Holy cats — I just realized I have a book coming out in a week from Tuesday. It’s the paperback edition of Life Sentences and, for the first time since 1997, I am NOT touring. I am doing events in my two hometowns, Baltimore and New Orleans. You can find me:
March 2, 7 p.m., Barnes and Noble, Ellicott City, MD, Long Gate Shopping Center.
March 15, 7 p.m, Garden District Bookshop, 2727 Prytania, New Orleans.
But as a countdown to publication, I’d like to switch this blog from memories to advice for writers AND readers. To start, I’d like to talk about ideas. I know most writers don’t, that they groan at the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” But I like it and I think it’s an understandable question because our culture tends to create an aura of mystery around creativity and inspiration. There is a sense that certain talents are innate and maybe they are. But if craft is 90 percent of any endeavor — writing, cooking, gardening, playing a musical instrument — then aren’t creative outlets open to all?
Last year, as I was finishing my 15th novel, I found myself without an idea for the next book. Oh, I had a mental folder with at least three or five possible books, but it wasn’t the right time for any of them. I refused to panic, although — this is how I make my living. If I don’t write books, I don’t get paid. Weeks went by. Exactly six, if you want to know. I was keeping score. But I refused to panic. I decided that the latest book was taking a very long time to leave my system, and that was probably a good thing, a sign that I had been very deep into it. Until it was out, nothing new could really seize my imagination.
Then one morning, I was sitting in a neighborhood coffeehouse, playing with Facebook, staring into space. I wrote to my writer friend Jeff Abbott that I had no idea what I was going to write next. I stared into space a little more. I found myself thinking about Great Expectations, how a sinister person proves to be a benign benefactor. I thought about the wonderfully odd, beautiful, sui generis neighborhood in which I grew up, one I keep promising to tackle in fiction. I thought about a famous template in fiction, one used by writers as diverse as Val McDermid, Kevin Wignall, Lois Duncan and Wes Craven. I thought about a tiny detail from Every Secret Thing.
And there it was. I went straight from the coffee house to a spinning class — I know, tough life, eh? — and the idea continued to take shape against the backdrop of Lady Gaga and uphill climbs. I started the next day and since then I’ve written about 10,000 words, although I put the book aside when my galleys arrived Friday.
As it happens, the day before I started writing a new novel, I met one of my heroes/crushes, Tom Colicchio of Top Chef, who was kind enough to shoot the breeze with a good friend and me for an hour or so. At one point, he said: “Trained chefs don’t really use recipes. If I’m going to braise something, I know how to do that. And if I don’t have rosemary, I’ll use thyme.” As someone who follows recipes almost slavishly, I thought hard about this. Did it apply to what I did as a writer? In a sense, it did. And, in fact, I could use it as a cook, too. A week later, making red beans and rice, I had to make several adjustments for missing ingredients. It was one of the best batches I’ve made to date.
When it comes to ideas, I know if I open up my mind, it will eventually lead me to a new story I want to tell. And I don’t see that I have anything to lose by sharing this information with others. Yes, I suppose it would be more romantic to think of me in a long dress, wandering the moors of Baltimore and muttering to myself, or lying on a divan, a lily-white hand pressed to my forehead. But I don’t feel I have anything to gain by romanticizing the writer’s life.
I appreciate your willingness to share these thoughts with your readers and fellow writers. The idea and process of writing a novel, whether it be a mystery or something else, has always been somewhat mysterious. I don’t think it should be, and I believe readers are more engaged with a story if they understand from where it came. It really shouldn’t be a mystery. We had a friend recently read some of his poetry to us, and when my wife asked him whether a certain part of the last poem was a story about him and his son, the friend took offense. He said that when he views a great work of art in a museum, he doesn’t have the artist around to ask what inspired him to paint; so why should he have to say what inspired him to write the poem. Sure people don’t have to relay their sources of inspiration, but if they want their readers or viewers to appreciate the work, it is a heck of a lot better to be forthcoming. The reading audience does not need any more J.D. Salinger recluses. Thanks.
Laura, I’d been thinking that with your ability to find sympathetic chords with unlikely people, you might take on as a character a biology professoress who is denied tenure and responds by . . .
Ab – that exact same thing occurred to me last week, as the police suddenly looked at this professor and the “series of unfortunate events” that had occurred in the previous two decades, including another shooting and a pipe bomb.
One begins to think that the saying “you can’t make this stuff up” is almost true
That’s a pretty good idea, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that it was a novel in waiting.
As much as I love collecting writing advice and hearing how writers do there thing, I think it is very important for all artists to talk to other artists to help provide new angles on what we thought we knew. Writers should talk to chefs and painters and athletes and actors and stone masons and photographers and musicians.
One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was from a sculpture who told me she started first with just some globby vague shape of what the object would be and each pass she took at it she would refine it and add more detail. She told me I should try writing that way instead of planning it all out ahead first and damned if it didn’t work for me.
“Some globby vague shape” is a pretty good description of what I start with.
So, Laura, what is this “famous template” that Val McDermid and others have used? As usual, I am the last to learn of such things.
I credit my presence as a catalyst for the book idea finally popping out.
Sandra: A group of people, usually young, make a grave mistake, usually resulting in harm to another, and they decide their only recourse is never to speak of it, to anyone.
And, yes, Linda, you deserve full credit. If it weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t have gone to set that day!
Baltimore has moors?
I am living in DC, would love to come to the book signing, unfortunately, if we drove to it in MD for 7pm, by the time we got back we wouldn’t have a place to park, so will not see you there, but great idea advise. I crochet, and at times I use patterns others have written the same way a chef uses the recipes-oops out of that yarn, can’t get to the store, what other yarn do I have and presto-a different item. Creativity rears her head. Never realized before that I did the same cooking!!
Grant a gal some poetic license, Dusty!
I’ve always loved Harlan Ellison’s answer to the question of where he got his ideas. “Schenechtady. I subscribe to a service, they send six ideas down every Friday afternoon, I pick and choose.”
He had to stop being a smart-ass about it because too many people were asking him for the address, how much it cost, what did he do with the ideas he didn’t use, etc.
His real answer is right in line with yours, though. He stays open. Works for me as well. There are ideas I work on, I shape and craft, and then there are ideas that appear fully-formed (or close to it) out of thin air. The play we’re producing next is one of those, where the idea was so simple, so easy-to-grasp, and the crafting of the play itself has been a joy.