing. I fell into that trap for a time, after I got out of college and hit the solid reality of having to make a living in the real world.  Eventually I realized that I needed to get serious about the writing thing or turn in my union card.  One of the first steps I took was joining a writer's group.

So when you find a writers' group (or class, or whatever), make sure you're allying yourself with people who want to write, not just people who want to think of themselves as writers.   

If you're trying to write for publication, find people with the same goals.   Some people don't really want (or perhaps don't expect) to be published; they write for the love of it, for self-expression, and to share their inner selves with a few chosen readers.  (I suspect a lot of poetry falls into this category.)  It's a valid reason to write, but it doesn't really work well in a critique group.  ("Thank you for sharing your inner self.  Unfortunately, it needs a lot of work.")  Same thing with writers of certain forms of highly experimental or literary fiction.  Sometimes "None of them understand what I'm trying to do" is very true, but all too often it's a  comfortable way to insulate yourself against admitting that you're not achieving what you're trying to do.  (This would be the pretentious crap school of writing.)  Some people write for practical reasons--to document their personal or family histories, for example, or to bear witness to some momentous event they have experienced.  In which case, writing better is a goal, but arguably not a primary one. [Just Joey rose. Hey, it's there now, and it might not be when I get around to blogging about the garden again.]

Writers aiming for publication also want to share their inner selves; they still love writing, even if that love is rather frayed at the edges by rough contact with reality; they care very much about the art of writing--but they're also interested in the practical--in craft, the techniques that help support your art;  and in the cold, sobering facts about the writing business. 

What I want in a writing group is a relatively small group of people that I want to spend time with, whose writing goal is similar to mine--to write the best book I can and then get it published.  Writers I can learn from; who perhaps may be able to learn something from me; and most important, who can achieve the very delicate balance between support and critique.   There's nothing more exciting (to see or better yet, experience yourself) than what I call an "Aha!" moment--when you suddenly realize what you need to do to take your work to the next level, and you can't wait to go home and fix that paragraph, that chapter, that whole middle section of the book that you didn't know what to do about before.  Or maybe even to be so excited at how well someone else's work is going that you go home fired up to do something just as good--even better--of your own. 

Going home fired up to work is the whole point.  If you go home feeling pleasant because everyone said nice things--well, sometimes that feels nice, but in the long run, you know what happens if you try to live on cheese puffs and cotton candy, so  maybe you haven't found the right group.  And if you go home licking your wounds, wondering if some of the group members moonlight as hit men and dominatrixes (or is that dominatrices?), and convinced that your writing is hopeless--well, maybe it is, but it's also possible that this is not really your group.  [Rose of Sharon, which is not really a rose.]

More about groups anon--in this case, anon meaning whenever I really need another break from my revisions.  Anyone fired up to read more right now about groups might want to check out Steve Kelner's blog, Motivate Your Writing, which has a lot of good information about why some groups work and some don't-- and a lot more about what makes writers tick.  (And sometimes explode.)

Writing avoidance

There's goofing off, and then there's writing avoidance.    The difference is subtle.   If you're supposed to be writing, and you're doing something else instead, it's goofing off.  Unless you can plausibly justify doing whatever you're doing  because it contributes somehow to the progress or quality of your writing or the success of your writing career, in which case you've elevated it to writing avoidance.  (At left, the Barbara Streisand rose.)

If I've finished my quota for the day, puttering about in my garden--weeding, planting things, taking pictures of my roses--is merely puttering about.  No harm in it, and maybe a little good--gets me away from the computer and out in the fresh air.  Keeps the neighbors happy if I mow the lawn before the weeds achieve full jungle luxuriance.

But if I still have writing to do for the day, gardening suddenly becomes goofing off.  Which can be useful sometimes, because it transforms onerous chores into guilty pleasures.  Amazing how appealing it can be to weed, mow the lawn, or shred branches when the alternative is writing another 500 words.  I bet some of my neighbors wish I'd spent a little more time this summer goofing off in the garden.  (At left: the Livin' Easy rose.)

And if I can somehow convince myself that gardening will help my writing--that mowing the lawn will allow me to mull over the creative challenges facing me in this chapter and resolve them--you have writing avoidance at its best.

Of course, when you don't have any deadlines, both goofing off and writing avoidance are irrelevant.  I'm not on deadline--I can do anything I want!  Okay, not entirely.  There's also the issue of goofing off vs. housekeeping avoidance, billpaying avoidance, exercise avoidance, PR avoidance. . . all the responsibilities, wanted or unwanted, all the shoulda/oughta/coulda things you have on your plate, create the possibilities for new and complex forms of avoidance. Isn't it a fact of life that there's always something that seems more important, relevant, noble, or just plain urgent than what you want to be doing?  (At left: the Just Joey rose.)

All this suddenly becomes relevant because my editor has given me comments on the manuscript of No Nest for the Wicket.  And while the optimal thing to hear from your editor is that for once you turned in a book that was absolutely perfect and they don't want you to change a single word, the next best thing is to know what your editor wants and have made a start on the revisions.

Which could mean that the blog will be a little neglected for a bit, while I revise, or it could mean that it will flourish like the weeds have in my garden.  We writers tell ourselves that a blog is an important PR tool, and a wonderful means of keeping in touch with our readers--and it probably is.  But it's also a primo form of writing avoidance.  (At left: the Majestic rose.  All rose photos taken in my garden this week, and I'll let you guess which ones were taken today, when they count as goofing off, and which were taken Wednesday, when I didn't yet have my marching orders and they were merely another form of summer recreation.)

On writing: doing it my way

I promised an aspiring writer friend that I'd give some advice about writing--actually, she asked me in an email for some advice specifically tailored to someone who is coming to writing later in life, rather than beginning to scribble stories in grade school.  I warned her that I was, actually, one of those noxious little scribblers, having embarked on literary composition before making the jump from printing to cursive writing, but I do have some notions that might help.  And I also  told her that instead of just replying, I'd blog about it when I got my brain back from my trip, because anything I said that might be useful to her might also help someone else. 

Though I tend to be wary about giving writing advice.  Not that I don't have plenty of opinions, but I'm also very aware that that's all they are--opinions.  Based on nearly thirty years of making my living with a keyboard, first at nonfiction (or corporate fiction, as I prefer to call it) and then with fiction, so I like to think they're informed opinions.  But I'm only one person, and what works for me may not work for someone else.

Case in point: when my fellow Durango Sluts and I were talking about writing at Booked for Murder in Madison, WI, we discovered that we were evenly split on the outlining issue.  Two outliners (Jessica Speart and me) and two free-formers (Eileen Dreyer and Dana Cameron). And I suspect if we had time to delve deeper, we'd have found wide disparity between how Eileen improvises and how Dana does, and we'd have learned that Jess's outlines (and her methods of devising them) vary considerably from mine.  I like that kind of diversity.  There's more than one way to skin a cat; in fact, there may be as many ways as there are cat-skinners, which reassures me that my method probably isn't ridiculous and dysfunctional.  (Note that I'm speaking metaphorically.  No actual cats were skinned or even had their fur ruffled in the writing of any of my books or this blog.)

One of the few times I've actually gotten ticked off at anything I heard at a writing gathering was during an interview with keynote speaker Tom Robbins at the James River Writers Festival a couple of years ago. I hasten to add that the festival was a lovely festival, its organizers full of good ideas and blessed the savvy and energy to execute them, and I enjoyed going there immensely.  I even found most of Tom Robbins's speech delightful, at times inspiring.  But at one point, he and Richmond writer David Robbins, who was interviewing him, got going on the subject of outlining.   Neither of them outlines, apparently, and they spent a little time dissing anyone who does.  Guys, guys . . . just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it's uncreative, unproductive, immoral or not of general interest.  It just means it doesn't work for you.  Nothing gets my goat faster than someone pronouncing that this and only this is the right way to write.  (As before, we're talking metaphorical goats.  No actual goats were interfered with in the writing of this paragraph.)

William Kent Krueger, who is not only a brilliant (and now Anthony award-winning) author but also thoughtful and eloquent on writerly matters, gave a wonderful view from the outliner's camp in a panel at Mayhem in the Midlands earlier this year--one of the best explanations I've heard in years of listening to the dialogue between the outliners and the improvisers.  Wish I'd taken better notes, because I'll probably mangle his words--but when one of the improvisers asked, as they often do, where was the challenge, the mystery, the joy of discovery if you already knew what was going to happen, Kent replied that there was still the enormous
challenge of trying, with each day's writing, to realize on paper, in words, the vision you had in your head; the mystery of how to turn the bare bones of the story sketchily indicated in your outline into something that would engage and compel the reader.

Yeah.  What Kent said.

For me, the outline also serves as a door back into the book when I'm forced to leave it.  Most writers have something going on in their lives other than the book they're writing--jobs, PR chores, family responsibilities, crises (personal or world).  Back when I still had my day job, the outline shortened the time it took every day to shift from the work world into my fictional world.  It still helps me make the transition when I turn back to my work, whether from a five minute phone call or a week-long trip to a convention.  The most dramatic time when the outline got me back on course happened on September 12, 2001, when I sat down to do my day's work--after all, I was a full time writer now.  People with more difficult and dangerous jobs were carrying on--it seemed the least I could do; the one small blow I could strike for normalcy.

But I didn't feel terribly funny just then, and trying to pick up where I'd left off on September 10, in the middle of one of the more humorous parts of Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, would have been difficult.  But I knew that later in the book, there was a scene in which Meg and several others would be held hostage by the killer.  I knew this because it was in my outline, and I jumped ahead to that point, the darkest and most suspenseful in the book, and wrote the following:

     "What kind of heartless cynic are you?" Rico exclaimed. "How can you make jokes at a time like this? This is serious!"
     "Very serious," I said. "Or at least way too solemn."
     Which seemed to baffle him. He stared at me, and looking back, I could see that I was doing so from the other side of a gap--in fact, an uncrossable chasm. The chasm between people who take life very seriously and those of us who laugh to keep from crying. The people who stand around lugubriously at funerals saying things like, "At least he didn't suffer" or "Doesn't she look lifelike?" and those of us who want to tell tall tales about what a wonderful old reprobate he was and imagine how she'd laugh if she could see the sideshow. The people who sob long-neglected prayers on the steps of the guillotine and those of us who know God will forgive us if we have to banter with the executioner to keep our courage up, as if laughter were a gauntlet we could throw in the face of death.
     Or maybe I'm just a heartless cynic.
     "Sorry," I said. "Just ignore me. It's how I cope."

Not very much of an accomplishment for a whole day of writing, but considering the circumstances, I was proud of myself.  And as the days went on, I was able to write the parts that led up to this passage and followed after it, and eventually got back into the zone and finished the book.  Maybe I'd have done it without the outline, but it would have been much harder.

My advice, for what it's worth, is that writers who have trouble finishing projects might want to try outlining.  It just might do the trick.  But if it doesn't, don't torture yourself.  You're probably an improviser, one of those people for whom finishing an outline kills your interest in the book instead of inciting it.  No matter which camp you're in, you're in good company.  Roughly half the writing world will feel exactly as you do about outlining; the other half will shake their heads and wonder how you do it; and most readers could care less how you do it as long as they like the results.

More thoughts on writing later, after I've done some actual work for the day.

On the road with the Durango Sluts

Okay, it's actually a Durango SLT, whatever that stands for, but we nicknamed it the Durango Slut. A honking big red SUV, which seemed like overkill until the four of us--Dana Cameron, Eileen Dreyer, Jessica Speart, and I--began loading our luggage into it. We all packed as light as we could, but there were four of us, and we'd already survived a mystery convention, so we didn't just have the clothes and cosmetics and the laptops, we also had the books--the ones we brought to read in our free time, the ones we got in our goodie bags, and the ones we bought in the dealer's room.  (Dana and Jess managed to get into this shot, while Eileen and I are represented by our books.)

Actually, Dana and Eileen travel very light, with a carryon suitcase and a totebag or laptop case.  Every time we shoved the suitcases into the car, Eileen threatened to send Jess to packing bootcamp, and since my suitcase was halfway in size between Jess's and hers, I suspected she wouldn't think it a bad idea if I went, too.   I'm working on it. 

Eileen was first driver, with me as backup, though I suspect Eileen actually likes driving, since I never had to take the wheel.  Dana was navigator, and her expert direction-giving probably had a lot to do with Eileen's willingness to keep driving.  They made an awesome team. 

And we hit an awesome numbers of stores--twenty-eight, in only four days. I think.  It's all a blur.  I think we started with a scheduled stock signing at the Book Stall in Winnetka, where we had a hard time resisting the temptation to buy more books than we signed--writers are like that in a bookstore.  After we signed stock, we dropped by the cafe next door to plot our route, and spotted a baked good that immediately entered our vocabulary: the truffle muffin.  Discretion prevents me from revealing just who my fellow writers consider a truffle muffin--discretion and the fact that they could tell tales on me--but I seem to recall that Daniel Day-Lewis met with general approval and Tom Cruise wasn't in the running, even before he jumped the couch.

We then proceeded to sign stock at Anderson's, where we found that the wonderful staff had arranged a display of our books on a table in the front of the store.  If you want to see writers in ecstasy, just throw a few of their books on the new books table or on an endcap, so you can imagine how excited we were by the table.  (At left, Eileen, Dana, and Jess sign their books, with my books in the foreground--which is where every writer wants her books.)

After Anderson's, we began hitting chain stores for drive-bys (which is what we mystery writers call unscheduled stock signings).  I won't list them all, for fear of missing one, but I do want to relay a special thanks to the Barnes and Noble in Downers Grove for finding my wallet and keeping it until we could get back there on Monday.   Monday we did more stores in the western and northern suburbs of Chicago and stayed in Schaumburg. 

Tuesday we headed up to Madison, doing drive-bys on the way, and signed at Booked for Murder.  Can I say that it's maddening to spend so much time in cool bookstores and have to keep reminding myself that the airlines have lowered the maximum suitcase weight to fifty pounds?  We also had a lovely dinner with Mary Helen Becker in a nearby middle eastern restaurant.  I'm looking forward to exploring Madison a little more when Bouchercon is there next year.

Wednesday we drove over to Milwaukee to sign at Mystery One.  I think we did as much talking as  signing--Jon and Ruth Jordan of Crimespree magazine were there, and since Ruth is co-chair, with Judy Bobalik, of Bouchercon 2008 in Baltimore, the ghosts of Bouchercons past, present, and future were very much with us, both at the store and later over dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant with Jon and Ruth and Richard Katz of the store.  (Yes, I'm already signed up for Madison, and also Bouchercon 2007 in Alaska.)

And then back to our hotel, where we celebrated the official end of the Durango Sluts tour with a drink in the hotel bar.  Near the bar, anyway.  Our hotel was across the street from the Bradley Center where the Rolling Stones were scheduled to play the following night, and the bar was crawling with Stones roadies--all of them looking as if they were chosen to make the aging Stones look good by contrast-- so we retreated to a small seating area nearby and raised wine and margarita glasses to a successful trip. (Eileen finds Head Games in the new book display.)

Of course I'm leaving out all the best parts--the great conversations we had with friendly bookstore staff--and they were almost universally friendly and very pleased to greet our intinerant band of writers.  The long running four-day conversation we had in the car--it's going to take me the next year to hunt down and watch/listen to/read all the movies/CDs/books I heard about from the other three.  You couldn't ask for three people more fun to travel with, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. 

Home again

One of these days I'm going to get the hang of blogging on the road.  But for the last week and a half, I've been incommunicado.  Bad blogger.  No margarita tonight.

So to catch up. . .

Bouchercon

Bouchercon was a little schizophrenic. It's the biggest annual gathering of the tribe. We were trying to catch up with friends we haven't seen since Malice, or B'con in Toronto, or maybe B'con in Las Vegas while promoting our books and taking care of whatever business we have scheduled. It's a hell of a lot of fun and it can be a useful part of our business. This year, in addition to everything else we normally do at a convention, we were also trying to keep up with what was happening in New Orleans. Which would be hard enough in normal times. The convention was split between people who were trying, for the duration, to forget about the outside world and people who kept asking if there was any more news.  (Photo: Charlaine Harris and Pari Noskin Taichert.)

I spent Wednesday evening at the Sisters in Crime board meeting. The biggest item on the agenda was the twentieth anniversary celebration, which will begin in 2006 at Bouchercon in Madison and end in Anchorage at Bouchercon 2007. Barb D'Amato and the other Goddesses (as Sisters in Crime calls past presidents) agreed to form a committee to brainstorm on ways we could celebrate it, and it's shaping up to be a fun (and busy) year. But more of that closer to 2006.

Thursday morning the panels began. And I was making more of an effort to attend panels than I usually do, because I was dismayed by the way in which women writers and traditional writers seemed to have been marginalized. Many people don't get to the convention until Thursday afternoon or maybe even Friday afternoon. And yet the Thursday and Friday morning panels seemed overbalanced with women writers and writers doing traditional (particularly cozy) mysteries. Not that I don't want to hear the hardboiled and thriller writers, but I don't ONLY want to hear  them. Patti Sprinkle, in one of her last official acts as SinC's outgoing president, compiled some quick-and-dirty statistics on the issue that Elaine Viets presented at the Bouchercon business meeting on Saturday morning, and many people are hopeful that the organizers of the next few Bouchercons seem aware of the issue and committed to addressing it.

I was also buying more books than usual, partly because my B'con roomie, Chris Cowan of Undiscovered Treasures, was driving home and offered to take what I couldn't pack, and partly because I was worried about how well the dealers were doing. The convention rooms were spread out over four floors; the signing room was on the top floor and the dealer's room on the bottom. How many readers could really dash down after seeing a panel on the top floor, buy a book in the dealers' room, and then dash up to the top floor again to get it signed during the half hour signing slot? How many would even try? (A lot, obviously; and my hat's off to those who did.) But a lot simply couldn't. So while I realized that singlehandedly I couldn't possibly make up for the revenue the dealers were missing due to the location, I could do my bit. (What a great excuse to commit retail.)  I picked up a lot of new fantasy and science fiction from Larry Smith, who takes my books to fantasy and science fiction conventions, and tried to spread my new mystery buying around among three or four of the new book dealers.

My panel was Friday morning at 9 a.m.--ghastly hour; though at least 9 a.m. Chicago time is 10 a.m. in my home time zone. Carole Nelson Douglas moderated; our topic was "Humorcide;" and I think Tamar Myers, Ben Rehder, Randall Hicks, and I did a reasonably good job.

Friday was the point when I began losing track of time. I know I made it to the Sisters in Crime luncheon that day, which was held in a restaurant at the top of the Hancock building, with a glorious view of half of Chicago. I got to bed reasonably early, because I did manage to show up at 7:30 a.m. to help Libby Hellman run the Sisters in Crime chapter presidents' meeting on Saturday morning. I had a Thai dinner with myCalifornia friends, Harriet Lord and Bernard Banks and a burger at Boston Blackie's with Dana Cameron and Dan Hale. I hadn't gotten around to buying a banquet ticket, so instead I went off to the Navy Pier with Patti Sprinkle, Eve Sandstrom, Marcia Talley, and Beth Wasson, where we ate greasy food and rode the Ferris wheel.

When we got back to the hotel, I had the chance to congratulate William Kent Krueger on winning the Anthony award.  Would have congratulated some of the other friends who won (Harley Jane Kozak and Elaine Viets), but I didn't see them after their wins.

Coming up next (like maybe tomorrow, when my fingers are rested; or maybe later tonight if I get my second wind): on the road with the Durango Sluts.