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I wrote for a couple of hours in the coffeehouse last week. A couple of hours is a pretty long writing session for me. I got nearly a chapter written on the second Memphis book and felt proud of myself for knocking so much out.

But there was a barista there who had me beat to pieces, as far as being productive.

She greeted probably 80% of the people who walked in the door by name. (I have days when I struggle to remember my own name. It’s the Riley/Elizabeth thing…I think I’m getting confused.) This girl seemed genuinely happy to see the customers and even asked about specific things related to their lives.

The barista told one of the customers that she’d been up until 2:30 that morning studying….she was a college student. She gotten to the coffee shop at 6:30 a.m. and was working until noon, when she went to class. After class she waited tables at a restaurant until 11-ish. Then went back to her apartment and studied.

Okay…given…she was 21 years old. Being young does do a lot for your energy level. But she seemed—alert. Energetic. Happy!

I’m usually running around like a chicken with my head cut off. It’s fueled by coffee in the early morning and deadline desperation by the late morning. My fast pace while knocking out non-writing related stuff is due to pure necessity. Otherwise…the stuff just wouldn’t get done.

My energy? It’s hyperactive. It does get stuff done, but I seem more jittery than not. And I have a writing friend, Cleo Coyle, who writes two series for Penguin and has a lot going on. But it seems like the more she has to do, the more productive she gets.

So I thought I’d look at energy-boosting ideas.

Coffee. I’m drinking enough of it, I’m sure. It does help, though! At least, short-term. Before the inevitable crash. :)

Exercise. Bleh. But okay, I’m trying. I’m on the Wii 3 or 4 times a week now, doing that advanced step aerobics. Does anybody else do it? Do y’all think it’s hilarious that the steppers are on a stage with an audience cheering them on?

Sleep. Yeah, that would definitely help. Insomnia keeps me from much of it, though.

Meditation/Quiet time. I hear a lot about the benefits of this, but haven’t seemed to be able or willing to squeeze time in for it. How long is long enough to have it work?

I’m thinking exercise or meditation sounds like the best of the group. Maybe there are more ways to get energized? Anyone?

And—if you exercise—what works well for you?

I thought that, after writing a post on James Patterson—the top book marketer—that I’d write a short post on J.D. Salinger—the anti-promoter.

James Patterson and J.D. Salinger shared the same publisher: Little, Brown & Co. That’s all they seem to have had in common.

Salinger, famed writer of Catcher in the Rye, died Wednesday at the age of 91. He wrote four books; his last release was Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963).

By all accounts, he was a man who loved writing. In 1999, Salinger’s neighbor claimed Salinger told him he had at least fifteen unpublished books in a safe at his house. Salinger’s former girlfriend said he wrote daily.

In 1974, Salinger told The New York Times: “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

Salinger was a remarkable writer, but it’s easy for me to feel selfish as a reader and wonder why he didn’t care more about us—what books have we missed out on because of his intensely private nature?

I have similar feelings for Harper Lee. No other To Kill a Mockingbirds for us? Really? Please?

I’m a private person, myself. And an introvert. It is very difficult for me to gear myself up to do an appearance or go to a conference or workshop. But I see it as part of my job as a writer.

The job description of an author has definitely changed in the past twenty years. Unless you have a truly amazing talent, you really can’t get away with doing some form of promotion for your novel.

Readers are lucky they have Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird to read and enjoy. Maybe it’s just human nature that we want a little more.

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A quick note to mention we’re all lying about ourselves at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen today–and also giving one truth…but you’ll have to pick out the truth from the lies! Hope you’ll pop over: we’re having fun today.

Thanks to Terry Odell for guest posting for me today for my Writing Process series on Mystery Writing is murder! Terry’s books straddle the mystery and romance genres and you can find out more about them here.

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Thanks, Elizabeth for having me as your guest on Mystery Writing is Murder. When I saw your topics, I had a head-scratch moment, since I don’t consciously separate my writing process into the 3 stages you mentioned. Then again, I’m someone who thought she was writing a mystery, but was told by my daughters that it was a romance. At that point, I’d never read a romance, so I just kept writing the story I wanted to tell. I didn’t know there were “rules” or “methods” so I just do what works for me.

I’m not a plotter or an outliner. I tried. Really tried. Went to all those workshops about storyboarding. But after a short time, all I could think was, “enough of this.” I don’t do character sheets, because that’s as much of an “enough of this” exercise as plotting.

For me, writing is a matter of moving in short bursts, and keeping track of what’s happened, or where I think I might want to go. But as Nora Roberts is famous for saying, “I can’t fix a blank page.” So I write and see what happens.

First writing of the day is looking at what I wrote the day before. It’s had time to settle, and the typos tend to rise to the top. It also gives me a running start for new material. I have an on-line critique group, and if they’ve given me feedback, I’ll decide what needs to be addressed. If they catch a plot hole, I have to fix it before going further.

Late afternoons and evenings, I write new stuff. That’s simply the way my mental rhythms work out; everyone deals with their own schedules.

My current manuscript was my first straight mystery, and I thought I might drag out the storyboard again. Still a no go. But I did find I could use it to keep track of what I’d written, and also of ideas for scenes, plot points, character moments. I used two separate boards: one for the ideas, and one for tracking the story.

First came the ideas. Plain and simple, it was brainstorming. Lots of “what if” thoughts. For previous books, I’d done it on a computer document, but having the physical sticky notes to pick up and move around gave me a better visual, and made it easy to change things. As I dealt with each ‘idea’ I’d either toss it or put it on the story board in the appropriate chapter box.

Since I’ve been “trained” in romance, I tend to focus on the big GMC: Goal, Motivation & Conflict for each character. I would figure out what my characters wanted, why they wanted it, and why they couldn’t have it. Again, a lot of trial and error. For example, in the book I just finished, the underlying motivation was for Justin to find a “secret something” (at the beginning of the book, that was enough for me) at his grandparents’ home. A big question I ask myself all through the process is “why”. So, why would Justin want something? And, the bigger why: Why doesn’t he just ask his grandparents for it? They love him; they’d probably give it to him. So figuring out what “it” was required a lot of discarded ideas.

But I don’t need to know exactly what it is right away. Heck, I didn’t even know who the villain was until at least halfway through the book. I strongly believe that our subconscious minds will know, or at least lead us in that direction.

Using colored post-its made it easy to see at a glance where the story was going. I learned what I needed to track and started adding things like where the scene took place, what secondary characters appeared, what clues were revealed, what day it was, etc. I used big sticky notes for the POV characters; a different color for each. I used smaller ones for the secondary characters, locale, etc. By the end, the story board was jam-packed, and my idea board was almost empty. If I’d looked at the empty board and tried to fill in before I started writing – well, “enough of this.”

So, I suppose if I had to summarize my writing technique, it would be plan a little, write a little, fix a little. Rinse. Repeat. When I finally get to “The End” I do tightening edits, but by then, the story should (note “should”, not “is”) be complete. After the tightening comes the polishing, where I’ll find the rest of those problem children that have risen to the top. But, again I don’t play by the rules. I can’t write scenes out of order. If I’m waiting for feedback on a critical point, rather than write ahead and take the chance everything will unravel when I find out whether the cops can actually do what I want them to, then I’ll do some polishing. Maybe I’ll plug a chapter into Wordle.net and see what words I’m overusing. Or make sure my transitions are clean, or my dialogue isn’t drivel.

If you want to see how my storyboard technique worked for me, there’s a summary on my website. http://www.terryodell.com

Hope this helped someone – I’ll be happy to answer questions. And I chat about other aspects of writing at my own blog, Terry’s Place, http://terryodell.blogspot.com

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Thanks so much, Terry! I love finding out how other authors plan and write their books. And that storyboard is very cool-looking.

I took this opportunity to do some guest blogging myself. :) You’ll find me today on Mason Canyon’s blog, Thoughts in Progress. My topic today is “Nancy, Trixie, Scooby, Miss Marple, and Me.” Hope you’ll pop by.

“I have a saying,” Patterson told [the interviewer]. “If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for a few friends, get a blog. But if you want to write for a lot of people, think about them a little bit. What do they like? What are their needs? A lot of people in this country go through their days numb. They need to be entertained. They need to feel something.”

I know James Patterson has as many detractors and critics as he does fans. Well, maybe not quite as many detractors as fans. :)

You can say what you like about his writing (or that of the co-authors he hires to write for and with him), but the man sells some books. And I do respect sales. You really can’t argue with money as an indicator of reader popularity.

According to the New York Times article from Sunday (which I’ve taken the block quote from, above), Nielson’s Bookscan reported that Stephen King, John Grisham and Dan Brown’s sales combined in recent years don’t match Patterson’s sales or income.

He has 51 New York Times bestsellers. Thirty-five of those books went all the way to the top spot.

So we’ve established that he’s an extremely popular and successful author. He gets repeat business from readers—some read everything that he puts out.

How does he do it? And—do we want to do it?

I’ll admit that I’m not a Patterson reader. My son reads his YA books, but his other lines are just too graphic for me (I’m a sensitive soul.) I’ve read probably one or two of his books, and it was a while back.

I read the New York Times article with a lot of interest. Several times in the story, it referenced Patterson’s populist appeal—an appeal he carefully planned. He thinks of himself as both an entertainer and a proponent of reading…reading for the masses. He aims to write books that will even pull in non-readers.

The Times says this about his style:

His books all share stylistic similarities. They are light on atmospherics and heavy on action, conveyed by simple, colloquial sentences. “I don’t believe in showing off,” Patterson says of his writing. “Showing off can get in the way of a good story.”

And this:

“…his books are accessible and engaging. “A brand is just a connection between something and a bunch of people,” Patterson told me. “Crest toothpaste: I always used it, it tastes O.K., so I don’t have any particular reason to switch. Here the connection is that James Patterson writes books that bubble along with heroes I can get interested in. That’s it.”

Basically, Patterson analyzes what readers want. What pulls them into a story? What makes them buy books? What makes them repeat readers?

He’s decided that his readers want a fast-paced book with short chapters, lots of action, and less setting and description. This formula is definitely working for him.

There’s no way that I could write books like James Patterson. But I found his approach very interesting—he writes what his readers want.

As a genre writer (low-to-midlist), I definitely want to tap in to what readers want. My editors want me to write what readers want, too—that is, after all, what sells books. Most often, what cozy mystery readers like to read is what I like to read: quirky, interesting characters, a twisty plot, a few red herrings chucked in.

But this article made me really sit down and assess—am I delivering what readers want?

I know there are many writers who write primarily to please themselves and they hope that their novel will please readers, too. There are some who probably wouldn’t want to sacrifice their vision for a book in favor of a populist appeal….they may even view that as selling out. This is likely the case with most literary fiction.

Unfortunately, it’s harder for books to get to the shelves if readership is uncertain.

The last thing the world needs is a bunch of James Patterson wannabes on the shelves.

But each genre has its avid readers. What do readers in your genre want? Is delivering their wants a priority of yours? Should it be…or is it too much of a sacrifice?

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Hope y’all will drop by tomorrow..my guest will be Terry Odell , kicking us off my series on the writing process with her post, titled “Plotting? Moi?”

And…feel like some corn pudding? It’s Simple Southern Side day at the Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen!

“Where do your ideas come from?”

Writers frequently tag that question as the single most frustrating inquiry we get from non-writers. It’s frustrating because it’s nearly impossible to answer. We get ideas from everything. Getting ideas isn’t usually the problem for a writer…herding the ideas is.

Plot ideas from current events:

The local newspaper has given me plenty of inspiration as a mystery writer. There have been stories this past week in the paper that completely horrified me. These stories will not fit in with my cozy writing. But they can send your mind into a whole different, dark direction.

Plot ideas from others:

Sometimes other people unwittingly give you plot ideas. I’ve overheard bits of conversation that have really made me raise my eyebrows…and reach for a pen. This is an advantage of being a wallflower and sitting quietly in public places. As a mystery writer, I’m particularly interested in what makes people upset with each other. I’ve heard stories of people angry with coworkers, spouses, and family. Motives galore! I can dream these motives up…well, I could. But I don’t have the violent emotions that some people have. I’m usually pretty calm. When I’m around people experiencing these high-powered emotions, I do jot down notes after they’re gone.

Character ideas from people we come across: My favorite people to bump into at the store or at the bank are people who surprise me or make me smile. I was at church a couple of weeks ago and a very stern old lady with tightly coiled curls put her elderly husband down firmly in the pew ahead of me. “Now don’t move! Don’t talk to anyone! Stay put.” And she stomped off to join the rest of the choir. He immediately got up and started talking to people in another pew. “Ohhh…he’s gonna be in trouble,” said my son. The best part was when she went up the aisle with the choir in the processional (singing an ancient…maybe 17th century, solemn hymn) and her husband reached out to pinch her as she went by. Her face was priceless. I jotted it all down on my bulletin so I wouldn’t forget her expression.

Plot ideas from our own experiences: I don’t plan to write about myself. But there’s a little bit of me that goes into my protagonists—usually a bad part. I think writing down my shortcomings is good therapy in a way. Other people put a lot of themselves in a book.

Plot ideas from the world around us:

Plot ideas from music we hear. Plot ideas from something we see while we’re out running errands.

I pick up facial expressions, names, emotions, outfits, and settings when I’m on the go. It’s a constant stream of inspiration—bits and pieces of things to eventually make up a big picture.

Where do you get your ideas from?