Inspiration from Unlikely Places - Mar Preston

Inspiration comes from unlikely places in the form of ears going ping, ping, ping and your fingers tingling as you reach for a pen or keyboard.

Cherry Mattias, DVM, and I attended the Writers of KernSpring conference yesterday. Writers of Kern (WOK) is a branch of the California Writers Club serving Bakersfield and its surrounding communities. WOK provides a forum for published and aspiring writers to share ideas, hone their craft and encourage one another. 

The yearly conference held in Bakersfield, California brought together poet Matthew Woodman, mystery icon Anne Perry and Victoria Zackheim, and Bakersfield Californian columnist Lois Henry.

All of the presenters, who are what you’d call professional writers, have thought deeply about the subject of voice or persona.  With the exception of Lois Henry they speak of their love of their craft. 

What unified the three disparate speakers was an insistence on writing honestly and from the heart. Victoria Zackheim, a playwright, novelist, and writing teacher pushes her students in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program to go deeper and deeper in writing the personal essay to heal the raw patches in one’s own soul. Anne Perry, author of 80 novels with 27 million copies sold, stated readers instantly spot insincerity. Zackheim and Perry are fast friends and speak daily, brainstorming plot ideas and spurring each other on.

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in wishing I could be part of these conversations. 

Matthew Woodman, who teaches writing at California State University Bakersfield, skillfully presented a session on how to adopt a voice particular to a poem, drawing on the work of Carl Jung’s archetypes and the contemporary adaption of Jung’s ideas in the work of Carol Pearson. Voice and persona are airy ideas that sometimes feel ethereal. I was impressed and pleased at Woodman’s skillful explanation,  illustrating the concepts with poems, one of them his own.

I read a lot of fiction, a lot of crime fiction as well, and I sometimes forget how much I enjoy poetry’s concise evocation of feeling. I seem to need 300-350 pages to tell a story and here was Woodman’s poem in sonnet form updating the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in Los Angeles. 

Lois Henry, who reports and writes and twice-weekly column for the local newspaper, claims to hate writing. Winner of major awards for journalism, she’s pressed often to collect her columns into a book.  She can’t imagine anything worse than writing all day then going home to write in the evening, to paraphrase her remarks. A breezy and fresh voice in the afternoon of the conference, she focused on the nature of her craft which is to entertain and inform her readers with crisp, accurate, and economical prose. 

Cherry Mattias, DVM, my co-founder of the Bakersfield Sisters in Crime chapter, is a beginning mystery writer. We were there to not only learn from the presenters but also to drum up support for our fledgling mystery writers’ group. The group of about 75 eager attendees represented the range of the writing craft: creative non-fiction (memoir writing), romance, science fiction, local history, poetry—from beginners to seasoned professionals. 

Sadly there were few mystery writers. 

Nonetheless, it was an interesting and worthwhile day spent with engaging presenters which made me rush home to my computer to start writing my sixth Dave Mason mystery.

Check out my new eBook. Don't fall prey to self-doubt and the Why Bother syndrome.

http://www.amazon.com/Finishing-Your-First-Mystery-Writing-ebook/dp/B01CF367BU/

The Freedom of Finishing by Mar Preston

I’ve just sent off my sixth novel to my editor and my two best and trusted writer friends. I am hoping to get insightful comments that help me better this mystery. It is the second in my series about a Kern County Sheriff’s Detective investigating a murder in the far from tranquil village where I live.

I’ve turned it over after two years work on it. After four unpublishable novels which served as an apprenticeship in learning how to write, then five modestly successful crime fiction novels, I thought I had the process down fairly well. This last one has almost defeated me.

Perhaps it was one I did really want to write but felt I had to. Four previous novels were set in Santa Monica and featured an SMPD detective. But my bestselling novel had been a standalone set in my mountain village. I thought it should be the debut of a series.

It’s advanced slowly through many fits and starts. I tried outlining which is against my nature. I changed the killer half way through. I gave the killer a sidekick. The only constant through this agonizing process was that the story took place in a cat sanctuary. I knew the animal rescue world and it unfailingly intrigues me.

In the meantime I wrote and published 3 eBooks on the topic of Writing Your First Mystery. The book, still untitled, just wouldn’t come and I had now put so much time into it, I couldn’t abandon it. Finally I summarized the process in a 4th eBook called Finishing Your First Mystery, now in the process of publication. I worked at the wretched novel almost every day for two years. Of course there were lapses, but not many.

Quoting one of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman: Creative work is often a slog and the only way you'll really get good at it is to finish what you start even when it's not going well. You'll end up learning more from that experience than if you quit.

Gaiman is right. I feel some sense of satisfaction, it’s true, even if I can’t say yet it’s ready for publication. By now I know it will be finished and I will feel pride when I hold it in my hand.
More than anything I feel the freedom of finishing. My first waking thought is not dread at what lays ahead of me when I open the file for the day. I can play at writing. Blogs, do some long-needed promotion, write a catch up email to my friend in Australia, pick up the phone and have a long gossipy conversation with a friend, start a new novel.

I’ve learned again that writing a novel-length piece of crime fiction is a marathon endeavor. My good friend tells me I always say I will never do this again at the finish of a novel. I don’t remember that but I believe her.

A story is already bubbling in my mind, this one in Santa Monica.

Writing Your First Mystery is available free here on my website.

Writing the End - Mar Preston

Finishing: this subject is much with me as I labor towards the end of my sixth murder mystery, this one set in a tranquil village in the mountains of Central California.  A sequel to Payback, the debut of a second series that takes place in a village somewhat like where I live, it hasn’t come easily.  In fact it’s the most difficult of my six crime fiction novels. 

My editor returned my first draft with comments. I knew the draft had faults but I couldn’t figure out how to fix them. If I was ever going to write The End I needed to get past the gaping plot holes and somewhat peculiar motivations for the Killer. 

She pounced on all the faults, of course, because she’s a superb editor. We had a phone meeting and I did my best not to whimper. I know that critique is not criticism.  What lies ahead to fix the problems is a painstaking restructuring of the characters and plot.

What is keeping me going at this point? Certainly not the money.  I hear you all laughing. 

The fame?  I am famous on my block. They love me here. Not the fame then. 

The joy of writing?  Not hardly. I actually considered falling madly, foolishly in love with an unsuitable man just so I would have the excuse not to finish this wretched thing. 

But something must keep me going. I like my characters. That must be it. The setting, yes, that too. The novel features a murder in a well-funded cattery, that’s a sanctuary for cats of all sorts: kittens that get adopted the same day they come in; cats who are frisky and cute; and senior cats who have beautiful markings.  And it provides shelter for the sickly and  unadoptables. 

I have in mind Cat House on the Kings near Fresno, California, which I visited this summer when I got my American citizenship. I could not speak more highly of the work they do. That visit was a joy.

I do care about the subject matter of animal rescue. There are things I want to say. 

Writing a book is a marathon exercise. It will drain from you every scrap of inborn talent, memories, dreams, fantasies and life experience. You may have come to the point where there’s nothing left but heart. Raw guts. 

I suspect I’m at the 23- mile mark and can’t see the finish. That’s what I say to myself as I sit down every day to work on it. I will finish this and it will be good. 

 http://www.amazon.com/Private-School-Detective-Mason-Mystery-ebook/dp/B010YF49XO/