Memoir, Mystery, and the Muse

by Sheila Webster Boneham


I recently taught a six-week "Write Your Memoir" class through the Cameron Art Museum here in Wilmington, NC. I love teaching through the Museum School - we get terrific students. Writing is rather new to the Museum School's offerings and we are still building up that portion of the catalog, but things are looking up as people find out about the writing classes. 

Now that "Memoir" is finished, I'm back to focusing on the third book in my Animals in Focus Mystery series, tentatively titled Catwalk, and I've been thinking about some of the links between memoirs, mysteries, and that slippery character, the writer's Muse. Creativity, after all, works in similar ways regardless of the genre -- or even the medium -- in which we work.  

One of the tools I shared with my memoir students was a series of questions to ask of old photographs. We've all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a photo (or other visual image) may also help inspire and expand ideas. It's no surprise that photos can be used to bring up memories of places we've been, or people and animals we've known, or events we've experienced. 

What may not be so obvious is that  photos can be useful creative tools for  writers in other genres, including mystery. Images of settings, people, animals, or objects can serve to inspire short stories or scenes in longer works, especially when the narrator or a character answers the questions I pose below. An image might even provide the kernel for a longer piece of writing. For instance, one of my inspirations for The Money Bird, which will be out in September, was a photo of an escaped pet parrot in a tree in the Midwest. 

So if you're looking for a way to go deeper, or wider, or to find new ideas, try "interrogating" a photo or painting. Better yet, have one of your characters do it. Start with these questions:

• Where is this?
• When?
• Why are you there?
• Who else is there?
• Have you been there before?
• What is happening, or not happening?
• Is some object in the photo significant to you?
• Is a person or animal in the picture significant to you?

Now dig deeper:

• What do you hear?
• What do you smell?
• What did you eat or drink?
• What does it taste like?
• What’s the weather like?
• What time of day is it?
• What are you wearing?
• Who else is there?
• What do you feel with your hands, your feet, your skin….
• What emotions do you feel?

And so on....

Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. Send a picture! You can find me at www.sheilaboneham.com or on my Write Here, Write Now! blog. 

Idea Fairy

by Shannon Baker

Where do you get your ideas?

Writers get asked that all the time. Sit in on writers’ panels and workshops and it’s bound to come up 85.6% of the time. (Yes, I made up the statistic.) Most writers are polite but the overwhelming responses I’ve heard all come down to this: they have so many ideas coming at them so frequently they’re like Minnesota mosquitoes in June.

I want to shout, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?!”

My measly excuse for a lazy-assed brain churns out ideas at about the same the rate as ice freezing in Tucson.  

I worked on the same novel for nine years because I thought it might be the only good idea I’d ever come up with. Ever. And really, that one didn’t come from me, either. After I told some writer friends about a random news story I found interesting, one of them asked, “When are you going to write the book?”

If I’d been one of those writers who have too many good ideas to use, I’d have figured that out all on my own. But I’m much too dense to see the obvious.  Ideas are doing a kamikaze dive into my brain and I’m wondering if we should have meatloaf for dinner or if I ought to paint the living room red.

But then we moved to Flagstaff a while back. I started reading the paper to acquaint myself with the goings on around town. And there it was--the idea I’d been afraid would never arrive.

So get this: In Flagstaff, just an hour or so from the desert, there is a ski resort, Snowbowl. It’s one of the oldest in the country, dating back to 1938. Did I mention the proximity to the desert, which would hint at lack of water, and, hey, we’re in a drought!

American’s are nothing if not determined. Instead of giving in to logic, Snowbowl’s owners decided to make snow. Still, lack of water and all that. So they are using reclaimed waste water. Grey water. Pretty ingenious, right?

Turns out, not one, not two, but thirteen Native American tribes consider that mountain sacred. It features heavily into their creation stories. Are they happy about the ski resort? Naw. Does treated wastewater tickle them? Not at all.

That’s one big conflict. Perfect for a murder mystery. And I didn’t even need my writer friends, who have ideas to spare, point it out to me.

I started researching tribes in the area and found out, Hopi, one of the smallest tribes in the world lives on isolated mesas and one of their villages is the oldest constantly inhabited village in North America. This small tribe believes they are responsible for the survival of the world. The Whole World.  

Then I got a job working for The Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental non-profit whose mission is protection and restoration of landscapes on the Colorado Plateau. (If you don’t know, and I didn’t before I got the job, the Colorado Plateau covers northern Arizona to southern Utah.) For twenty years I’d lived in the Nebraska Sandhills, where environmentalists are shot on sight. More conflict.

 So my writer’s “What if” bone kicked in and I ended up with all these ideas. When Tainted Mountain opens, Nora Abbott is the owner of ski resort in Flagstaff on a sacred mountain and she’s just won a court victory allowing her to make snow. She’s got environmentalist tendencies which clash with mining interests and big business. The kachinas, Hopi spirits of the mountain, are not pleased. And let’s not even get into the issues with her annoying mother.

The what ifs kept coming and pretty soon I had a bunch of ideas. In fact, I had so many that I ended up with a series.

So now I’m feeling cocky. Look at me, the writer with enough ideas for the next few books.

Then a very successful writer friend of mine brought me back down to where I live. She was talking about her multi-book series and said, “I need to get this book finished so I can work on all these other books I really want to write.”

You mean one mystery series isn’t enough? I should be working on something else? She has so many ideas she doesn’t know where to start. Me? Not so much.

Where will I ever get another idea? 

What about you, where do you get your ideas, and do you have any to spare?

Of Herbs and Stewing SNIs

(with apologies to JRR Tolkien)

The trick to planting herbs is to contain them in pots. That is, unless you want your garden overrun with mint and sage and oregano and thyme. I stick to this rule, because I want my garden to produce tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers too. Except there’s this one peppermint plant that went rogue years ago. It’s small, I thought, I’ll be able to keep it tamed. Besides, a Buffalo winter will surely kill it.

I’ll pause so all you gardeners can laugh.

This is that peppermint plant today:










The only way I keep it out of my garden is ruthless hacking. I make tea from the leaves, so it’s a useful beast, but an unruly one.

Which brings me to SNIs (Shiny New Ideas). I’m deep in the sequel to Force Of Habit. Yet there’s this YA that’s nagging me. On top of that, this morning as I drove to the grocery store I saw a deserted parking lot with seagulls fighting over some stale bread, and I started to write an entire scene in my head. For yet another book.

Just like the rampaging peppermint, if I don’t contain these books, they’ll devour my sequel time. This is why I keep pen and paper in my glove compartment. I sketched out the scene. It was like giving a treat to my hungry cats so I could finish a task before feeding them. The SNI settled in its corner, gnawing its tidbit of attention. Like this oregano:








When the sequel is with betas, I know I’ll have time for the SNI files. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I’ll squee as I open their boxes and dither over which to play with first. I’ll allow the many scenes and characters and story arcs I’ve tucked away to audition for the starring role of my new WIP.

I can hear them now, rehearsing their parts, putting on their best makeup, shining their tap shoes. They’ve seen what a well-tended plant in the right pot can look like and they want the same result.

Since rogue herbs don’t yield a useable crop, I’d love to hear how everyone else handles this. All the writers reading this post (writers of fiction, nonfiction, songs, anything): how do you contain your peppermint?

Guest Blogger Elizabeth Zelvin: Where do stories come from?

{G.M. Malliet}
Our guest today is Elizabeth Zelvin, a New York City psychotherapist whose new mystery, DEATH WILL HELP YOU LEAVE HIM, features recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends. Also out in October: Liz's story, "Death Will Trim Your Tree," in the holiday crime anthology, THE GIFT OF MURDER, to benefit Toys for Tots. Another short story was nominated for an Agatha award. The first book in the series, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER, is up for an Anthony award for cover design. Liz's author website is www.elizabethzelvin.com. She blogs on Poe's Deadly Daughters, and today she shares with us a funny, powerful story of a writer's progress:

===== ===== ===== =====

“Where do you get your ideas?” is one of those questions that most authors wish readers wouldn’t ask (along with “I’ve got a great idea for a best seller; will you write it?” and “Why don’t you go on Oprah?”). But in fact, stories do have to come from somewhere.

Since I started hanging out online and in person with other mystery writers, I’ve been pleased to find that, like me, they experience characters springing to life and talking in their heads, ideas that come tapping on the inside of their skulls demanding to be let out, and lines bubbling up from deep within and streaming out onto the page or screen.

The source of these experiences is what in my profession, ie the shrink trade, we call the unconscious. Nineteenth-century poets called it the Muse. In spiritual or religious parlance, it’s being a channel for a Higher Power. And we all know a perfectly good word for it: inspiration.

Whatever you call it, what it casts up still has to come from somewhere. The raw material consists of our own experience (“Write what you know,” we’re told), the experience of others, whether it’s stories we’ve heard or headlines “ripped from the news” (“Use everything,” we’re told), or the stuff of our dreams, our reading, and our fantasies constantly reshuffled like bright bits of color in a kaleidoscope (“Use your imagination”).

An old friend recently unearthed and sent me a short story of mine that was published in our high school literary journal fifty years ago. I read it with interest, especially since I had no recollection whatever of writing it. It was about a college boy who dies after getting what seems to be just a bad cold, told from the point of view of his roommate.

Write what you know? I didn’t know anything when I was in high school, although as a bit of a smart-aleck with a high IQ, I thought I knew a lot. It had a horrible, pretentious title: “Finitude.” (I suspect high school kids in general don’t have much sense of humor. It took decades of increasing maturity to come up with the novel and short story titles of my current mystery series: Death Will Help You Leave Him, Death Will Get You Sober, “Death Will Tie Your Kangaroo Down,” “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” “Death Will Trim Your Tree.”) It wasn’t a badly written story overall, though I used one word incorrectly, “balmy” for “barmy,” and one sentence made me cringe when I reread it: “He was in labor with a novel.” (After an additional half a century of writing, I’ve learned that one of the greatest tools of revision is embarrassment: If it makes you cringe, delete it, preferably before anyone else sees it.)

So why did I choose to write this particular story? I wasn’t a guy or the girlfriend of a guy. I wasn’t in college yet, and I had certainly never been to the kind of drunken party I described. I had never lost a friend or family member. My parents were so protective that I’d never even been to a funeral. None of the characters seemed to be based on anyone I knew. (They might have been better differentiated and more interesting if they had.) What on earth could have brought this story into being? I read all the way down to the last paragraph before I found the clue I needed.

“In the hall, I met a friend of Sam’s and mine. She looked at me mutely, her eyes begging like those of an anguished puppy. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, but I put my hand briefly on her arm and nodded reassuringly.”

Okay, two sentences that made me cringe. I’m sorry I didn’t delete the “anguished puppy.” But that moment in the story rang truer than the rest, and a vague recollection stirred. That minor character was me, and the reassuring hand and nod were real. Our “crowd” in high school had a charismatic leader, a big, paternal teddy bear of a guy who played guitar and sang as well as Pete Seeger. He was a year ahead of us, so it must have been in my junior year that his older brother died, of leukemia if I remember correctly.

As I said, I had not yet learned to deal with death. I must have met him in the hall in school right after it happened. I didn’t know what to say. He must have needed comfort, but true to his role in his circle of friends, he tried to comfort me. And I, just old enough at fifteen to recognize the authenticity of that moment, made it the germ of my story.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? (And Does It Matter?)

"Where do you get your ideas?"

I mean, really, is there any other question so ubiquitous in the life of an author?

That said, it’s also a GREAT question because I know as a reader I often find myself looking up from the page and thinking, “I wonder how the author came up with this?”

After all, since the birth of the Internet we all have access to scads and scads of information. So how can it be that two people might look at the same occurrence or the same news article or the same commentary and then disappear into their offices to write two entirely different books? How can it be that Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse (once called her “Southern Vampire” series) be incredibly different from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight? Which is different from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat? Which is different from Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Which is different from Rosemary Laurey’s Kiss Me Deadly?

Truth to tell, there’s nothing new under the sun. Or, ahem, under the full moon either.

Today I found an old handout from Lou Heckler, one of my favorite speakers. Check him out at http://www.louheckler.com/ It would be difficult to find a more thoughtful, entertaining and erudite platform professional. If you ever get the chance to see him, by all means do. (While you listen, pay careful attention to the structure of his talk. He’s very canny about the order he uses to present and emphasize information. Really, each time he speaks, it’s a master class in the art of giving an effective presentation.) In this particular handout, Lou discussed how “theme” is not the same as “slant.” You see, all those books I mentioned above have vampires as their theme. Each book, however, has a different slant.

Charlaine Harris’s work raises questions about xenophobia, what it means to be human, and whether our prejudices might stem, in part, from our religious beliefs.

Stephenie Meyer’s work takes the form of a romance novel with its extended riff on unfulfilled sexual promise, but she is writing about the trauma of being an awkward teenager.

Anne Rice’s work had a decidedly gothic theme and a religious viewpoint. Their setting—New Orleans—was as vibrant as any character.

Bram Stoker’s work wasn’t the first mention of vampires in literature, but it was probably the great granddaddy of most of what we think about the undead, blood-suckers. Written in epistolary form (diary and newspaper articles provide much of the information), it sprang from the legend of “Vlad the Impaler.” The novel is supposedly a riff on the clash between the new world and the old.

Rosemary Laurey’s work is incredibly romantic and yet very modern. It follows many of the ideals of popular romance novels, but adds in the sort of questions that are part of our zeitgeist.
As I write this, I think of the classes I’ve taught about getting published. Many times students will tell me they fear having their ideas stolen. That’s reasonable. That can happen. But most ideas for books are fungible. It’s the slant, the plotting, and the author’s voice, that make a book unique—and therefore, salable.

Let the Feds Enrich Your Fiction

by Nina Wright

I’m as big a fan of online auctions as the next compulsive shopper. Way bigger than I should be, given the depressed economy and my modest advances to date. So imagine my delight when I discovered a secondary use for auction sites. One that costs me nothing except my time and offers limitless fictional inspiration. Although you can play this game at virtually any online auction site, it’s especially fun at bid4assets.com.

Here’s why: The U.S. Marshals Service offers an amazing, if not bizarre, array of articles for public auction: residential, commercial and agricultural real estate; timeshares; sport fishing vessels, aircraft, high-end vehicles and collector cars; artwork, antiques and collectibles; fine jewelry and financial instruments. Federal courts ordered these assets to be either forfeited or sold, so let the novelist’s fun begin!

Surfing the categories is diverting enough. Consider these samples from vehicles, antiques, and jewelry:
· A low-mileage black 2001 Chevrolet Corvette two-door convertible (minimum bid $11,000)
· A handmade knotted all-silk Oriental runner rug in excellent condition (minimum bid $800)
· A 7-carat Burmese ruby and diamond tennis bracelet (minimum bid $300)

Fusing these elements into a single story premise, I imagined a young auburn-haired woman receiving the Burmese ruby and diamond tennis bracelet from an older man with a mysterious past and dubious taste in jewelry; he collects Corvettes and inherited his late mother’s Oriental rug. Now what kind of trouble is he in with the Feds? Or, in my tale, did he murder his mother? Does he plan to murder the young woman? What’s his game?

My most efficient use of Bid4Assets is shopping for quirky character details. Let’s say I need a hobby for my antagonist. Or an unusual vehicle. Or, more exciting yet, a “prop” to launch the mystery or provide a valuable clue.

A random surf through Bid4Assets consistently yields intriguing possibilities. Imagine the criminal who would . . .

Drive this “old school” ’63 Chevy truck with camper trailer.

Or collect a “fine antique” Wagner Turbidimeter, manufactured circa 1925, which according to the post writer would be a “welcome addition to any museum, tech school, or industrial office.” (I must confess I had no idea what a turbidimeter was. But it's fun to pronounce.)

Or purchase a Pete Rose Gold Signature Series autographed baseball. Not just a signed souvenir, please note, but a GOLD signature on a dramatic BLACK leather ball. The perfect symbol of the dubious career of a flawed baseball hero. A “must have” for sports fans likewise inclined to bend the law.

But my favorite Bid4Assets story-starter this week is a replica of Jackie Kennedy’s Minaudier purse, gift from French President Charles De Gaulle in June 1961. That’s right, folks! With its dark red velour lining, push-open catch, and detachable 24kt gold-plated shoulder chain, it comes in the original gift box accompanied by a Camrose & Kross certificate of authenticity. Best of all, it’s “approved by the Jacqueline Kennedy Foundation.” I’m having too much fun imagining the person who prizes that item.

Enough surfing amid someone else's mistakes. It’s time to put these details to work in my mysteries. Any plot suggestions? What are your favorite online sources for fiction fodder?

The Way In

By Nina Wright

For three years I was glued to my chair writing one book after another on deadline. Six books, six sales. Very satisfying.

In recent months, however, my goals and my pace have changed. I’ve researched, contemplated, and started a half-dozen fiction projects unrelated to anything I’ve done before. Since I write for younger readers as well as adults, I’m continuously monitoring trends in several markets at the same time that I audition new ideas. Although the “market mindset” is necessary, I find it also potentially distracting and, worse, discouraging. Thus I’ve concluded that it’s time to stop obsessing over what sells and simply write from my heart.

Finding "the way in" is different every time. I vividly recall walking through a cemetery in Tecumseh, Michigan five years ago when I imagined a girl who saved a key from every apartment she lived in with her troubled, itinerant mother. At the time I was facing a move that seemed both inevitable and ill-advised. Notes for Homefree traveled with me and found their way into a draft that endured many revisions and submissions before it was published in 2006. The notion of the saved key survived but ended up a sidebar rather than the center of the story.

When I wrote Whiskey on the Rocks, the book that launched the Whiskey Mattimoe series, I was sharing my rural home with Lucille, a dog rescued in late pregnancy by my then-husband and me. Not remotely an Afghan hound, Lucille was a mutt with fast legs, a scary snarl and bafflingly high self-esteem. Like Abra, she had no apparent maternal instincts and a libido that wouldn't quit. She also had a propensity for chasing anything that promised misadventure. Given the slightest opening, Lucille would take off running full-tilt toward the nearest tavern, which lay on the other side of a vast soybean field. She'd ignore our calls for at least 24 hours before—I swear—she came home stinking of whiskey and cigarettes. I could never figure out what the bitch was up to. So my creativity kicked in. An old friend from college had an energetic Afghan hound; mentally I morphed the two dogs into one and added a healthy dash of imagination. The result was Abra.

What inspires me these days? Mostly, things that go wrong. Or could go wrong, or at least madly off course. Example: While I was grooming my father's cat, the feline kicked a wadded up paper toward me. It contained a confusing partial message written in a cramped hand; my father claimed he'd never seen the note before. Who wrote it, and why did the cat have it? That incident went straight into my notebook of potential story ideas. Since I’m inclined to use the most recent notions, I periodically review older entries to see whether any of those ignite sparks. When they do, it’s the lonely writer’s equivalent of Christmas.

Other ways in: Because I favor visual stimulation, once I get an idea working, I look for photos to feed it. Dozens of pictures of St. Augustine, Florida (for my teen books) and Afghan hounds (for the Whiskey books) fill my walls and computer files. My screensaver is always a slideshow related to my current projects.

Music provides another access point. Whiskey and Water, the fourth Whiskey Mattimoe mystery, was fueled by a Barenaked Ladies soundtrack. Imagining Whiskey’s first marriage set to those tunes made the writing not only easier but a helluva lot of fun. My close friends benefited, too; they got copies of BNL’s Greatest Hits.

Now and then I track my dreams, and whenever I do, something intriguing shows up. A Southern woman named Picket Pie came to me in my sleep. She explained that her name was short for Elizabeth Bye and promised she’d be back. Months later she appeared on the page as a leading character in my play Cherchez Dave Robicheaux.

All writers know that the way in is both simpler and more complicated than I make it sound here. I eavesdrop shamelessly; free-associate wildly; take lots of photos; go for long walks, swims, and bike rides; brainstorm exhaustive lists and alternate scenarios; and draft interviews, monologues, dialogues, and character bios. Sometimes I bounce ideas off friends.

What’s your way in? The key, I think, is to get out there and in there and turn off your mental critic. Put another way: “Travel boldly, listen closely, and carry a bright light.”

Where I Get My Ideas

by Nina Wright

Since the premier of my very first play, I continue to be thrilled whenever readers or audience members care enough to ask where I find my ideas. It's a question I always answer honestly; however, the reply that I long to make is a variation on one I heard a bestselling writer give on late-night TV. When asked where he got his ideas, the celebrity novelist replied, "Dubuque." After the laugh, he went on to say that he’d never been to Dubuque, but he figured it was as good a place as any to shop for inspiration.

I’d like to say my ideas come from . . . Cincinnati.

And not just because it sounds funny. Newly divorced in my 20s, I had moved to Cinci to take what would be my first corporate job when I realized that I was never going to be happy wearing a suit every day. That shouldn’t have been a stunning revelation since I had already worked five years in professional theatre; however, the big Three-Oh wasn't far away. Time to get serious about earning a steady income. Alas, selling bulk orders of Crisco shortening for Procter and Gamble was not my career destiny, despite the tempting health and retirement benefits.

So it was in Cincinnati, during an existential crisis, that I faced my personal truth: no matter what the cost, I wanted to walk through life as a Writer.

I look back on my brief time in the Queen City as the start of a long and winding road paved with corporate failure and creative fodder. I wish I could say (on a late-night TV talk show promoting my first bestseller) that I found a blockbuster idea in a bowl of Skyline chili, but of course that didn't happen. No, the answers I stumbled on in Cincinnati led me to grad school, restaurant work, more grad school, more theatre work, assorted teaching jobs, lots of freelance writing gigs, a sideline biz renovating homes, lots of elder care, and a costly school-of-hard-knocks general education before I ever got my first novel published.

So . . . where do I get my ideas?

Honest answer: Finding ideas is the easy part—the easiest part—of the whole creative process. Inspiration is literally everywhere, especially if you listen more than you talk. People are always telling their stories, asking their questions, whining their complaints. All you have to do is pay attention. You don’t even have to wait around long enough to hear the ending. In fact, I recommend that you don’t. Walk away while they’re still talking and go write the rest of the story. It’s yours now. Let the magic begin.

The Dreaded Epiphanot Alligator

epiphanot
An idea that at first seems like an amazing insight (at least to the conceiver) but later turns out to be pointless, mundane, stupid, or incorrect, and often is the root cause of bad decisions. Mostly occurs under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

That's the word of the day over at the Urban Dictionary. It got me to thinking…
As writers, we're constantly asked the question, "where do you get your ideas?"
I don't think that's the real question with writers. I think most of us are bombarded with story ideas. Every eavesdropped snippet of conversation, every weird news event, every person we pass on the street holds an idea for us. That's just the way we're wired.

The real question isn't where we get ideas, it's how to know which ideas to act upon. How do we know that idea isn't leading us into Bad Idea Swampland where we find out it's an epiphanot ? How do we know the Epiphanot Alligator isn't waiting in the dark to snarl, "This is schlock!" and gobble up weeks, maybe months of work?
(Okay, sometimes he's an agent or an editor or a critique partner, he just looks like an alligator at the time.)

I can only speak for myself on this, and the truth is, I don't know. But I trust my gut when a really intriguing idea beckons me to step out into the dark. If it won't go away and seems friendly, I grab my flashlight and venture a few feet out at a time. Maybe I plot, maybe I collage, maybe I journal, maybe I brainstorm, maybe I draft like crazy.

Sometimes I whine. Loudly.

But I do whatever it takes to get me to move out in the dark a little further.

I may have to back up and take another path now and then, but I keep going and trust that just beyond the flashlight's beam, is Story. Being a writer means we have to be optimistic, sometimes even irrationally so, that we will reach that Story End, and a lot of that is simply about moving out into the dark swamp. So what if we encounter the Epiphanot Alligator?

We'll probably just write him into the story.

Susan Goodwill writes the Kate London Mysteries, BrigaDOOM, a quirky romp through murder, mayhem, and romance gone awry was released March, 2007 from Midnight Ink Books.