A writer's workspace (mid-book)

by Toni McGee Causey

JT has her idea box and her official book box. Alex outlines (I think?). Allison brainstorms as she goes. Rob has a hole in a cave somewhere. (Kidding.) 

I have whiteboards.

 and...

(photos taken with my iPhone because my big digital camera died on me)

I also use Scrivener for Macs -- which has many of the same capabilities of these whiteboards + a Word-like software... and I will dump a lot of photos there, images of my characters and such. But when I am working on specific scenes, I like having the photos right there on my board.

 (photos are random, from the internet... not my own)

I like Scrivener for the organizational information-at-my-fingertips convenience. I am actually very lazy about organization--and I've paid for that countless times by wasting hours looking for something that I couldn't remember how I worded (and therefore a simple "find" search wasn't helpful). Or I'll forget a character's last name from the time I mentioned them (which drives me nuts when I can't find a last name, and then I can't remember if I actually used it or changed my mind but maybe mentioned them by last-name-only somewhere else). So the organizational ability to just plop a folder under a heading called "characters" on Scrivener, and drop bits of info in there (cut and pasted description, a photo of an actor or anyone I find on the internet who most resembles the character)... and later on, it's there to remind me of details without me having to search. 

Mostly, though, I use the whiteboards. And lots and lot and lots of Post-It notes.

I hate writing a linear outline. I don't "see" the story like that. I see it playing out horizontally, like a movie. And that might seem like splitting hairs, but I was finally able to structure a story solidly once I allowed myself to write it out horizontally and "hang" the bigger turning points along a timeline, rather than try to write down the page, vertically, in a paragraph-by-paragraph explication.

[So far, I have never had to go back and make any big structural changes--once I get this structure up on the board. When I start blind, without the structure, I end up re-doing the first act too many times to count.]

When I start a project, both of those boards are empty. My husband, Carl, made those for me. [We ordered the magnetic whiteboards online where I found them at a pretty significant savings over Office Depot--especially for these sizes. Carl then framed them and hung them for me.][Yes, he is my hero.] The first thing I'll do on the board that you see on the second photo is draw that timeline across the time--Act One, Act Two, Act Three lines in place, then turning point lines, climax, resolution. And I start plugging in the major emotional moments / major plot issues. 

Weirdly, I will not write down every scene I "see" in this pass. I don't need to--if I have a major turning point, I'll know what I'll need to do to build up to that turning point. Those things will fluctuate and change, though, so I'm not fond of nailing them down too severely. 

The Post-It notes start showing up at some point around the mid-book process. I'll start seeing too many things at once and I don't want to forget the smaller details. I'll have a note up there about motive, or a twist, just to remember to layer in those clues as I go so that when I get to that scene, it's ready. As I write, I'll realize I'll need to go back and layer something in earlier, or give it more depth because it's turned out to be more important or useful than the initial throwaway comment indicated back when I wrote it. (I often find I planted things I had no idea I'd planted... I'll think, 'Oh, I need to go back and do X' only to go back and lo, there it was, already there.' That, my friends, is freaky.)

By the end of the book, I'll have dozens of Post-Its up there, of things I still need to go back and check. I'll discard the ones I know I already finished, so it's not confusing.

[During the edits and then later, the copyedits, I will do more Post-Its. I think the company owes me a thank you for keeping their revenue up.]

You see that notebook on my desk? That's the second one for this book. It's a five-subject college ruled thing, nothing fancy, and I'll brainstorm in there. I will work out motives, or the characters' traits, backstory, habits, etc., and I almost never go back and refer to anything there because once I write it, I know it. It's very stream-of-consciousness and hard to follow, but I will often start babbling in there if I have a knotty story problem and usually, the physical process of writing it down helps me brainstorm it out. I don't know why. I can't actually write the story in longhand--I freeze up. I've been typing too long, having started writing back in the early eighties on an IBM selectric typewriter. 

My office used to be in a front room of the house--a room not-quite-double this sized room, and with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I never got anything done. Part of it was the fact that I was too accessible to everyone (kids, employees, husband), and part of it was that the wall space was too visually busy. I don't have much on the walls in this room, and I like that it's in the back of the house, where almost no one but my husband will go. I can write in public places when I have to, but it's difficult because I am naturally nosy and want to eavesdrop on everyone, and then I end up in conversations. Which are great, but then I get nothing done.

[I am just one of those people that complete strangers will tell absolutely everything to. If I'm in a restaurant, people will want to tell me stuff they've never told anyone else. Little kids love me. They will be terrified of everyone else in that place, and if I sit down, they are going to try to come over and crawl in my lap. I have had new moms hand me their infant and say, "Can you hold her a sec? I just have to run to the restroom." or in the grocery story, "Oh, here, I'll be right back, I have to grab some cereal." And then I'm standing there, with this kid I've never laid eyes on, who, for some reason, thinks this is perfectly okay. At least they don't cry.]

Anyway, I digress.

I have worked in a very tiny office space made out of a closet. A back porch that we turned into an office. A converted dining room. My "desks" have included everything from a piece of plywood or a lap pillow to an old table to a hand-me-down desk, to, finally, a new desk. I've worked with just a typewriter all the way up to my Mac and a big honking monitor. (Yes, I know it's huge. That wasn't on purpose. That is just one of those, "Well, fine, if you insist," moments when they did not have mine fixed, couldn't fix it, and had to replace it with something bigger. I should get an Oscar for the straight face I had when they asked me if I would mind the bigger monitor.)

I've also written while lying in the backseat of a truck, just after having had surgery, while my husband drove us to Colorado--pen and paper and only occasionally, the laptop that was on its last leg.

So I'm curious about your workspace, no matter what you do. What's on your desk? If you don't work at a desk, tell me something about what you do and see when you arrive at work? What's your ideal working environment (whatever you do!). What is the one thing that will derail your efficiency? (Mine is the dog barking next door. There is one of seven which sounds like you are stabbing her, and stabbing her some more and oh, wait, stabbity stabbity stab, and I swear, I think she's dying and it upsets me. But that's just how she barks.) (Not too coincidentally, I have begun to write to music all of the time, now.)

Tell me about your workspace!

I think I'll be a heart surgeon . . .

By Allison Brennan

My good friend Karin Tabke wrote a blog last week asking the question, "How hard do you work?" and pontificating on the 10,000 hour rule: that to be truly good at something, you need to put in at least 10,000 hours. I thought that sounded like an unusually long amount of time, until I figured out that there were 8,760 hours in a year. Suddenly, 10,000 hours didn't seem very daunting at all.

Doctors go to school--not including residency--for eight years. Between classwork and studying, they probably put in 60-70 hour weeks for at least nine months of the year. That's over 20,000 hours just to graduate--and most of us probably prefer a doctor with a few years experience.

Musicians--the top guns, the ones who play at Carnegie Hall--practice many hours every day, often from when they are young children. I played piano for eight years, and I was technically proficient--but I didn't love it so much that I was willing to put in more than the minimum required 30 minutes a day. (I can play piano, I've said, but I can't make music.) A girl two years younger than me practiced three hours every day. Was it any surprise that she was better? Yes, she had natural talent. But without practice, that natural talent would have gone nowhere. Just for the years she was a minor--before going to college--she practiced more than 10,000 hours.

Athletes train year-round, practice hours every day in and out of season, is it any wonder the basketball player who spends his free time shooting hoops and conditioning is the one getting the scholarship?

Then why is it that every writer on the planet hears, "I could write a book if I had the time." Or, "I'll write a book when I retire." Or, "It must be easy to churn out [fill-in-the-blank] books--they're so formulaic." (Romance writers get this all the time, but I know many mystery writers who hear the same thing. After all, aren't all mysteries the same? Murder, investigation, solution. Duh, anyone can do it, right?)

No one goes up to a doctor and says, "When I retire, I'm going to be a heart surgeon." Or, "If I had the free time, I'd go to medical school." 

Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone thinks they're the best person to tell it. How many hours have they put in to read, learn the craft, write, edit, delete, and write some more? I grow frustrated at times by some writers who finish a book and are then stunned and defeated by rejection. Many times these writers blame the system (New York wouldn't know a good book if they wrote it themselves.) Or agents (they don't want to work, they want the easy money.) Or the reading public (they just want to read trashy books.) Far too often, these writers become discouraged and spend more time lamenting the system or learning only about the business of published, rather than learning the craft: how to be a great storyteller.

One of the best things that Romance Writers of America does that few other writers organizations do (largely because most aren't fully open to unpublished writers) is teach want-to-be authors that they need to practice, write, re-write, write some more, and repeat as necessary. That most authors do not sell their first manuscript, or even their second. Or third. Yes, some do--many do not. An article I read when I first joined RWA in 2003, the year before I sold, said that among published authors in RWA, it took on average FIVE MANUSCRIPTS before a sale and FIVE YEARS, SIX MONTHS of writing before making the first sale.

Storytelling is hard work that takes thousands of hours of practice (and this doesn't include the thousands of hours of reading) but it doesn't get easier.

A doctor or a lawyer or an engineer may become more confident in their abilities as they gain experience, but I'd venture that open heart surgery is never easy, no matter how many times you've done it. Books are the same way. It doesn't get easier. Authors may gain confidence, or may see problems in their stories earlier simply because they have more experience, but writing is never easy. In fact, as we've discussed here recently, it gets harder. My books are tighter and cleaner when I turn them in--meaning, the technical part of the writing is easier for me after 14 books--but the storytelling is harder now than when I started. 

But even so, I love it. With all the warts and heartache and long hours and the fact that I'm still learning and have much, much more to learn about storytelling (like who knew I needed a theme? Thank you Alex and Stephen) . . . I wouldn't want to do anything else. There is no end of the road, where you've learned everything you can. Basketball players, when they win, don't stop practicing. Doctors, when they graduate, don't stop reading medical journals. Writers, when they get published, don't think they now know everything. (In fact, many of us are stunned when people come to us for advice because we're really just winging it.)

I figured I probably wrote or studied craft about 10,000 hours from when I was ten until I was 34, when I sold my first book. Since I sold, I've put in over 14,000 hours writing and re-writing and studying and practicing and learning from people who know much more than I do.

Writing is hard work. It takes hours, thousands of hours, to go from crapola to something marginally publishable. And if you fail as a writer, you can always be a heart surgeon, right? 

Writers, what are some of the odd or insulting comments you've gotten about your writing? Readers, what are some misconceptions about YOUR profession? What, if anything, are you willing to put in more than 10,000 hours to master? 

Literary Look-Alikes: Who are the Doppelgangers?

Over at Facebook, folks are winding down Doppelganger Week, which called on Facebook users to change their profile picture to a celebrity they've been said to resemble.

As it turns out, I've been said to resemble a broad array of celebrities.  When I was in college, my father (around the same time he said my two sisters looked like Jessica Lange and Kim Basinger, respectively), maintained that I looked "just like" these knockouts:

Apparently age has treated me well, however.  More recently, I've been compared to these women:

Um, yeah... right.  Although I'm much happier to be compared to Kate Hudson or that actress who temporarily ruined Law & Order than either of the Rosies, I conclude from this mish mash of non-matching faces that I may not have a celebrity doppelganger.  But, lucky for me, other writers do.

You see, much like my father, I also have a tendency to swear that people look "just like" someone else.  I can't run into Andrew Gross, for example, without reminding him he looks like that totally hot kid on Weeds.

  

 And poor Michael Koryta has surely lost count of the times I've pointed out his resemblance to David Duchovny.

 

Marcus Sakey's probably sick of hearing that he looks like Starsky.

 

The late JD Salinger bore a strong resemblance to George Gershwin.

JA Konrath sort of looks like Ben Roethlisberger.

And Barry Eisler might as well change his last name to Baldwin.

It turns out some writers have lookalikes I hadn't thought of. Jason Pinter also played Doppelganger Week, posting a photo of Al Gore.  Now, Jason, can you say "Lockbox?"

Laura Lippman tells me she's often compared to Susan Dey.  No surprise there, right? 

  

But I was beyond amused to hear that in profile, she's a dead ringer for a fellow journalist who loved Underdog, Sweet Polly Purebred.

With some writers, the identification of a lookalike's a little more challenging.  And, boy, do I like a challenge.

With someone like James Born, for example, it depends which photograph you select.  In some pictures he looks a lot like that writer who once said I looked like Rosie O'Donnell.

But in other pictures, Jim, I've got to say it, you look more like MacGyver.

 

In my constant quest to identify lookalikes, I have an irritating tendency to tell friends they look like X and Y had a baby.  Harlan Coben, for example, looks like the offspring of Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci.

+     =

And Victor Gischler could be the long-lost love child of Meat Loaf and Mario Batali.  (Wow, that sentence  actually made me hungry.)

+     =

 So here's today's challenge: Who are the other doppelgangers?  Do you have one, and this a good thing or bad?  And which other writers have lookalikes that I've missed?  Psychic gold stars for those who include links to photos!

Author Bios: What's Missing from the Back Inside Flap

by Alafair Burke

I promise this next sentence is an honest intro to today's post, not just BSP: This weekend I officially joined the board of directors of Mystery Writers of America and became President of the New York chapter.  (Pause for applause.)

In preparation for the annual MWA board funfest (aka orientation day), the unparalleled Margery Flax requested a biography to distribute to fellow board members.  I sent her the usual jacket copy:

A formal deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair Burke now teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School and lives in New York City.  A graduate of Stanford Law School, she is the author of the Samantha Kincaid series, which includes the novels Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and Close Case.  Most recently, she published Angel's Tip, her second thriller featuring Ellie Hatcher.

Her response was polite, quick, and resoundingly clear, something like, "Are you sure that's all you want to include?  This is usually a longer fun one, only for internal board distribution."

In other words, Yawn, Snore, Zzzz....

I can take a hint, so I gave it another try.  Borrowing in part from my website, I allowed myself thirty minutes to hammer out something that would give those who hadn't met me yet some sense of who I am and where I've been.  Margery's assurance that this was purely internal was freeing.

After I submitted my specially-designated "MWA board bio," I couldn't stop thinking about the sterileness of those book jacket author bios, scrubbed clean of all personality.  As writers, we're committed to exploring the human stories that lurk beneath the superficial, but when asked to describe ourselves: Yawn, snore, zzzz.....

I've spoken a few times during author appearances about a hypothetical world in which books (like the law school exams I grade as a professor) would be published anonymously, their authors known only by a randomly assigned number that readers could use to "identify" the authors they consistently enjoyed.  After all, what separates reading from television and film is the active role of our mind's eye.  To read books without knowing an author's age, gender, race, religion, region, education, attractiveness, or work experience might truly unleash our imaginations.

Despite my musings about a utopia of anonymous publishing, I've come to realize why publishers emphasize (and readers desire) personal information about authors.  The most delightful unexpected benefit of writing has been meeting some of my favorite authors.  I already read these folks religiously before I met them, but I'll admit that I read them differently -- and more richly -- now.  I recognize the wry winks in Laura Lippman's most leisurely paragraphs.  I hear Michael Connelly's quiet voice in Bosch.   I think I really know what Lisa Unger means when she writes on Ridley Jones's behalf that she's a "dork."  And those short, little, maddeningly frustrating sentences from Lee Child are now sexy as hell.

But I didn't get any of that from the book jackets. 

As the traditional print media and personal appearance opportunities for authors to introduce themselves to readers continue to dry up, many of us have taken to the Web.  We do that not only to get our names out there, but also because we recognize that readers are more likely to experience our written work as intended if they come to it with a sense of who we are. (For example, an online reviewer once dissed a line of Ellie Hatcher's, something like "kicking it old school."  The fact that it's corny to talk that way is of course precisely why she'd say such a thing. And if the reader "got" Ellie or anything about my work, he'd know that's -- ahem -- just how we roll.)

So as we're knocking ourselves out to convey our souls to readers, maybe we should take another look at book jacket bios.  The publishers are going to type something beneath that favorite photo: It may as well be interesting.  And so, even though Margery promised to keep this unsanitized bio a secret, I've decided to blast it out to the world:

Alafair Burke is the author of six novels in two series, one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, the other with Portland prosecutor Samantha Kincaid.  Although reviewers have described both characters as “feisty,” Alafair might accidentally spill a drink on anyone who invokes that word to describe her or anyone she cares about.

Alafair grew up in Wichita, Kansas, whose greatest contribution to her childhood was a serial killer called BTK.  Nothing warps a young mind quite like daily reports involving the word, bind, torture, and kill.

From Kansas, Alafair dreamed of fleeing west.  Fearing their daughter might fall prey to a 1980’s version of the Manson Family (um, Nelson?), her parents prohibited her from attending school in California.  Ironically, she ended up at Reed College, where the bookstore sold shirts that read "Atheism, Communism, Free Love," and Alafair found herself (lovingly) nicknamed Nancy Reagan and The Cheerleader.

From Reed, Alafair went to the decidedly less hippy-ish Stanford Law School. Although she went with dreams of becoming an entertainment lawyer so she could make deals at the Palm and score seats at the Oscars, she eventually realized she had watched "The Player" one too many times, and instead decided to pursue criminal law because she was obsessed with the Unabomber.

Most of Alafair’s legal practice was as a prosecutor in Portland, Oregon, where she infamously managed to tally up a net loss on prison time imposed during her prosecutorial career.  (Help spring two exonerated people from prison to put a guy called the Happy Face Killer behind bars, and it really ruins your numbers.)  As hard as it is for her to believe, she is now a professor at Hofstra Law School.

When Alafair is not teaching classes or writing, she enjoys rotting her brain.  She runs to an iPod playlist with three continuous hours of spaz music (think "It Takes Two" by DJ Rob Bass, "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Art Farm, and "Planet Claire" by the B-52's). She insists that Duran Duran, the Psychedelic Furs, and the Cure hold up just as well as the so-called classics. She watches way too much television, usually on cable.  She wants Tina Fey to be her BFF.  She likes to drink wine and cook. 

She discloses TMI on the Interwebs, blogging regularly at Murderati and logging teenage-territory hours on Facebook.  She will golf at the drop of a hat even though she’s bad at it.

Most importantly, Alafair loves her husband, Sean, and their French bulldog, The Duffer.  She also loves her parents, but if you ask her about them, she’ll ask you about yours.


What do you think?  Should all authors let loose on their jacket flaps?  Would it affect that crucial decision of whether to purchase?  Would it change how we read?  If you're a writer, what should your author bio REALLY say?  And if you're a reader, what would you like to know about some of your favorite writers?

P.S.  As a follow up to my last post about my sometimes odd marketing attempts, I brought a video today for Show and Tell.  Not the usual literal movie trailer, the clip is intended to evoke the themes, setting, and tone of my new book, 212, out in March.  It also allowed me to bop around to Lady GaGa for countless hours and tally it mentally as work-related.  What do you think?

Chameleon or True Blue?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I find myself now, for various reasons, in a sort of therapy (is that vague enough? Because I can easily be more vague…) which requires that I regularly talk about my thoughts and feelings, and things like How I Am.

Some of you who have met me in person have noticed and called me on the fact that I rarely talk much about myself – I’m very good at turning the conversation to YOU so that I don’t have to disclose anything. (Or maybe more because I have no idea How I Am. Remember, I started blogging about story structure primarily so I wouldn’t have to talk about myself anymore… and anyway if I’m at a conference the answer is always the same - I’m deliriously happy. Who wouldn’t be?)

To a certain extent all writers are good at this, turning the conversation onto someone else, because hey, it’s character research. Maybe in fact all good writers are good at it, and only the annoying ones that you would never read anyway talk about themselves all the time (and I know you all know who I mean).

But in this therapy I am very good at talking about myself. I disclose all kinds of things. I even cry. Because I am nothing if not a good student, expert at discerning what a teacher (or director or choreographer) wants from me.

When I was doing improv I had directors who called personal disclosures like the ones I am now engaged in “California Scenes”. It wasn’t a compliment. A California scene is when you just dump every sordid detail of your character’s life onto your scene partner – and never actually tell the real truth.

The thing is, what truth? What real?

What I mean is, how do I know what’s me when I just spent four hours in what was basically a dissociative state as a sixteen-year old girl tracking a potential mass murderer through the back tunnels of a shopping mall? I can tell you her feelings, but those aren’t really my feelings. Except that for the last four hours, they were.

When you spend most of your waking day being someone else, and most of the rest of it dreaming, who are you really?

This is I think why, for so long, actors were shunned by society and not allowed to be buried in hallowed ground. (That I suppose and all that unhallowed sex). Because they’re not really real. You never know who they are. But then what about us writers who play EVERY part, constantly, plus sometimes an omniscient narrator on top of that? How much less real does that make us?

When I and my siblings were in high school, my brother once brought home a Cosmo magazine with one of those great Cosmo quizzes (you know you all love them): Are you a Chameleon or a True Blue? And said to my sister and me: “Right there is the problem. I’m a True Blue and you two are Chameleons.” And okay, yeah, we didn’t even have to take the quiz to know that he was right. But we did take the quiz, and he was right.

Day to day I’m actually quite fine with my Chameleon nature, because it IS who I am. But I’m less comfortable with it in therapy; it makes me feel like I’m lying. Maybe because in the group I seem to be surrounded by True Blues. But maybe those people have a very strong sense of who I am, and I’m the one who doesn’t.

Now, we all write ourselves as characters, to a certain extent or another. I certainly am not as much any character I’ve written as Cornelia is Madeleine Dare, not even in the same universe, but I can point to certain characters in certain books and say definitively that they’re more me than others. I’ve noticed our readers play that game, too (just the other day someone here commented that she sees Tess when she reads Maura Isles, and really, who doesn’t?). Only at least with me, they’re mostly wrong. People think I’m Laurel MacDonald because there are places in THE UNSEEN where she says things in my voice, and I used a lot of my California-to-North Carolina experience in the book. But she’s a lot prettier than I am and also worlds less sure of herself… she’s softer, so much so that I don’t much relate to her. I’ve also had people say to me, “Do you know someone like Robin (in THE HARROWING)? Because she seems so real but you’re not at all like her.” But actually I am very much like her, but that’s just one half of me, and the other half, that masks her, is another character in the book.

I am very grateful for the conference circuit, which for me provides a very grounding, real-life balance to the all that writing and dissociation I do. I can find myself again in large groups of people (well, especially if there’s dancing), and when I am forced to talk about myself (on panels, etc.), I remember who I am, apart from the random dreamlike state that writing is.

But I guess this is what is puzzling me. Are ALL writers Chameleons, or are some of us True Blues who easily snap back into our “real” selves once we turn off the computer for the day? Are some people with “real” jobs as much Chameleons as actors or writers, playing a completely different part or parts during the day, at work, which parts are as much a dissociative state as writing?

What do you think? Are you a Chameleon or a True Blue?

And for bonus points, writers: which characters that you’ve written are most like you? Readers, which characters do YOU think are most like the authors who write them? And most importantly, why do you think actors were not allowed to be buried in hallowed ground?

- Alex

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Alex will be in New Orleans this Labor Day weekend for Heather Graham’s unmissable Writers for New Orleans Conference, teaching Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, paneling, and (thank God) being herself by playing a pirate wench and riverboat prostitute with Heather’s Slush Pile Players. Pitch sessions available with editors and publishers Leslie Wainger, Adam Wilson, Eric Raab, Ali deGray, Kate Duffy and Helen Rosburg.