Two Sentence Tuesday

What did I read this week? Well, I read the comments on my Daphne submissions. Unfortunately, there's not much I can say about them except that in the spots where they were specific they almost always contradicted each other. Comments like "I really loved the description of the setting" contrasting with "there are too many details about the setting." It's enough to make your head explode!

But, that's the way it goes...every reader is different, and the same 15 pages got scores (out of a possible 128) ranging from 92 to 128. What did I learn? Well, I knew the manuscript needed work...it will take some time to figure out how useful the comments are. A couple of things that were pointed out are things I already knew were issues but I didn't know how to fix. I was hoping I'd get some suggestions, but I suppose it's useful enough to know that I am not the only one who sees the problems. And at least one person loved it!

What did I write?

You have more to worry about than perverts watching you pee, she reminded herself. But still she pulled the hem of her shirt as low as she could, and huddled over, shielding herself from the view of any potential cameras.

How about you all? What did you read? What did you write? If you're posting your work on your own blog, just leave a note in the comments and I'll add a link at the bottom of this post.

Two Sentence Tuesday Participants:

Travis Erwin has posted his sentences on his blog
Ilana Stephens has posted hers in the comment section
Miladysa has posted hers in the comment section
Britta Coleman, our resident non-conformists, posts hers on her blog on Thursdays

A Writer's Brain

I wrote the first draft of my first mystery in six weeks. When I tell people that, they are shocked and envious. But here's the rub: I'd spent the previous several years working on another writing and research project, a project I could not finish because medical issues got in the way. All that time, while I couldn't write, couldn't even really read, I suspect my brain was busy working on the murder mystery. I just wasn't physically able to write anything down, or even vocalize it, until I got all the weird electricity in my head under control.

I am an epileptic. Or, in modern, politically correct language, I have a seizure disorder. This puts me--at least according to epilepsy.com--in great literary company. Unlike Dostoevsky or Dickens, however, I've never had any desire to inflict my disorder on one of my characters. No one reading my fiction, at least to this point, would diagnose me as an epileptic writer.

Epilepsy is a pain in the tush. I probably had my first seizures in my teens, but they were "absence" seizures, "partial" seizures or dizzy spells, nothing that presented in a fashion recognizable to my friends and family. I didn't have my first grand mal seizure (or, again with the more politically correct label, "tonic-clonic seizure") until college. The first drug they put me on--Dilantin--I was massively allergic to. I have no recollection of the three weeks before they discovered the allergy but for brief flashes, most of which involve doctors.

But then they put me on another drug, Tegretol, which worked fabulously for fifteen years. Until it slowly began to fail, which caused the medical problems that prevented me from finishing my dissertation. In 2005, I went on Lamictal. That's when I wrote my academic mystery. Followed, in the space of about eighteen months, by a rough draft of my second academic mystery, and a first, second, and final draft of the beading mystery that eventually found a home with an agent. The rough drafts of each book took progressively longer. I believe that's because by the time I got to the beading mystery, I'd run out of all the stuff that had built up while the Tegretol was failing.

Then came the hives. Six months consumed with trying to find their source didn't leave a lot of time or physical or mental energy for writing. Eventually, they figured out that the Lamictal had caused the hives, and I had to go off of it. Then they put me on Keppra. Once the hives went away, I could write again, though not nearly at the level I'd been working at while functionally medicated.

In a couple of weeks I have to go get my brain recalibrated. I go into the hospital for five days, they hook me up to electrodes and videotape me while I sit around doing nothing. This is because the brain noise is now too loud for me to write, too loud even to allow me to read more than a few sentences at a time. It has taken me hours to write this post--a far cry from a whole mystery in six weeks!

So when I read about Tolstoy, and Carroll, and Dante being epileptics, I wonder whether they would have been as prolific, and whether they'd have written such interesting things, if they'd lived in the era of EEGs, anti-convulsants, and videotaped hospital stays. Maybe I'd be a better writer if I stopped taking medications for a while and went off somewhere where all the walls were padded and I couldn't hurt myself if I had a seizure.

Or maybe I'd just be out of my mind with boredom, and unable to write at all.

Women of Mystery Meet Ellery Queen

Welcome to Two Sentence Tuesday.

We are proud to announce that Women of Mystery contributor Meredith Anthony has a story “Murder on the Main Line” in the July issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

This is the second month in a row that a member of Sisters in Crime New York Tri-State Chapter has been represented in Ellery Queen. As you may recall, Meredith Cole had the honor in June with her story “Exercise is Murder.” Do I see a trend?

Here are two lines from “Murder on the Main Line,” which I read on Sunday.

Bitsy’s hyperaware senses, as tuned as a cat’s, were on full alert. But even so, she almost missed the arrival of Luke and presumably Aaron late that night.

And here are two lines I wrote this week.

“Someone mentioned to me that it was far more likely that Vi’s extracurricular activities were the cause of her death." So much for my despising gossip, here I was quoting Calysta as if she was the Guttenberg bible.

So let’s have it, ladies and gentlemen. What did you read? What did you write?

Terrie

Sorry Darling, Must Dash. Ta Ta....

Maybe it's a leap, but this water-skiing squirrel reminds me of the busy mobile professional I used to be, assisted by bluetooth, wireless, cable, and cellular. I'm not quite a technophobe now, but I did figure out that spending all day juggling twelve things simultaneously keeps me from sleeping at night.

I'm sure I'm not the first. Oprah's bound to have had guest speakers on the subject. But...duh...it's only just occurred to me that bedtime is the only time my brain isn't otherwise occupied. So - because I haven't yet entirely fried them - my brain cells work double time to squeeze out a couple of epiphanies before I succumb to slumber. Which I never do, of course, because epiphanies are way too exciting. (I should have known it was Colonel Mustard. The candlestick's in his camera bag....)

To wean myself off Ambien, I've resolved to do one thing at a time and keep head-noise to a minimum. No more turning pages while eating lunch. I've tossed the headphones. Shut off the phone. Walk right past my silent PC on the way to bed. On my hour-long commutes by car, I no longer listen to Mozart's Requiem. Nor to audio books and Garrison Keillor. Instead I let my mind wander, and wander it does.

The only problem - a significant one - is that my memory's shot. How to record stunning revelations doing 75 on the Thruway?

While I confess to having written the occasional note on the back of an envelope (I now welcome traffic jams) I've been trying to figure out a safer way to recall brainstorms. Which brings me right back to technology. Get a recorder, friends enthuse. With Dragon Naturally Speaking you can digitize your musings. Voice-write entire manuscripts.

Forget that. Characters continue to live in my keyboard. But since plot twists come at desperately inconvenient moments - in the wee hours and on wheels - I've done two things. For those middle-of-the-night ponderings, I put a notebook and pen under the bed. For the car, I use Jott with my cell phone (yes, with headset) to send myself text emails of my own, spoken, ideas. Yeah, yeah, I'm still an egghead.

Jott's free. Conversion to text is spookily accurate. I can speed-dial Jott's toll-free number, discuss my inspirations, and get a near-perfect text version by email. (See The Washington Post or Network World.)

I suppose that talking to myself while driving - even with the headset, officer - makes two things I'm doing at once. But then, I never could keep a resolution.

- Lois

The Long Haul

The other night, I was talking to someone about my frustration with my current WIP. It's now just about 68k long. Plenty long enough for a mystery (especially since there are a good 4k worth of spots where my manuscript currently says things like "TRANSITION" or "DESCRIPTION"), but nowhere near the 85k it needs to be as standalone romantic suspense. And yet, it's not finished, and it's too long to be category-length even if it were.

Here's the problem: I'm tired of writing this story. I like the characters, I'm still excited by them and their predicaments, but I'm ready to be working on something else. Usually, I can control my ADD, but at this point every word is a fight. The thing is, I'm too close to the end to give up now and go work on something else. I have to finish it, then put it away for a bit while I work on something else, then come back to it. I know that's the only way I can make this work.

What do you do when the story stalls? When your characters rebel and tell you they don't feel like coming out to play? When turning on the computer irritates you?

Two Sentence Tuesday

These two sentences are from a book I am currently reading, Drop Shot by Harlan Coben. If you haven’t read any of his work you should take a look. Coben combines humor and mystery in a very unique style, and with sports thrown in, how can the reader lose?

“What’s-her-name was Jessica, which Esperanza knew very well. Esperanza did not care much for the love of Myron’s life.”

This week I wrote these two sentences in a short story:

“But time has its way of adjusting your take on things. After a couple of years inside, I picked up a routine.”

We have a brand new blogger participating in Two Sentence Tuesday, stop on over and say hi to Huddlekay.

Anyone out there got some great lines to share? We wanna see 'em!

Terrie

What's Not To Love?

Clare's post yesterday on the various kerfluffles around the writing world got me thinking about two strains of chatter I have seen in the past week.

First, there are numerous blogs participating in a project started by Patti Abbott wherein blog authors use Fridays to recommend books. Says Patti, "I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next."

On the other hand, there seems to be quite a bit of chatter about what turns readers off. On one reader forum I belong to, the moderator posted a poll asking about bad editing in published books [membership in Delphi forums required]. Here are the options:
• It makes me mad, but what can you do?
• It makes me mad, and I'm going to write to the publishers.
• It makes me so mad, it's putting me off buying books from the worst offenders.
• Other (specify).

At the moment, there's a 60-40 split between "what can you do" and "not buying books from the worst offenders." (If you feel like answering this yourself in the comments, I'll be happy to pass along your comments.)

At the same time, a conversation began in a romance readers forum at LibraryThing about "wallbangers", i.e., books so bad you throw them against the wall. These appalling books range from books with horrendous plots or dialogue, to those with factual errors, to...well, you name it.

In both of these discussions, a good number of people have been turned off entire bodies of work--either they won't read anything written by an author or anything published by a certain publisher. As a writer, I find this both encouraging and frightening.

On the scary side, what if I accidentally publish with one of those publishers people refuse to read? What if I make a mistake and am shunned forever for it? But I can control those things. I research publishers, and the list of those who publish my kind of work who I'd work with is comparatively short. (Compared to what, you ask? Compared to the list of publishers of genre fiction overall.)

As it happens, the ever-helpful Victoria Strauss has a post today on researching small presses. One thing she mentions only in passing, but I would emphasize, is actually reading books published by the press in question. That's usually the first thing I do. And I evaluate every aspect of a small press book if I am considering them as a viable publishing option-- not just the contents, but the price, the design, the paper quality. I am a consumer of books in both the literal and figurative sense and I don't want to put my own work out in a way that doesn't please other readers.

As for the factual stuff turning off readers, well, luckily, research is something I enjoy (witness all the years I spent in school getting useless advanced degrees). Some things I will, inevitably, get wrong, especially in the law enforcement arena, but I hope I won't make the glaring kind of errors people are talking about in these threads.

But I find all these discussions--not just "don't forget about these great books," but also "these books are so awful they left dents in my wall on the way to the trash"--encouraging. They mean that readers are still passionate. Some people, at least, are involved enough in what they read to be both enthusiastic about books they love and angry about books that aren't what they should be.

All that, I think, bodes well for the future of genre fiction, in whatever form it may come to be distributed.

KHAN!!!!!! A 2-sentence Postscript.

I forgot to include this great picture which shows (again) how widely graphics are being used, but I couldn't stand thinking about hashing around the original long and mangled post. So, here's a rack of philosophical, historical works in graphic form from the For Beginners book series.

P.P.S. Faked you out with that 2-sentence stuff, didn't I?

P.P.P.S. We shall see...


UPDATE: What the heck? Here they are. I read:
She was her Staten Island cottage, the shining bay, the sailing ships, a sanctuary from the sense-numbing city. Imagine unlacing her every night. - The Midnight Band of Mercy by Michael Blaine.

I wrote: There wasn’t a flexible-enough cover identity, except possibly as an especially naive journalist or NGO staffer, which each had limitations. No one but a minister would drag his wife to these places, which left Franklyn the role of someone’s girlfriend, a status too often translated in locals’ minds to being the Westerners' whore.

Please share any two you read and wrote in the comments, or let us know where they're posted so we can provide the link.

Travis Erwin's inspirational and whitewashed twos.

Britta Coleman likes to post her 2x2s on Thursdays. A sweet one.

Update: Signet Fires Cassie Edwards Over Plagiarism Scandal

We didn't spend a lot of time on the Cassie Edwards scandal here, although Elaine did have a very timely post on the subject of plagiarism in novels. But this is just a quick update for those of you who might be interested. Signet let Cassie Edwards go, reverting all the rights they owned back to her. (You can find the whole, pathetic story in the right sidebar of the Smart Bitches blog.)

And tune in later today for a wonderfully bizarre My Town Monday from Clare, who spent the weekend at the Comic convention.

The Haiku of Discipline

*Thanks for the title, Claire2e.

I’ve been having fun with my writing lately. I’ve been testing out different genres plus playing around with different forms. No question, the umbrella category of mystery/thriller/suspense will always be my favorite, and I seem to derive the most satisfaction from novels, both in reading and writing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like anything else. In addition to preventing burnout, taking occasional breaks from spending all my writing time on my mystery novel reinforces my decisions to write a novel and to write a mystery. It also allows me to learn new things or practice skills that benefit my regular writing.

One of the formats I’ve been playing with is micro fiction. A type of short story, micro fiction has 100 words or less. It sounds easy. After all, who can’t write a story of just 100 words? Well, it’s not easy; it’s dang hard. Plus, I’ve been entering my creations in a weekly contest that requires exactly 99 words―no more, no less. That’s even harder.

But the results have been worth the hair I’ve pulled out. I’ve always been able to write newspaper, magazine, and newsletter articles to fill a certain amount of space. I majored in journalism in college and spent my first several post-graduation years as a newspaper reporter. But fiction has been different. Compared to my nonfiction writing, my fiction writing has been extremely undisciplined. I always just . . . wrote.

Practicing writing toward a specific low word goal can help tame undisciplined writing. Try it. Think of a story, write the first draft, and then trim it down and fill it out to your desired low word count, correcting any typos and grammatical problems. At the same time, keep a good balance of dialogue, action, and description, plus—and even more important―convey a complete story. For some good examples of micro fiction, see here.

Poetry is also good for learning or practicing discipline. Some forms have very specific requirements. For instance, haiku generally consists of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Traditionally, the first line should establish the situation, the second should convey the action, and the third should describe the result, but most people just aim to hit the syllable count. For some classic funny examples, see here.

Micro fiction and haiku are just two types of writing that can help develop discipline. Many others also exist. See what strikes your fancy. You can learn new types of writing, hone your skills, and have fun all at the same time.

On Prologues

I seem to be reading a spate of books of late that have completely pointless prologues. I realize the custom in the suspense genre these days is to open with some poor innocent being captured or killed by a serial killer so that we can see just how deviant the "baddie" is (or so the author can then relax a little, having already shown you the basic plot and stressed you out) and I've gotten used to that. I've even written a prologue for my romantic suspense, though it's not nearly so involved as some. (I posted a draft of it a while back, here, and while it's undergone some revisions since then, it hasn't become much more elaborate.)

I didn't have a prologue at first, but as I wrote, I realized that I wanted the reader to know that Nicole was dead long before the characters became certain of it. I wanted them looking for clues before the characters did, and that was the sole purpose of the prologue.

But the past few books I've read, I wonder why the authors bothered with the prologues and why no editor told them the book would be stronger without one.

• In one case, the prologue--which occurs more than a hundred years before the rest of the book--shows the discovery of an archaeological find. One of the artifacts is stolen later in the book, which forms the basis of the mystery/suspense, but nothing dramatic happens during the find, nothing vital that is not explained more than once later on in the story.
  
• The prologue of another book, taking place nearly ten years before the rest of the story, depicts the main character witnessing a murder as a child. The event is definitely life-altering, and you do need to know about it to understand the protagonist, but it's recalled so many times in the book, in dreams, in discussions, etc, that I got bored with all the repetition.
• The third actually takes place after the book begins. That is, Chapter 1 is dated earlier than the prologue. You get the prologue again later on in the book.

None of these is unique to the book in question. I've seen all these techniques used more than once (and the list is far from complete--certain styles of prologue get used regularly). However, reading these three books one right after another really brought question of a prologue into focus for me. All these books are by "name" authors (I'm too lazy to see whether they all qualify as "best sellers"), who've been writing and publishing for years, and now I want to go back and see whether they've always incorporated these introductory bits with information readers get again later on, or whether there's some sort of trend that's making them feel they need to have them.

I am a careful reader, so if I get information in a prologue, I don't want it again in the body of the book. If characters are going to discuss in detail a crime that's taken place, I don't need to see it being committed--you don't have to show the blood spilling first if you're going to give me two pages of spatter analysis later on down the road. (On the other hand, if you do show the spillage, that's fine...just give me a single sentence about what the spatter analyst had to say when the time comes.)

On television, there's a minute or two of story before the titles roll. Often, in shows like Cold Case, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, the crime takes place in that first spot, and the rest of the show is an investigation into it. Sometimes, further crimes take place during the show, but there's a teaser up front, and that's how I often feel about the prologues in suspense novels. Maybe that's actually why I don't even notice the "serial killer grabs a victim" prologue any more; I'm so used to it from television.

So I wonder...how do the rest of you feel about prologues? Do you have particular types you like or particular ones that make you crazy? And what about epilogues, while we're at it?

Spring Finally Sprang, and I'm Sprung

I am happy. I understand now the central theme of the book I'm writing, that idea wrapped around the mere plot that represents its identity and reason. As I've griped here before, I was struggling over tone, but still the real theme hadn't asserted itself.

In On Writing, Stephen King wrote (and I paraphrase from memory) that it's in the later revisions he can identify the themes he's woven throughout and can sort and amplify them. I've finally been thinking about this project long enough to have learned what fascinates me most
about it.












Sure, this means redirecting the plot from what I thought it was (again), and showing events from a different camera angle, but it all feels easy this time. And that's how I always know when I've got it right. The choreography starts flowing like I've been spending my nights sleepwalking at Arthur Murray. I can't ever predict the timing, but things just organize themselves effortlessly and it's joyful to glide along.


The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. ~Mark Twain



As of yesterday, my visiting houseful of family has gone. Lots of energy expended and not much sleep, but I'll remember it as more wonderful than tiring. And today, I'm finding all this springy goodness inspiring and supportive of my efforts, not distracting like it felt just a couple of weeks ago. Funny how that works. Though many of my neighbors have flowers and trees that I wish my covetous eyes could transplant, I've stuck to inflicting upon you specimens from our own territories. I know many of you also have works-in-progress right now. Any new breakthroughs of glorious blooms or plumage?


1)Blossoms of some weepy-cherry thing.
2) Pansy survivors of last week's torrents. More pals coming.
3) Flowering basil in the kitchen. Eggling on the sill.
4) Eggling ceramic planter with new-sprouting mint.
5) Forsythia from the sideyard.
6) The first, bravest daffodils. Mob in transit.
7) Hydrangea. Will eventually go into our front garden with the other bushes. I love these kind of blues.

The Muse and The Music

“Imagine one note struck on a piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of a room.” -- Aaron Copeland, What to Listen for in Music.

On Absolute Write I found an energetic thread about writers who write to the strains of Beethoven or Talking Heads. It struck my fancy because I’ve been moving CDs to a new Media Center computer connected to our living room speakers. Along with music and audio books, this new toy plays and records television, runs my Netflix stuff – both DVDs and instant movies – runs games, and stores our entire collection of photographs. I’m waiting for the upgrade that will wash my windows.

My old albums sound so good through a quality audio system, and are so easy to access, that I’ve found they propel my writing. It seems not to matter which genre, as long as the tracks are old favorites. Music stirs me. Both physically and emotionally. If I’m upright (and alone!) I get down and boogie. With the laptop in my recliner I dance on the page. That screen of sound keeps work deadlines and laundry outside my orbit. It keeps my head in that place where the writing surprises me. (Turn up the volume, however, and I sing along with the vocals.)

The thread on Absolute Write is great. A couple of responders seem to have a fair bit of time on their hands – they create entire play lists to evoke a manuscript’s tone. Or an era they’re writing about. Or they make different play lists for each character.

Initially, although I was charmed, I was skeptical about what seemed a unique way to avoid actually writing. Until the other day when I queued up albums for a friend coming over, a colleague who’d recently lost a beloved relative. The CDs were favorites of mine that I was sure Lauren would like. But when I started listening, I realized every track was in a minor key…dirge-like…hardly the thing to lift the spirits of someone grieving. I dumped that lot and recorded some Concrete Blonde, The Band, and Rusted Root (am I dating myself or what?). Again, tracks I thought she’d like but a tad more upbeat. I called the first set Lauren Sad, the second Lauren Glad.

Those AbsoluteWriters are on the right track. I'm thinking of making sets for each stage of my heroine's journey: Paige in Denial. Paige Terrified. Paige Triumphant.

I’m curious who needs silence. Who among you listens. And where do you go for the music?

Image found at http://www.tuba.is.nl/pic1-10.html

- Lois

Two Sentence Tuesday

I have no brain this week at all. This past weekend I had one of my three-day trade shows, and I am completely shot. (Most of my shows are two days, I have two three-days and two one-day shows every year, both of which are a drain, though for different reasons.)

So my two sentences reflect my lack of brain, being trivial in the extreme. But I find myself focusing more on trivialities these days!

“If I get the ones I usually wear,” she explained, “I don’t need to try them on. We can just buy them and go.”

And two -- well, three -- sentences I read this week that I printed out and pasted in the front of my notebook, from Jessica Faust's blog:

Think of always moving your career forward. Don’t get stuck working for years on the same book or the same series. If you truly want a publishing career, and not just to write books, you need to be in search of the next thing.

Jessica is talking about books and series, but I need to remind myself of this on a scene-by-scene basis. If I let myself, I can become mired in the physical aspects of a scene, just trying to move the characters around, rather than getting through it with the knowledge that I can go back and perfect it later.

Criminal Inspirations: Rx Exaggeration

It's been awhile since I posted one of these, and I've noticed them a lot lately. Nothing like a stubborn MS to make you value all the plots that got away. Here's one from this morning in the New York Post's Page Six that seemed ripe with possibilities:

Did He Or Didn't He?

BRITISH publishing maverick Felix Dennis claims he killed a man who had beaten a gal pal and "made her life a living misery." Dennis, who publishes the British edition of Maxim and 50 other mags, made the startling admission - which he then denied - during a wine-fueled interview published yesterday in the Times of London. The 60-year-old billionaire declined to offer specifics other than to say the violence happened 25 years ago. He told interviewer Ginny Dougary, who taped the session, "I killed him . . . He hurt her . . . He wouldn't let her alone. She told him to stop. I told him to stop. Many people told him to stop. Wouldn't stop. Kept on and on. Made her life a living misery: beat her up, beat up her kids, wouldn't let her alone. So in the end, I had a little meeting with him, pushed him over the edge of a cliff. Weren't hard." The day after the interview, however, Dennis sent the reporter an e-mail saying he had been on prescription drugs that, combined with wine, can cause "severe exaggeration."

The woman's and children's story from 25 years ago might be tragic and horrible, even ultimately triumphant in an awful way, but when the "savior" is a publishing magnate and billionaire who finally succumbs to the temptation to boast, it adds another twist to the pretzel. I wondered: Was he really the man's romantic rival? Could Dennis have been justifying an ultimately immoral act to himself this way from back then? What would the woman say? Has she been eternally grateful for the relief, or shaken forever by the violence done to her children's father, let's say, in her name?

Given that the subject in question possesses amazing wealth and notoriety, I'm not so sure the prescription exaggeration excuse will go down that smoothly. Some ink-stained wretch(es) will be inspired to dig the dirt and answer these billions of questions.

P.S. Though we've been hosting Two Sentence Tuesdays around here, some people have found that schedule simply too jam-packed with fun on the heels of My Town Mondays. Britta Coleman, for one, calls hers 2 X 2 and posts them on Thursday. Until you build up your fun endurance, if you missed Tuesday, it's not too late to join in. And let us know when and where you do so we can link to it!

P.P.S. Our friend Marijke's idea of a blogiversary present is a big fat tag posted at her Help My Hurt blog. I'm thinking...

Two Sentence Tuesday on April Fools Day

Happy April Fools Day! I was going to play April Fools on the blog today, but decided that April Fools trickery is funniest in person or by phone. I am sure that my four older grandchildren will all find a reason to tell me that: my pants are ripped, I have orange on my nose, my hair fell off the back of my head and plenty of other tricks that, being Grandma, I will fall for, hook, line and sinker. And won’t I be the silly fool.

So, for all of you, instead of a trick, I present the Snopes write-up of the origins of April Fools Day and if you don’t believe a word they say, well, April Fools to you.

Now, for Two Sentence Tuesday:

This week I wrote:

“He tried to grab the door-frame, his arms waving like a seagull trying to flap away a plover pecking out clams at low tide. But the screen door come at him and smacked his shoulder.”

Our Sister in Crime, Meredith S. Cole, a Murder New York Style alum had an excellent story called “Exercise is Murder” published in the Department of First Stories of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, June 2008. I read her story Saturday. Here are two sentences:

“The apartment looked as if its owner had walked into one of the chain furniture stores and ordered everything out of the display. The furniture was arranged and the posters on the wall were framed, but nothing looked as if it was ever sat on or enjoyed.”

Meredith was last year’s winner of the St. Martins/ Malice Domestic First Novel Award. Her novel will be released in 2009 and we promise to tell you all about it.

Terrie

(Not) My Town Monday

(My Town Monday is a project conceived in the darkest corners of Travis Erwin's brain.)

My current work in progress is set in St. Martin, in the French West Indies. It's half an island. Or, to be more precise, 20 square miles of a 37 square mile island. The other half of the island is Dutch. I'd say the island was in the Caribbean, but only half of it is--other coasts are washed by the Atlantic. And, now that I think about it, only half the book is set there. The other half takes place in New York.

I've been going to Saint Martin/Sint Maarten since I was a kid, for thirty years, and my husband and I own a couple of timeshare weeks there. (We inherited them from my parents after Hurricane Luis destroyed the island in 1995, leaving the timeshare development in ruins. It took 5 years to find someone to take the place over because the original owners ran off with the insurance money. My parents moved on to a livable space for their vacations and passed their weeks--completely worthless at the time--to us.)

Half a book is a lot of words, but it doesn't cover a lot of time, and there's no way my characters could go to all the great spots I've been on the island. But a few days a year isn't long, either, and I now give you three spots I've never been. The signs, though, the signs are priceless.



and the place where they take care of all your sleeping needs...forever....

A Confusion of Birds and Words

Apparently, a confusion of guinea fowl is another of those funny animal group names like a murder of crows or a smack of jellyfish. I discovered that and this painting, also named Confusion, by high school student Kara from Allentown, New Jersey. I thought it captured wonderfully the problems of focus and concentration amidst nature's splendors that several of us have been discussing lately.

I hate not having the right words. Currently, I feel like I'm moving the troops across the map, storywise, but without the style or charm I know my tone needs. Worse, as I try to fix the flatness, all the words I reach for seem worn-out and dull. In response, I'm filling my eyes with words that I don't habitually use, trying to liven up the joint, but I'm so dead bored with my own description, and the writers I'm reading all seem to make better choices than I ever could. Kara, I feel ya, girlfriend.

Still, as much as we battle repetition and cliches in our fiction, apparently it's as big an issue in book reviews. The NYT Book Review blog identifies their overused seven review deadlies: poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft, muse, and lyrical.

Mario Puzo’s intriguing novel eschews the lyrical as the author instead crafts a poignant tale of family life and muses on the compelling doings of the Mob.

Read their arguments and the comments section with lots more candidates. Truly, my misery's enjoying the company.

Diversions

Who was the author who claimed to lock her office door not to keep the world out but to ensure she stayed inside? I know I'd do well to follow her advice. But my real distractions - if you don’t count food in the kitchen and gunk in the shower stall - aren't outside the room. They're outside the window.

In a black cherry at the bottom of my hill there's a pair of nesting hawks, and to the north – no joke – I can see fifty miles to Mohonk’s Sky Top ridge. But my most recent distractions are the two equine occupants of a small barn on a neighboring eight acres.

When they arrived a few weeks ago, the temperamental pony did her best to evict her full-sized roommate. Ever seen a horse jump backward, hind legs kicking? By now she's adjusted to sharing quarters. When they're let out of the barn every morning, they prance the perimeter of the paddock before settling to graze. There's a black lab working up the nerve to herd them, but so far he's kept a safe distance.

In March the wind sometimes blows like a hurricane on our ridge. The day it whipped a skylight off our roof, the horses were stuck in the barn. I missed them, but resolved to accomplish a fair bit of writing. Until I discovered that by leaning forward in my chair, I could see their noses through the stall windows.

It's hopeless. I’m considering moving my desk to the basement.

I can see why Michael Connelly writes the occasional novel in a windowless room. Why, according to Joanne Palmer in Write Blindfolded, Steven King wrote on a typewriter squeezed between washer and dryer, and Andre Dubus parked his car in a cemetery to write The House of Sand and Fog.

There are certainly alternatives to writing at home. I do like libraries (I recommend Nyack’s). I’ve gotten into the zone on trains, although I once nearly missed my stop at Secaucus Junction. Cafe's sometimes work until I get to know the regulars. (See Best Places to Write/Work in NYC for one writer's recommendations.) But as Clare pointed out, it's spring. The jonquils are ready to bloom. I'm expecting bunnies in the yard any day now.

This time of year, can anyone honestly claim self-discipline? What's your secret? Maybe a sturdy set of window shades.

- Lois

Link Saturday with Fuzz on Top

We're living in a new place this spring with actual (albeit fractionally slivered) acreage. There's already been some nice landscaping done, but I didn't know whether we had any spring bulbs working. When I asked my long-time, gardening neighbor, she assured me that I could safely wait to see what showed before planting more. Something would happen.

Now, I can really see the daffodils pushing up. No crocuses or snowdrops that I can tell, though other houses already have blooms, but lots of daffodils. Those are the most important to me anyway. The Montauk Daisies are working their magic and sprouting leaves and spreading plantings. The miscanthus grass is starting to green up, but so slowly. The hydrangeas? Dunno. Risky. I think I see buds, but I can't be sure. Some of the recent birds at the feeder are small, even for sparrows, and still carry silly plush mohawks of gray fuzz on their heads and backs. Last night, I made coconut cupcakes to take to my family's for Easter. I love the time of year, and am starting to feel more awake and alive again myself.

My novel's also finally picking up momentum again, even if, at the last meeting of my writers group, no one's life was transformed or even astoundingly improved by reading it. There's still nascent fuzz on it, too, but I believe it's getting pared down, muscled-up, and more aerodynamic by the day. So while I continue plucking the yuck out of my paragraphs, here are some scribbling-related links:

1) Some (I've done it) may give the occasional cat mystery a hard time, but Rita Mae Brown is a fascinating, forthright person as well as a successful author. Though approaches and subgenres may deteriorate into caricature over time, she was one of the founders of the genre and still believes in her characters and concept, so she's earned her pass. Anyway, I enjoyed this Time interview (via CrimeSpot) ...Well, I didn't know I was going to be famous. All that happens, and I was like, what is all this crap? Excuse me for swearing...

2) In a refreshing departure from traditional "literature" or "classics", One Book, One Chicago has chosen a crime fiction title, specifically Chicago-born Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, for its citywide reading program. Coming up in early April, the NEA-sponsored Big Read will also be offering two free events with a noir focus. Panels of MWA authors at Manhattan's Mercantile Library will discuss (and debate, if you're lucky) the lasting influence of The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade.

3) You may love your copy of the terse Elements of Style by Strunk and White , or maybe you prefer the even shorter Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing (however swelled into its hardcover from the original speech delivered at Bouchercon). But neither of these brevities will fit into the waistband of George Orwell's pithiest 6 tips , linked in their entirety. Free sample: Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

4) This TimesOnline article compares contemporaries Albert Camus and Georges Simenon, prolific creator of Inspector Maigret. The existentialist versus the existential hack. I'm sad Paul Theroux used that phrase, because though I don't know what Nan will choose, Existential Hack has always been on my business cards.

5) But Clare, you ask, why are you spending your time on this flapdoodle when you should be writing, writing, writing? Well, procrastination is part of my Method. Besides, I still see blogging as an extracurricular outlet, not a substitute for writing, but plenty of authors have found it worked otherwise to their detriments. Ignore your agent and pals, and do what's right for your writing. (via Whatever) Bestselling fantasy author Robin Hobb strongly cautions against the time and creativity-draining Vampires of the Internet. And yes, you have to read her warning online, smart a**.

Happy Spring!