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Unfortunately, my son’s technology teacher got very frustrated with his 7th grade class Monday.

One of the students hadn’t followed directions and printed out 8 sheets on the computer printer instead of the 2 that the teacher instructed.

The teachers are allotted a certain number of paper reams per quarter. The student who didn’t listen understandably upset the teacher.

To my irritation, though, he punished the whole class. It was probably one of those “straw that broke the camel’s back” things. I’ve met this teacher and thought him a pretty nice guy.

To add to my irritation, his punishment was for the class to write.

Wonderful. Great way to foster a love of writing in the next generation. It couldn’t be math problems instead? (Now I’m risking upsetting the math types here….but there are only 2 math lovers that I’m aware of who read this blog.)

My son came home in a really frustrated mood and told me he had to write a five page essay on three computer-related questions.

The questions? They could be answered in ten or fewer words—they were basically vocab terms for Microsoft’s Excel software program.

“I’ll never be able to get five pages from these questions!” He was swamped with other work….he’s in honors courses….and didn’t really have the time to suddenly write an essay for an elective course.

“Well…..you can. It’s completely possible. It won’t be good writing, but this isn’t Language Arts,” I said.

“How?”

“Picture the most boring person you’ve ever known. Think of a topic that’s dear to their hearts. Envision them blabbing on and on and on about their love for this thing while you’re desperate to get away from them. That’s the kind of writing you’ll need to do.”

The beginning: I recommended he start off with a couple of paragraphs about Excel itself and why it’s important. And list allll the people who find Excel useful: accountants, students, stock brokers, etc. Then list all the ways they could find it useful.

The middle: I recommended he define the vocabulary word. And then elaborate on why the item in question is a useful feature in Excel. Give several examples that don’t cover new ground but reinforce the feature’s benefits. Do the same with the two other questions.

The end: Wrap it up with a drawn-out closing, overstating the obvious. Repeat some of the same points in the summation.

There would be no subtlety in this essay. He would be spelling it all out, word by word. He would pretend that the person reading it had never heard of the Excel spreadsheet program—or, possibly, a computer– and would explain, in dreadful detail, all the different ways that different types of people could benefit from using this software and these particular features of it.

I read it after he wrote it. It was gosh-awful, which is exactly what it needed to be, under the circumstances. It’s probably an A paper, despite its intrinsic hideousness. I’m so glad I’m not this teacher, reading a total of 150 pages of that drivel from this one class.

The odd thing I found is that my son was elated. He hadn’t realized it was even possible to elaborate to that extent on a topic. I hastened to tell him never to do it with a Language Arts essay.

If I were editing that bloated monstrosity?

He used approximately 1250 words to explain something that easily could be stated in 100 or fewer words. I’d have slashed most of the text as unnecessary.

The beginning was unwieldy and verbose. It dragged on and on. It didn’t zone in to a tight focus on the subject (these few features of the software) but prattled on about the big picture (the entire spreadsheet program and its benefits.) In a murder mystery, this would be the equivalent of talking about the importance of the justice system instead of focusing on a soon-to-be occurring crime.

He assumed his reader had no experience with his subject matter (the only way to squeeze out a big word count was to over-explain.) Yet he knew the paper was going to a technology teacher. We know our audience and need to make sure we don’t talk down to them or over-explain.

He used an information dump on a topic, categorically listing aspects of the program that could be useful. In a normal paper or manuscript, there’s no need to overstate descriptions or to sum up. If you’ve described Tina as a nerd, then you don’t need to keep expounding on this a few lines down: , “Tina loved to read.” “Anytime Nova was on, Tina watched it.” “The highlight of Tina’s day was when she got to watch ‘Star Trek.’” Okay, everyone got the point at the very beginning when you succinctly stated that Tina was a nerd. The rest is overstating the point, unless the reader needs to know about Tina’s ‘Star Trek’ love as an important plot point. No need to belabor it.

The ending was no quick summation of points covered. No, it was this grueling step by step review through the material. I like endings to tie into the beginning, but to offer some fresh insight…after all, a journey should have occurred through the book. Rehashed endings can be painful to read through.

It was ghastly. But I think it taught him more about writing than penning a good paper would have. He had to think about all the standards of good writing—really think about them. And then deliberately disregard them all. It ended up being a useful exercise.

Have you ever read something that made you wonder how it got published? Did you think of ways you could have written it better yourself? Has that provided you with any inspiration for your own writing?

And…it’s pumpkin lasagna, y’all, at the Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen! Now, don’t make that face until you see what’s in it. I promise it’s sweet…and it doesn’t have any tomatoes in it.

My daughter and I were riding down the road in the car and she was chattering about one of her favorite subjects—birthdays and birth places. She’s very impressed with herself that she was born in a Charlotte, North Carolina, hospital since the rest of the family was born elsewhere.

“You were born in South Carolina,” she said. “In Anderson.”

“Actually, no. I was born in Fort Benning, Georgia.”

There was a look of great surprise on her face. “At a fort? Why?”

“Well, honey, there was a war going on—Vietnam. And Papa was in the Army.”

“Papa was in the Army?!?!?!” I can’t really overemphasize her statement, despite the ridiculous number of exclamation and question marks I just used. “What was he doing in the Army?”

“He was a lieutenant. He taught people how to shoot guns.” Big guns.

“Papa?”

It was a shock. She knows her Papa as a mild-mannered English professor in his early 60s. He writes extremely well, edits well, and makes astute analyses on English literature. To her, he was not some gun-toting, camo-wearing soldier during the Vietnam era.

We all have these different facets to ourselves. We wear lots of different hats. And in the past we’ve been different things—I’ve worked in a bank before. I didn’t like it, but it’s part of who I am. An unhappy part. :)

I try to show my characters as people with different facets to them, too. If you’ve got a sleuth who is just a crime fighter, then the reader gets a one dimensional impression of your protagonist.

All these little bits of our past contribute—in good and bad ways—to the person we are now.

Introducing the past can be done casually in a book, without dumping a lot of backstory. My protagonist, Myrtle Clover, is introduced as a retired English teacher. The reader isn’t surprised when she tries to force her book club to ditch chick lit. My protagonist Lulu Taylor, was raised by her aunt and spent her childhood at her aunt’s barbeque restaurant. Now she treasures her family and that restaurant over anything—and is prepared to protect them when some become murder suspects.

With a little bit of set-up, we can take our characters in different directions, and show a different side to them.

And, on a separate note, I’d like to offer a sincere thanks to all veterans as those of us in the States observe Veterans Day.

Originally, I despised the whole idea of Twitter. Now, I’ve got to give Twitter a big thumbs-up. Want to find out what I think its advantages are? Please pop over and visit Terry’s Place, where I’m guest blogging today.

Yes, it’s a teaser. :) They’re very useful on Twitter, too—and a great way to drum up blog traffic.

After 38 years of setting the clock back, you’d think I’d expect the changes.

But each fall I’m surprised how dark it is in the late afternoon. Every morning I’m surprised how light it is so early.

The darkness puts our whole family in a different mood. We light candles at suppertime. We feel sleepier at bedtime. And when I take my daughter to her Brownie scout meeting at 6 p.m., she gets the delicious sensation that she’s up really late at night and out on the town.

I’ve noticed lately, though, an aggressive attempt by stores to put me in a very particular mood.

The Christmas shopping mood.

It was November 3 and I walked into a store that was playing Christmas music. Whoa! There’s no way I’m ready for that stuff yet, y’all. I picked up some things for the kids last summer and that is it. The Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving. It does! But I kept running into stores that were selling the season awfully early.

These stores’ determination to put me in a money-spending mood was a slap in the face. It was not subtle. It felt very pushy to me.

I’ve read some books where I felt the writer abruptly and clumsily tried to force me into a mood: a tense mood, a frightened mood, a maudlin mood. It jumped off the page at me and I don’t think it’s because I’m a writer.

It’s like watching a poorly-done horror movie. You know the bad guy is going to leap out at you because of the scary music, heavy on strings, that’s loudly playing.

Subtle ways to create a mood:

Skillful (and, to my liking, brief) description of the scene’s setting: an abandoned, deteriorating house (unease). A crowded train with body to body people (stress).

Setting tone through dialogue. Obviously this would be two or more characters sharing more than just chit-chat with each other. There could be an urgent tone set, a joyful tone, somber tone…

Syntax: We convey our feelings about a person via word choice—choosing words with negative connotations instead of positive ones. Someone’s face has pity, not sympathy. Someone is smug, not content. A person is cloying, not sweet. The character contributes toward establishment of the mood—the reader feels suffocated by the closeness of the cloying character, e.g.

Weather: I’ve seen this overdone. But it can be used very effectively in unusual ways. We all remember what a beautiful day it was in New York city on 9-11. It just illuminated the horror that played out.

Light: The daylight savings time shifts play havoc with my moods. You could do the same with blackouts, houses with uncertain electrical wiring, uncovered ceiling lightbulbs creating sinister shadows, etc.

I appreciate subtlety in creating moods instead of having a writer lay it on too thick. Are you the same way? As a writer, how do you invoke mood?

I’m not a horror writer ordinarily, but I’m going to type in a sentence now that will strike terror in the hearts of many of my female readers:

I went jeans shopping yesterday.

Yes, it’s a horrific experience. And it really shouldn’t be. But apparently blue jeans manufacturers go out of their way to make all of us feel like freaks when we’re trying on their garments.

I for one, though, was desperate. I am so done with hip huggers. Come on clothing manufacturers! It’s not fun having to hitch up one’s britches. Besides, these jeans don’t hug hips. If they did, then I may not have this complaint. But they don’t. They behave as though my hips are not even there.

I have this problem in other areas, too. The Hollywood producers and cinema franchises decide what I’ll watch. But I don’t want to watch gory movies, action movies, or movies with a distracting amount of profanity in them. Could I once watch a subtitled film in a real movie theater?

And television? If I had my way, it would run British police procedurals all day long. Instead, television honchos seem to think I want reality shows.

On to books. Too often, the media tells us what we should be reading (Dan Brown, anyone?) That’s not to say that I’m not planning on reading The Lost Symbol. The whole Freemason thing is very interesting to me. But I just object to the way it was pushed down my throat by the media.

This brings us to individual writers. Some of us have books that don’t easily fit into a standard genre or description. This could throw up a red flag at a publisher—how will it be marketed? What’s its hook?

Of course, that’s a problem I don’t have. I love reading traditional mysteries and that’s what I write. It’s fun for me to work inside the parameters of their standards and rules.

But I want to make sure that there is variety out there to read. That it’s not all stuff off an assembly line that will be easy to market and a clear blockbuster. I may not be interested in reading what a marketing department thinks should sell well.

What do you think? Are you writing a book that defies easy packaging? Do you plan to adapt your manuscript to fit commercial standards of length, subject matter, genre-labeling? Or are you a writing rebel?