The Writing Life

Jess Lourey, Jan Dunlap and I made an appearance at the Normandale Community College in Bloomington (Minnesota) today. We sat at a table and rambled on about why we write mysteries, how we came up with our sleuths, the methods we use in plotting, and whether or not our characters resemble people we know. Attendance was a bit sparse -- community college students are more about books needed to pass courses than reading for recreation. Still, some good questions were asked, and each of us signed a few books. What I liked about the event was how we played off each other. One would say something that triggered a good thought in another. It was much better that there were three of us than if any of us had appeared alone. That doesn’t always happen, but it’s great when it does. I’d like to do something with the two of them again sometime.

One of the subjects was how writers today have to be two people. One is an introvert, able (sometimes driven) to work alone, with only a looming deadline for encouragement. The other is a gregarious and amusing extrovert, given to clever remarks and interesting conversation while on a book tour. Publishers today tend to focus on the big sellers and even mid-list authors are forced to arrange their own book tours, traveling on their own dime, getting no reimbursement except for a tax deduction. So it’s not just the appearance at a book signing the author has to do, it’s the scheduling, the cold calling of bookstore managers, the cheerful voice and cooperative manner put on when making arrangements. And when it’s all over, there is the lonesome room and the intimidating blank computer screen waiting.

But you know something? I wouldn’t trade my job for any other. I enjoy the book signings, meeting fellow authors and fans at conventions, even (sometimes) the challenge of setting up a signing. And when the muse is riding me, there’s nothing more fascinating than working out a complex plotline, watching the characters come to life on the computer screen, making it all come together in a grand climax.

Of all the activities involved in writing, I think I probably like research best. In fact, I have caught myself using research as a way to avoid writing. There is always one more thing to check out, one more fact to pursue, and the Internet seems too often a bottomless resource. I love talking to people face-to-face, I love getting into e-mail correspondence with experts in some field or other, I even love taking stitching classes. I guess somewhere in my ancestry is Rudyard Kipling’s elephant’s child, full of ’satiable curiosity. Of the several traits that make someone into a writer, I think curiosity is one of the elementals. How does that work? Why do people do that? What is it like to (fly, fire fires, do factory work, cope with an abusive boss or spouse, fill in the blank). We’re worse than the National Enquirer and National Geographic combined. If there are such things as ghosts, and they get to choose the places they haunt, I will be found at my old school, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, attending classes and reading obscure volumes in the stacks of the Union Memorial Library. Though the way books are going out of style, I may have to inhabit a computer -- do you think that might be possible?