Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

I was back again at the YMCA, exercising with my children last week. This time I’d finished walking on the treadmill and decided to try out a weight machine I’d never used before.

I read the little sign on the side of the machine and hesitantly started out.

After a minute or two, I relaxed. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. In fact, it seemed almost easy!

I was confidently lifting the weights when a big guy, with a YMCA badge on, walked up to me, frowning. “You’re doing it wrong, ma’am,” he said. “You should be sitting all the way up here. And your elbows should be here. And you need to pull the bar this way.”

Suddenly, the weight lifting got much harder. And more unpleasant. In fact, I stopped doing it completely and retreated to the safety of the treadmill.

This, I think, is what writing is like at first. I’ve gone back and looked at stuff I wrote fifteen years ago and winced. The WIPs usually had good bones to them, but they were a cosmetic disaster area. Lots of telling instead of showing, too many dialogue tags, gobs of adverbs.

I can tell by reading it that the words were coming to me really quickly—but I was, technically, doing it all wrong.

I think we all need someone to (more gently than the guy at the gym did) tell us when we need to go back to the drawing board—or do some major revision. Sometimes the story does come out really easily, but usually we have to do a lot of grunt work in the editing process…and we could use some direction.

New writers should probably try to pass their manuscript around in front of a beta reader or two. There are writing critique groups online where you can find critique partners who write the same genre. They’ll read your manuscript critically and you’ll read theirs in return.

What’s important, I think, is not to retreat when the going gets hard or when we hear constructive criticism, or when we realize the process is a lot more time-consuming and scary than we thought. For most of us, writing is just too important to us to give up because we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.

I ended up going back to that weight machine…not that day (because I was too flustered), but the next one. And my muscles really did end up being sore afterwards…but the sense of accomplishment was worth it.

My July 6th release is just days away! Click here for my book release contest. Entering is easy…and you might win a $25 bookstore gift card, a signed copy of “Delicious and Suspicious,” and a “Delicious and Suspicious” tote bag. :)

I’d like to thank Deb for guest hosting today. Deb is a friend of mine and fellow Mystery Ink author and I’m a huge fan of her humorous Southern mysteries. I’m honored she’s at Mystery Writing is Murder today–the day her new Mace Bauer mystery, Mama Gets Hitched, is released. Welcome, Deb!

Thanks so much, Elizabeth, for inviting me to guest at ”Mystery Writing is Murder.” A lot of truth in that blog title, honey.

If you’re a writer, you should be able to write anywhere, right? I was embracing that dictum recently while barreling south on the Florida Turnpike, cruise control set somewhere north of 70 mph.

Don’t get your knickers in a knot, safe driving advocates. Both hands were firmly on the wheel. My husband was in the passenger seat with his laptop, typing away as the two of us collaborated on a writing project. I’d toss out a line; he’d type. He’d toss out a line; I’d wrinkle my nose because it wasn’t exactly the same line I would write. Anything Goes Husband and Control Freak Wife as collaborators. Weird, and the subject of a whole ‘nother blog post. Kerry Sanders and I have been married for 21 years, both from journalism backgrounds. He’s in TV, and I come from print, which is definitely apples and oranges.

I read last month on Elizabeth’s blog about stretching as a writer. It was great advice, and it was exactly what I was doing at 70-some mph (Okay: 80. You get flattened if you go any slower in South Florida, where even the cops pass you at 70). Kerry volunteered us to write a script for a short film competition, despite my imminent launch for MAMA GETS HITCHED, and the fact that the man travels more than 200 days of the year reporting for NBC. We typically communicate via sticky notes and Facebook. Oh, yeah. Did I mention neither of us had ever written a screenplay?

”When are we supposed to write this movie?” I asked, my voice edged with wifely exasperation and a touch of hysteria.

”Don’t worry. It’ll work out,” Kerry said, which is pretty much his answer to everything.

Kerry flew from Louisiana, where he’d been covering the oil spill, to meet me in Boston, where our nieces were graduating. To get home, we had a three-hour plane ride, together for change. We squeezed in most of the writing then. Once back to Florida, he had barely enough time for expenses and laundry before it was back to the Gulf. But first, we did a little turnpike writing on a two-hour drive to an event he couldn’t cancel.

With three of my funny ”Mace Bauer Mysteries” published, and a fourth out next year, I’m in sync with Mace, Mama, and the town I created in Himmarshee, Fla. By now, the books feel like a favorite pair of shoes: Gently worn, but still shiny. Writing a script, especially with such a narrow time window, was like wearing new dress shoes: They pinch, and if you’re unused to heels, like I am, there’s always the chance you’ll teeter and fall on your face.

Exhilarating, right?

If you’re looking for a way to stretch, though, try writing a short movie script (Each minute on film is about a page; so we ended up with 10 pages.) There are plenty of resources to learn the format online or at the library. The experience may sharpen your prose, too. A screenplay forces you to concentrate on skills every novelist needs:

1. Advancing plot with dialogue and action. No room — or audience patience — for long narrative passages.
2. Conveying character quickly through clothing, props, and gestures. (One of our characters carried a tiny designer purse and a long cigarette holder: an instant visual to tell the viewer –or reader– this woman is different from someone who might wear owlish glasses and clutch a book.)
3. Deciding what’s essential and stripping away the rest. (We cut an entire character and his dialogue when we realized he was making the same point we’d already gotten across).
4. Starting your work ”in scene.”

Beginning writers can rarely resist the urge to explain how their characters got to the point where the story’s action truly starts. Our little movie begins at a train station, where a crowd is assembled waiting for a ”beloved” Hollywood icon. She’s returning to the small town she couldn’t wait to quit; the same town she’s trashed during the intervening decades as a backwater hicksville. The scene is set, the characters and action are underway, the train whistle sounds.

Kerry and I didn’t start with what the characters had for breakfast; what route they drove to the station; or the phone call they got two weeks earlier inviting them to come. We started In scene.

The process definitely made me stretch as a writer. I even stretched a bit as a wife. I have to admit Kerry was right. (Mark this day in your calendars, folks!) It did work out.

Deborah Sharp, a former USA Today reporter, sets her ”Mace Bauer Mysteries” in a rodeo-and-ranching slice of her native Florida. She and husband Kerry Sanders live in Fort Lauderdale. No kids; no pets. They had a couple of goldfish once. It turned out badly. You can visit Deborah’s website here.

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Because I have events in the next couple of months that will involve speaking, I decided to pull up my tips from a year ago and review them. (I haven’t done any public speaking for a couple of months and I get rusty quickly.) In case anyone else is in the same boat, I’m running the post again here:

Five years ago, public speaking was a dreaded, but necessary, horror for me. You’d have had to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart and prop me up at the lectern to prevent me from looking like I was about to pop out of my skin. If you’d looked up the phrase ‘nervous wreck,’ it would’ve pictured me for illustration.

Nowadays I’m speaking in public so often that the biggest danger is that I look bored. Frequently, I am bored! If you’ve been listening to someone repeatedly give the same spiel, as I’ve listened to myself, then boredom does set in.

A while back, Helen Ginger did a great series on public speaking at the Blood Red Pencil blog with a lot of wonderful tips.

I have a few tips of my own, learned the hard way.

Bring water. Sometimes the venue organizer will provide it, but more often they’re so busy that they don’t think about it. I’ve had coughing fits before and just had to get up and leave. (I’m sure SWINE FLU!) was going through everyone’s mind.

Bring money. If you’re speaking in a library or to an organization (and are selling books), bring lots of ones and fives. I’ve forgotten to bring money to several of mine and when the people asked if I had change, I said, “No. But what do you have?” Bartering at its finest.

Arrive early. I don’t like surprises and events are very different from each other: with microphones, without mikes, standing, sitting, sharing your time with other writers…it’s just good to know what’s expected of you before your talk starts.

Arriving early also puts me more at ease. If I meet people as they arrive to listen to me, I feel a lot more comfortable talking to them later.

Watch eyes and faces. They’ll let you know if you’re getting too boring. If I signs of sleepiness, I’ll change my talk’s course.

Too short is better than too long. Notice when you’re starting to ramble. This can be a symptom of being too comfortable with public speaking, but there’s also a nervous rambling that happens with newbie public speakers…I did it whenever I lost my train of thought or forgot what the original question was. Now I just wrap up my segment quickly when I feel blah blah blahs coming on.

Have fun. Be funny. Those in attendance are so appreciative if we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

How about everyone else? Any good tips to share?

My July 6th release is right around the corner. Click here for my book release contest. Entering is easy…and you might win a $25 bookstore gift card, a signed copy of “Delicious and Suspicious,” and a “Delicious and Suspicious” tote bag. :)

Maybe it’s because it’s Walmart, but I get annoyed every time I’m at the checkout because the sign says 12 items or less. It should be 12 items or fewer.

This, of course, makes no difference at all. The point is the same—if you have 13 or more items, don’t stand in that line. (Although people do. That annoys me too, but that’s a whole other issue.)

And when I took my dog to the vet the other day, I drove on a road that claimed it was a boulevard. A boulevard, by definition, is a wide street or thoroughfare. But it wasn’t wide at all—it was a winding two lane country road that was acting pretentious.

I’m the first to admit that this blog is rife with errors and typos because I’m bolting through my posts. But I take a lot more care with my manuscripts—they’ll be as error-free as I can make them before I submit them to my agent or editor. Although I know they’ll still have errors (with any luck, just minor ones)— the errors will bug me to death, even if no one else notices they’re there.

But Jane Friedman, editor of Writer’s Digest, wrote a post recently that surprised me. She states:

But if I have a pet peeve with writers (both beginning and published), it’s their unrelenting obsession & unforgiving attitude toward errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Ouch.

She goes on to say that “perfect grammar has nothing to do with great writing.” Ms. Friedman calls it a “surface level” problem that sucks up energy better spent toward content and craft.

This post makes me wonder if I’m just off-base with my nit-pickiness. It’s probably just English majoritis on my part.

How thorough are you with your editing? Do grammatical errors and typos trip you up as a reader, or are you able to overlook them?