Learning to Write a Mystery

Although I’ve been an avid reader from an early age, I’m not one of those people who dreamed of being a writer since I was three years old. In fact, I never thought about writing fiction.
I don’t mean that I didn’t write or didn’t enjoy writing. I wrote a lot, but I wrote project proposals, project plans, memos, user guides, training manuals, program and system documentation, management reports, and other business related documents. I’m proud of that writing. It was clear and to the point and served its intended audience. And I took great pleasure in the process, in finding just the right word, in putting words and sentences together to define, explain, and teach. I love the logic of writing.
Then, a few years ago, I had a sudden desire to write a novel, a mystery. But once I sat down at my computer, the complexity and the magnitude of the effort overwhelmed me. All the details, all the characters, all the clues, all the . . . . And how do you decide what to write? How do you develop a plot? How do you bring everything together? I stared at the clean white page on my screen. My hands hovered over the keyboard waiting for inspiration, but I had a serious case of mind freeze. Finally, I exited MS WORD and shut down my computer. Perplexed.
Did I give up? No. Did I need help? Yes. So I did what I always do, I turned to books. The first book I stumbled across, Stephen Koch’s The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop, provided a good general introduction. Then I discovered Stephen King’s On Writing, and I was off and running. I read any book on writing that I could find in the library. The useful ones I purchased, and began to build my own personal library while giving myself a graduate education equivalent to some college writing programs. After nine months of reading and studying, I wrote my first fiction, the first chapter of my book. Then I wrote another unrelated chapter and then I was stuck again. I had learned a lot but not enough. While I understood the various elements– characters, plot, technique, scenes, chapters, dialogue, setting, etc.– I still didn’t understand how to construct a novel. Something essential was missing, a structure or a process, an approach to bringing all the elements together. I went back to searching the library and book stores until one day there it was, exactly the book I needed, Write Away by Elizabeth George, a writer I admire. In Write Away George shares her writing process in detail. And with her process as my model I began to write. The result: a three hundred seventy page first draft completed in five months. I had done something most people talk about but never do. I had written a novel. Of course, I spent the next two years rewriting, trying to make it the best I could. I’ve continued to write while I look for an agent and about two weeks ago, I completed the first draft of the second book in the series. While rewriting the second book, I’ve been noodling an idea that I have for a new character, new series. I’m having fun.
The books made it possible for me to write the novel, and from them I learned to edit and rewrite. I’ve grown as a writer and I’m confident that I can do even better, but I need something in addition to the books to ratchet up my writing. My solution? A two-week writing workshop with S.J. Rozan in Assisi, Italy, August 8 - 21. Am I nervous? Yes. Am I excited? You bet.