Archive for the ‘Writing Process’ Category

When I first started writing this series, my goal was very simple. Start with a title that sets up a crime scene and create a whole plot from that. And it worked quite well for the first book. But that was the first book. It reads like a first book. It’s pretty simple, plot wise, and like it or not, I don’t tend to keep things simple.

And that’s probably why I’m not all that crazy about first person perspective.  It’s only one point of view explaining an entire story. That feels stilted and boring to me. My brain likes to crawl into the nooks and crannies of all my character’s psyches from time to time.

I’ve also noticed that my writing is becoming more expansive, subject wise. I blame it on getting back into screenwriting again. I took a few years off when the books occupied a good chunk of my time. I got back into it again last year.

It’s probably a “David versus Goliath” complex and could in all likelihood be just another step on my road to developing as a writer. I explore really big problems from the microcosm of how those problems affect a few people personally. Last year’s screenplay dealt with Alzheimer’s. This year’s is corporate control of energy. Book 4 dabbled in illegal pot farms and money laundering. Book 5 involves human trafficking.

It’s impossible for me not to feel a personal involvement or indirect responsibility when researching these subjects, either as a citizen of one of the most consumptive countries in the world, or more personally, just living out my daily life.

I’ve been raised by my stout Midwestern brethren to tend toward martyrdom, and I’m sure my writing reflects that. Since there is a sense of powerlessness concerning these things in my real life, I try to control them in an alternate universe, hopefully leaving my audience feeling entertained and maybe a little enlightened in the process.

It’s my way of humanizing the monster.

Sometimes the world can be a very uncomfortable place. Right now the temperature outside my house is 15 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, with little in the way of a reprieve for at least a couple of weeks.  For more than two months straight, my facial expression while running errands has been similar to the one I make when tweezing eyebrow hairs. It’s no wonder that I, and those I share this presently inhospitable environment with,  desperately seek comfort in other ways.

The problem with comfort is, it can stifle ambition pretty damn quick. If you’re content with your present situation, there’s little motivation to change it, even if that situation becomes detrimental to you.

“Comfortable in my own misery,” is an all too common phenomena. It keeps us in unhealthy relationships, overweight bodies, dead end jobs, and generally uninspired lives. That’s why we all need to break out of the comfort zone every once in a while.

The last winter that we had that was this bad compelled me to become a writer. My act of comfort was removing my attention away from my reality and focusing on the fantasies in my head where I could control everything.

Having the responsibility of writing for an audience is less comfortable, but it still gives me a sense of purpose that I don’t often feel with other aspects of my life. Writing offers me excitement and anticipation. I’m creating an alternative universe that never existed exactly as I’m creating it. I’m good in that place.

I’m horrible at marketing. My comfort in misery is self publishing and marketing each book in my series exactly the same way because it’s familiar and I don’t have to go to any extra trouble.

“Don’t enter any contests because that’s extra effort and you might fail. Don’t test new markets because it requires extra file formatting and that might just end up being an entire new audience that ignores you, or even worse, hates you.”

I listened and obeyed that lazy, indulgent, “comfortable” voice in my head for years, and wouldn’t you know it, but sales of my books were slow, and I began to lose hope.

So, in this god awful cold winter, I felt compelled to change. I entered my books into new markets. I just entered a contest last week. I have two more contests to enter this weekend and one that has a deadline in June. I’m gearing up to go on another social media site. And I’m still writing my heart out.

Metaphorically and literally, it’s still hard to wake up in the morning and remove myself from the warm, soft, bed covers to face the cold, stark light of day, but I persevere with hope in my heart that spring is just around the corner, waiting with joyful surprises. I hope you will be there to enjoy them with me.

I’m not always the sharpest knife in the drawer. There are days when I’m so distracted, I’m surprised I’m able to dress myself, let alone operate a car, or perform duties I actually deserve to get paid for. But don’t call me stupid. I’m not stupid.

I may be unobservant, blissfully ignorant, probably delusional, and quite often distracted…Wait, I did a whole paragraph on that already, didn’t I? Well, there ya go then.

One of the great things about choosing to write is I get to learn tons of stuff I would normally have no interest in if it wasn’t required to flesh out a story.

Like the toxicity of plants: Can’t concoct poisons without knowing where they come from, what components make them poisonous, how they affect their intended victims, or how or if they can be detected in an autopsy.

Or SuperPacs: Previously, political ideologies and special interest groups were just abstract representations of those annoying talking heads that I had to tolerate during campaign seasons. Then I included them in a story, and suddenly I am enlightened (still not impressed, but enlightened).

Writing this series, I’ve learned all sorts of things about my home state that I would’ve never known otherwise: Like that Big Manitou Falls in Pattison State Park is almost at tall as Niagara Falls (just much, much skinnier). Or that, according the to constitution, our state attorney general is not required to have any court experience to hold office. Or that the way Northwest Wisconsin looks now (though very pretty) is actually the result of an environmental disaster perpetuated by the Lumber Barons between the Civil War and the Great Depression.

I don’t like learning new things unless I have a useful application for what I’m learning. Creating a story with thought-provoking problems that revolve around crime and mayhem gives me permission to delve into information that I would normally consider myself “too stupid” to comprehend with any satisfaction.

Writing a story with corporate espionage and the infamous Tesla conspiracies? Guess I’ll have to learn about that. Working the trucking industry into a story about human trafficking? Guess what? Now I have to research long-haul trucking. Getting scared/injured people lost in hundreds of acres of swamps? Now I need to become familiar with that environment.

He’s going to get sick of me repeating this story, but my husband was reading one of my books recently (he’s more into user manuals and less into romantic suspense, so I’m thrilled he’s reading my work at all), and he made the passing comment that amounted to: “When did you learn all that stuff you wrote about? I didn’t realize you’re so smart.” That makes me smile every time.