Author Archives: Dale Ivan Smith

About Dale Ivan Smith

Dale Ivan Smith is a retired librarian turned full-time author. He started out writing fantasy and science fiction, including his five-book Empowered series, and has stories in the High Moon, Street Spells, and Underground anthologies, and his collection, Rules Concerning Earthlight. He's now following his passion for cozy mysteries and working on the Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries series, beginning with A Shush Before Dying and Book Drop Dead.

Revisited: Running and Writing and Competition

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Kay will return next month, so for today, we’re revisiting an insightful post by her from three years ago, dealing with an issue so many of us face.

Running and Writing and Competition

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If you want to compete with somebody, run a race.

If you want to change the world, write a book.

* * *

Last week PJ Parrish wrote a TKZ post on Performance Anxiety. I’d like to follow up with a corollary on competition.

Competition is good, right? It gives us a chance to test our mettle against others and see how we stack up. Whatever field we’re in, competition is an opportunity to identify weaknesses in our performance and make a plan to improve. It may even lift us into that rarified atmosphere of winning the prize and basking in the glory.

When thinking about competition, sports always comes to mind. Personally, I believe foot races, specifically the 400-meter races, are the epitome of competition.

The 400-meter race is the longest track event run completely in lanes, so there’s no pushing or shoving. Each competitor runs her own race in her own lane. It’s once around the track, and the winner is easy to identify. She’s not necessarily the person with the best form or the coolest sports gear or even the newest model of Nikes. The winner is the person who crosses the finish line first.

This is obviously an objective decision. The other runners can’t say, “I’m a better runner than she is. I should get the gold medal.” Or “She won just because her coach is famous.” A runner wins a race because she is the fastest competitor in that particular race, and there’s camaraderie and respect among runners no matter where they place.

* * * 

On the other hand, competition can have a dark side. I’ve read recently that writers are a competitive bunch. That’s not surprising, seeing that we’re publishing books that are in competition with millions of other works, and the desire to excel in the field is strong. Writers want to know how they’re doing in the big publishing picture, so we compare ourselves with others, and sometimes it doesn’t go so well.

You’re toiling away to market your self-published masterpiece, which has seen slow sales and mediocre reviews, when you get word your good friend just secured a lucrative publishing contract for his first book. And then another friend posts to every social media site in the world about the big award she just won. That was the contest you entered and didn’t even make the finals! All of a sudden, feelings of competition turn to jealousy and envy.

But you’re a nice person, right? These writers are your friends, and you think you shouldn’t have these feelings. Well, don’t feel bad. Most authors have experienced some form of writer’s envy in their careers.

So what do we do about it? I like the way Erin Fulmer put it in her 2020 article on  professional jealousy 

Publishing isn’t a race.

Even if it were, the person who makes it to the next goalpost first is not necessarily going to make it to the one after that in record time.

But this isn’t a competition. There’s no deadline. Sure, the inevitable heat death of the universe is coming someday but until then, it’s anybody’s game.

And it’s not a zero-sum game. Yes, there is competition in publishing—I don’t want to sugar-coat that—but your friend getting a book deal or agent doesn’t meaningfully reduce your chances of the same, unless you are writing something extremely similar and submitting to the same editor/agent. Even then, it’s just as likely that their success will cause your work to be more in demand. A rising tide often does lift all boats.

If you are seeking a writing career, that journey only ends when you stop writing. There’s no finish line, no lifetime wish achievement that means you won like a good little Sim. There’s just the next book.

* * *

So, there you have it. Publishing is not a fair race. It can’t be since the judges (readers, agents, publishers) assess a writer’s work through the filter of their own backgrounds, tastes, and opinions. For example, I have a friend, a well-known writer, who entered her work in a writing contest some years ago. It was the kind of contest where several judges score the work and the entrant receives the results. Two of the judges scored her work in the 90’s and the third one rated her in the 50’s!

So maybe we need to adjust our perspective. As authors, we’re here to enhance the human experience through the written word, and we each do it in our own way. We’re a community, not combatants. We get to choose the lane we run in and how we want to run the race.

Envy tells us that success is more important than the journey. But if we truly love what we’re doing, we’ll seek success while finding the real joy in the writing. And with each circuit of the track, study and hard work will make us better. And in the long run, maybe that’s where the gold in the gold medal lies.

* * *

We’re fortunate that here at TKZ we have a community of contributors and commenters who go out of their way to offer suggestions and support for each other. A writing community at its best.

 

So TKZers: Do you feel that you’re in competition with other authors? Have you ever dealt with feelings of envy or jealousy of other writers? How do you handle them? What advice would you give to prospective authors, especially young ones, who may be feeling the same emotions?

Winning Words of Wisdom

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Best seller status, glowing reviews, a legion of fans, a movie deal, even “just” getting published, none of these are within our control. We might be able to influence such external outcomes, but we can’t guarantee any of them will happen, as much as we might wish otherwise.

However, we can win at the actual writing, and today’s Words of Wisdom provides three different ways with excerpts from posts by James Scott Bell, PJ Parrish and Joe Hartlaub. As always, the original posts are very much worth reading in full, and are date-linked at the end of their respective excerpts.

What makes a winner?

Is it going on a web cam and shouting Winning?

Is it having a lot of money?

Is it owning a lot of things?

Let me contrast a couple of writers for you. (These writers are composites, BTW, so don’t ask me to name names).

The first writer has had a couple dozen New York Times bestsellers in her career. She is not shy in saying she found a formula that sells a lot of books. And she keeps cranking them out, two or three a year now. Her publisher is very happy about this.

But her readers are beginning to feel like she’s just “mailing it in.” And in secret she’ll tell you she can virtually sneeze out a book, and does. She spends a few hours a week writing and never edits her stuff. She just turns it in and lets the publisher do the rest. Which gives her plenty of time to travel to her chateau in Gstaad. Or to go to conference appearances, where she plays the diva in a way that even Joan Crawford would have applauded.

She has money. She owns things.

But is she a winner?

The other writer is someone you probably haven’t heard of yet, but those who have read her books have not been able to forget them. While she writes in a certain genre, and is prolific, her novels never have a cranked out feel. That’s because she cares about the writing too much. She cares about her readers too much. She could mail it in, but there’s something inside her that makes her constitutionally incapable of putting out junk.

She doesn’t have as much money as the first writer. Nor does she own as many things.

Is she a winner?

I’ll tell you what, you can’t get away from ancient wisdom. Buddha, Confucius, The Bible, the great philosophers . . . they have all been telling us that just having money and owning things does not make you a winner. In fact, if you’re not careful, they can shrivel you up into a thing that blows away like dried grass in a windstorm.

But this second writer, she can feel things the first writer no longer does (or perhaps never did). She feels the intense pleasure of working and caring and crying and laughing over her writing, of seeing things happen on the page that she knows are worth more than a million cranked out passages that exist just to earn more money so the author can own more things.

Is she a winner? Oh yes. And so is any writer in any genre who does more than just mail it in.

I’m talking about a writer who is courageous enough to have some skin in the game, and who isn’t in this business just to make money and own things. If the money comes, that’s great, that’s awesome. We’re not turning that down. But this kind of writer will never let it go to her head or her keyboard. She will refuse to do that to her readers.

James Scott Bell—May 8, 2011

So how does Team Parrish feel coming out of this half-time locker room break and strategy session? Full of cautious confidence. We started out this book full of hope and ambition. But as the game wore on, we just sort of flailed and fumbled around out on the field, hoping we could make progress by blind luck and maybe a last-minute field goal.  This is how the Jets play every single year. Or the Browns, whose fans show up at games carrying banners saying “We Still Have LeBron.”  You want to be Seattle. Or the Pats, who find a way to win even with Brady on the bench for four games.

What am I trying to say here? Well, it’s a variation on what all the good folks here at TKZ preach. Have a good work ethic. (you don’t want to be giving up in mid-season just because you’re a little gassed).  Have a good strategy going in. (a great idea or at least a fresh take on an old one). Devise a game plan and keep to it. (that means for some of you out there outlining). Stop at each quarter or at least half-time and see what has gone right and what had failed. Be flexible enough to make adjustments. Don’t quit, because as the great sports sage Yogi Berra said,  it ain’t over til it’s over.

And with that, I leave you with a few classic football cliches that are actually good advice for us writers:

You gotta work with what’s working. This is a variation on the more erudite “You go with what brought you to the dance.” If you’re a hard-boiled type at heart, maybe you shouldn’t try YA romantic zombie fiction just because it’s hot. Yes, stretch yourself, but don’t be crass. Readers smell insincerity a mile away.

It’s important to give the ball right back to the guy who lost it. Yes, you can make mistakes. In fact, they help you grow. If you’ve had a setback, be it a rejection letter, a bad review or just loss of confidence, don’t let it defeat you.  Favre is the leading career fumbler of all time. You think that when he put the rock on the ground, he thought about quitting? Heck no. The guy took risks. (Though the Killer Chihuahuas never forgave him for that last season…)

He heard footsteps. This is the wide receiver who feels a defender gaining on him so he takes his eye off the ball. For you, this means, don’t let distractions cripple you.  This can mean anything from the little — social media, chores, research — to major distractions — envy over other’s success, people who tell you that you’ll never get published.

He ran east and west instead of north and south. Or as Dan Dierdorf put it: “You gotta keep the axis of your body perpendicular to the goal line.”  For writers, this means always moving forward and maintaining momentum. This is my biggest problem because I become stalled in an insane quest for perfection when I should be grinding out that first draft.  I spent too much time running east and west instead of heading toward the goal line. Don’t be like me.  Be a downhill runner.

It’s a game of inches. Success in publishing almost always comes hard and gradually. You pound away at that keyboard, bang your head up against big forces that feel like they are bent on keeping you back. You spend months, years, on your WIP and only manage to move a few yards forward.  But this is how it’s done. Slow and steady. And you never, ever, come prepared to play only one game because you must…

Take it one game at a time. Finish that book, get it out there somehow and then start the next one. And as you do this you will…

Leave it all on the field. You gave it everything you had because, of course…

There’s no tomorrow.

PJ Parrish—September 13, 2016

 

My suggestion is to write every day. That is not new or original advice. I am offering it particularly, however, to those of you who have no intention of or inclination toward starting or completing a story or having it revealed in the harsh light of day. Writing something every day because you want to, instead of when you have to, is good for you. I truly believe that writing regardless of length or motive makes one smarter — whatever that is — and yes, happier. Writing even one sentence of a few words per day enables you, the unintentional writer, to say, “I wrote this.” It may not give you an adrenaline rush but I submit to you that it will produce, at the least, a drop of it in your cup. It’s the difference between doing an action because you are required to (for reasons from within or without) and doing it because you want to. It can crack the ice that freezes your thinking, whether you write on a post-it, a computer, or your hand. It is an activity that you can do without prompting, or the desire of future reward, other than that occasioned by performing the act itself. I have mentioned this before, but the television series Miami Vice was born as the result of two words handwritten on a piece of paper. The words were “MTV cops.” Your results may differ. That’s the point. There are those who may keep a diary or journal for a similar reason. What I propose is not as involved.

This post is but one example of “wanting to” as opposed to “being compelled to.” I started this post with one sentence, though it is not the introductory sentence that you see above. I wrote a few words to get rolling and then took off, as John Coltrane said, in both directions at once. It was because I wanted to. “The Kill Zone” name notwithstanding, no one here writes with a gun to their head. We are all here because we want to be, whether to write or to read what is written.

Joe Hartlaub—May 29, 2021

***

What are your thoughts about “winning” at writing? Any advice or tips?

Revisited: How Did I Get Here?

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Kay DiBianca is away from TKZ for a bit longer, so today I am sharing her post on the journey of being a novelist.

How Did I Get Here?

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When I sat down at my desk a few days ago, the room suddenly turned dark, and there was a loud buzzing sound. I realized I had entered a wormhole, and I was being transported back in time to a day several years ago.

* * *

I was running on a dirt trail in a park near my home and I was listening to an audiobook on my iPod Shuffle. The book was one of the Rabbi Small mysteries by Harry Kemelman, and I was enjoying the story. As I jogged by a fence and around a turn, a thought lit a fire in my brain. I could write a mystery as good as the one I was listening to! It would be fun to write a novel just to see what it would be like. I finished my run, returned home, showered and dressed. Then I sat down in a recliner in our living room with my computer on my lap and began to type.

* * *

The wormhole suddenly closed, and I was back at my desk, a relatively new, six-foot-long testimony to my dedication to this writing journey. Desk-reorg day is later in the week, so the desk is messy, piled with papers and post-it notes – reminders of upcoming events and to-dos I shouldn’t ignore.

Two whiteboards sit on the back of the desk, leaning against the wall with lists of books to read and others I’ve read and need to review. A map of the Hero’s Journey is magnetically tacked to one of the whiteboards along with a few inspirational sayings. Reminders to Make Haste Slowly, Be Intentional, Make It Count.

My writing calendar is just inside the middle drawer of the desk. A glance at the page tells me about my obligations this month for blog posts, book promotions, meetings, and everything else that’s writing-related.

The Windows 10 laptop in front of me on the desk houses dozens of directories containing information from branding to short stories, from newsletters to marketing graphs.  This is where I handle email, write articles, post to social media, create jpgs and pngs to market books and share thoughts on writing.

A second laptop, a Mac, sits on the desk’s pullout shelf to my left. It’s owned by the publishing company my husband and I formed in order to publish our own works. I use it to format and publish the final copies.

A third laptop, another Mac, stays on the bar in the kitchen where I can glance over an occasional news story while I eat breakfast. Scrivener lives on that Mac, and it accompanies me to my office recliner, along with a glass of sparkling water when I sit down to spend serious time on my WIP.

A list of writing goals is taped to the back of my office door so I see it every time I close the door to begin work.

Bookshelves against the wall next to my recliner are filled with books on the craft of writing, constant reminders of how much I still have to learn. The bottom shelf contains copies of my three published novels as well as my husband’s recently published debut novel. Three-ring binders contain pages of notes on each of my books as well as several works-in-progress.

Other bookshelves in my office and throughout the house contain favorite tomes. (I really should spend some time reorganizing so I don’t have to go on safari just to find what I’m looking for.)

* * *

How did I get here? I was going to write just one novel. It was going to be fun, an act of exploration, like climbing a mountain. Do it once for the experience.

But then I discovered the craft and the joy of writing.

So TKZers: When did you decide to write that first novel? How did you get to the present moment? Were you surprised by the journey? Are you going to stay the course?

Words of Wisdom: Risk

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Risk. Your characters have to risk in order to get what they want. Perhaps everything. Writers need to risk failure when they write the next story or book, and when they attempt to grow and improve their skills.

Today’s WoW is features a trio of insightful posts about dealing with risk.

Boyd Morrison lays out what can be at risk for a creative. Jordan Dane’s post isn’t directly about risk, but it is about providing a foundation for success as a writer, which I’d argue is necessary if you are taking creatives. Finally, James Scott Bell breaks down the different kinds of creative risks you can undertake.

When I was in the sixth grade, I desperately wanted the role of the lisping Winthrop in my school’s production of The Music Man. I can’t explain now why I had that inner urge (I’m not sure I had even seen a play before then), but perhaps it was because I shared Winthrop’s shy, self-conscious demeanor and saw myself in his struggle to come out of his shell. I auditioned and got my first taste of rejection. I didn’t even get cast in the chorus. I can still remember the hollow pit in my stomach as I watched the musical, unable to enjoy it the way my fellow audience members did.

It was a whole year before I had the opportunity to audition again, this time for Anna’s son Louis in The King and I. It was a nerve-wracking experience, but I got the part, and the experience on stage was everything I’d imagined it to be. I’ve been in love with acting ever since.

Today, I still act, but I’ve raised the stakes to a level I couldn’t have comprehended when I was that seventh-grader. I’ve just moved to Los Angeles to explore the Hollywood acting business. It’s only temporary, but it means uprooting myself from my wife, who has been incredibly supportive of this venture. I’m also away from the comforts of home, although the discomfort is as minimal as can be because I’m living in my sister’s home and I’m able to continue my writing while I’m here.

Everything I just mentioned involved risk. Of course, it’s not risk in the sense we normally think of it. My life was never in danger; I didn’t fear bodily harm. But a devastated psyche can be even more painful and difficult to recover from. As soon as I auditioned for the first time, I was risking rejection, being told I wasn’t good enough, or at least not as good as the actor who got the role. To get the part of Louis, I had to put myself at risk again.

We constantly face risks. Should I risk leaving the steady job I have now to take a new job offer? Should I ask the cute girl out on a date and risk getting snubbed? Should I get up on stage and risk making a fool of myself? But if I don’t take the new job, I’m at risk of missing a golden opportunity. If I don’t ask the cute girl out, I risk not being with the eventual love of my life. If I don’t go on stage, I risk not exploring a new side of me that will make me more fulfilled.

Being a writer is rife with risk. We face rejection on a constant basis from agents, publishers, critics, and readers. We might spend a year of our lives on a project that ends up being a dismal failure. We may fall on our faces in a very public setting, with Amazon reviews broadcasting the results. If I failed in my old jobs, only my immediate co-workers would know it; now my work is out there for the world to see.

Achieving anything worthwhile requires risk. It means leaving the comfort of the familiar, facing the terror of being judged a failure, and embracing the change, come what may.

Stupid risks don’t count. Don’t mortgage your house to buy lottery tickets. It’s the smart risks that are worth taking. Prepare for the risk by doing your homework. Make it a calculated risk by weighing the pros and cons of each alternative. Minimize the risk by setting realistic goals that you have control over: you can deliver a novel by a certain date at your standard of quality, but you can’t control whether it will be a NY Times bestseller.

Boyd Morrison—February 25, 2013

Just like a good, tried and true recipe is for brisket, we pick up new tips but keep what works. The same goes for writing. There are ways we all use to build upon our craft methods of writing a novel. We try new things to see what works. We discard other methods that we’ve outgrown as we evolve.

Below are some questions I’d like for you to answer if you see anything that fits you. Feel free to add what you’ve learned about writing in your comments. I am a sponge for picking up new stuff.

Writer Questions – Share your Experiences

1.) Are you still finding time to read? Do you read outside the genre you write?Even when life gets busy, reading can be a comfort, but it can also open your eyes to new techniques or interesting POVs or genres. Always be a student when it comes to your writing craft. You will keep growing.

2.) Do you cherish the time you write, where you write and make sure you don’t get interrupted? Life, family/friends and your day job can pile on to add stress in your life. Is your writing the first thing to go? I hope not. Even if you only finish a page a day, that’s progress. I find that once I establish a routine, my body can react in a bad way if I stray from my writing schedule. I can physically get the shakes. Even when I had my day job, I made sure to write every evening and on weekends. It wasn’t easy but it paid off.

3.) How do you capture those big ideas that can spring on you any time of day or night? Do you keep notebooks all over the house or a voice recorder? I get lots of ideas while I’m driving. The best ones, I pull over and reach for my purse where I keep a small notepad and pens. Or better yet, get someone to drive you so your genius is unfettered. Is there a place where you consistently get your big ideas? No pictures if you tell me “the shower.”

4.) Do you have personal rules/discipline when it comes to unplugging from social media and the internet while you are writing? My usual day is writing 9:00 am until 3:00 pm with short breaks to care for my dogs and grab a snack. I try to get up every 3 hours to stretch and walk and replenish the well for a quick change of scenery but I don’t get to emails or social media until after I’ve achieved my word count goal. YES, I have a daily goal. I generally shoot for 1500-2000 words per day and do rolling edits to keep my progress going on the overall project. But social media and emails are a time drain. No sneak peaking as a diversion when you hit a wall. Pick another way to shake out the cobwebs.

5.) Do you read your work aloud? After all these years, I still read my edits aloud. It’s a great way to insure you have a natural cadence to your dialogue and prose. Even if you don’t do this every day, I recommend doing it for important passages/proposals or as one of your final draft processes. This is the best way to find words you’ve left out.

6.) Do you use the first third to a quarter of your book to set up your world building and character introductions? An editor with a large publishing house said something at a writer’s conference about expecting to read the basic set up with characters and conflict within the first 3 chapters. Now it may not be 3 chapters exactly, as I see it now, but he wasn’t wrong about how to establish your world for the reader. Even if you don’t plot ahead of time, expect that readers and editors and agents will expect you to set that foundation for your story and include your cast of characters and their conflicts in the first part of the book.

7.) Do you plan the ending of your book while you’re working on your plot idea or are you willing to let it happen when you get there? If you’re like me, each book can be different. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night with a new character telling me the ending to his/her story. True. That doesn’t happen with each book, but when it’s that strong that it wakes me, I listen. On the other hand, I am flexible enough to see new ways to add twists. I want to be open to new character motivations too. More times than not, I have found better books by staying open to my endings. How rigid are you? Have you ever been pleasantly surprised with an ending you never expected, just because you followed a rabbit trail or discovered something new about your main character?

Jordan Dane—March 21, 2019

Risk the Idea

I think each novel you write should present a new challenge. It might be a concept or “what if?” that will require you to do some fresh research. My new Mike Romeo thriller (currently in final revisions) revolves around a current issue that is horrific and heartbreaking. I could have avoided the subject altogether. But I needed to go there.

My next Romeo, in development, came from a news item about a current, but not widely reported, controversy. It’s fresh, but I’ve got a lot of learning to do. I’m reading right now, I’ll be talking to an expert or two, and soon will be making a location stop for further research.

I do this because I don’t want to write a book in the series where someone will say, “Same old, same old.”

Admittedly, writing about “hot-button” issues these days carries a degree of risk. Especially within the walls of the Forbidden City where increasingly the question “Will it sell?” is overridden by “Will it offend?”

But as the old saying goes, there is no sure formula for success, but there is one for failure—try to please everybody.

Craft Risk

Are you taking any risks with your craft? Are you following the Captain Kirk admonition to boldly go where you have never gone before?

There are 7 critical areas in fiction: plot, structure, characters, scenes, dialogue, voice, and meaning.

You can take one or all of these and determine to kick them up a notch. For example:

Plot—Have you pushed the stakes far enough? If things are bad for the Lead, how can you make them worse? I had a student in a workshop once who pitched his plot. It involved a man who was carrying guilt around because his brother died and he didn’t do enough to save him. I then asked the class to do an exercise: what is something your Lead character isn’t telling you? What does he or she want to hide?

I asked for some examples, and this fellow raised his hand. He said, “I didn’t expect this. But my character told me he was the one who killed his brother.”

A collective “Wow” went up from the group. But the man said, “But if I do that, I’m afraid my character won’t have any sympathy.”

I asked the group, “How many of you would now read this book?”

Every hand went up.

Take risks with your plot. Go where you haven’t gone before.

Characters—Press your characters to reveal more of themselves. I use a Voice Journal for this, a free-form document where the character talks to me, answers my questions, gets mad at me. I want to peel back the onion layers.

How about taking a risk with your bad guy? How? By sympathizing with him!

Hoo-boy, is that a risk. But you know what? The tangle of emotions you create in the reader will increase the intensity of the fictive dream. And that’s your goal! In the words of Mr. Dean Koontz:

The best villains are those that evoke pity and sometimes even genuine sympathy as well as terror. Think of the pathetic aspect of the Frankenstein monster. Think of the poor werewolf, hating what he becomes in the light of the full moon, but incapable of resisting the lycanthropic tides in his own cells.

Dialogue—Are you willing to make your dialogue work harder by not always being explicit? In other words, how can you make it reveal what’s going on underneath the surface of the scene without the characters spelling it out?

Voice—Are you taking any risks with your style? This is a tricky one. On the one hand, you want your story told in the cleanest way possible. You don’t want style larded on too heavily.

On the other hand, voice is an X factor that separates the cream from the milk. I’ve quoted John D. MacDonald on this many times—he wanted “unobtrusive poetry” in his prose.

I’m currently reading the Mike Hammer books in order. It’s fascinating to see Mickey Spillane growing as a writer. His blockbuster first novel, I, The Jury, is pure action, violence, and sex. It reads today almost like a parody. But with his next, My Gun is Quick, he begins to infuse Hammer with an inner life that makes him more interesting. By the time we get to his fourth book, One Lonely Night, Hammer is a welter of passions and inner conflict threatening to tear him apart. His First-Person voice is still hard-boiled, but it achieves what one critic called “a primitive power akin to Beat poetry.” And Ayn Rand, no less, put One Lonely Night ahead of anything by Thomas Wolfe!

In short, Spillane didn’t rest on his first-novel laurels. He pushed himself to be better.

He risked it for the biscuit.

James Scott Bell—September 24, 2022

***

How about you? How do you approach creative risk? What do you do to help yourself prepare?

Love and Death

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Last Saturday I was a panelist at Symposium, a very small writing-focused science fiction event held in my neck of the proverbial woods.

The guest of honor was a local writer, Steve Perry, who has had seventy plus novels published in science fiction, fantasy, thriller, including a NYT best selling Star Wars novel, Shadows of Empire, and ten books in Tom Clancy’s Net Force series.

He and I were part of the first panel of the day, “Love and Death—the only two things worth writing about.” We five panelists agreed that love and death were indeed fundamental to fiction, as they are in life. As Steve noted, everyone hopes for the former and will, eventually, face the latter.

The rest of that session tackled the questions posed in the panel’s description, such as what makes for a good plot, and what are the elements you are looking for, etc.

But the panel got me thinking further about the role of love and death in fiction, and how both are central to story telling.

Death.

Whether the world is at stake, or just one life, the risk of death can both shape and propel a story forward.

During the panel I brought up character death, citing our own James Scott Bell’s three kinds of death stakes:

“As I’ve written many times, the best fiction is about a battle with death, which comes in three forms: physical, professional/vocational, or psychological/spiritual.”

I added a fourth, societal. The risks of dying in any of these ways creates huge stakes for the character, and can drive the plot. Physical death is obvious. Psychological death is a loss of identity, sanity

Speaking of the plot, there’s the plot’s own “death stakes,” which could be one and the same with your hero’s death stakes, or could be death on a bigger scale, and which could also be potential psychological death of a community, or even the death of an ideal, such as justice or freedom, etc.

Love.

We tend to think of love as romantic love, but of course that’s only one kind. There’s love for family, as well as your community and your country.

Brotherly/sisterly platonic love can be powerful grist for the story mill. A little while back I joined my wife’s CraftLit group for an online watch of one of my all time-favorite movies, The Great Escape, which is filled with death stakes, both for characters and as part of the plot.

The Great Escape also depicts brotherly love, based on friendship and a bond brought about by the shared circumstances of war and imprisonment. We see several examples in the movie. There is the scrounger, Hedley, played to perfection by James Garner, and the forger, Blythe, equally well portrayed by Donald Pleasence who become friends while working together. Then there’s the two tunnel kings, Danny, played by Charles Bronson, and his friend Willie (John Leyton).

Hedley insists on taking a now sight-impaired Blythe out with him during the escape, increasing his own risk of physical death.

Willie stays with Danny to guide him when Danny is overcome by claustrophobia. The two stick together and find a way to freedom.

Being willing to lay your life down for another, is a sacrifice for love. Being willing to move heaven and earth to save someone, say a kidnapped lover, can be the stuff of thrillers and failure could result in not only physical death for the lover, but also psychological death for the hero.

Another classic movie example of love and death:

Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest sees Cary Grant’s advertising executive thrust into a world of deadly espionage, thanks to being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being mistaken for someone else.

He faces death multiple times in the course of the movie, including memorably at a crossroads when a crop dusting plane turns out to be an assassin’s weapon. He meets and falls for a beautiful young woman, played by Eva Marie Saint, who is not what she seems. In the end, he survives and gets the girl. Love and death drive a suspenseful, relentlessly paced film.

Modern mysteries often have death stakes for the sleuth, who can face not only the prospect of a a physical death, but also psychological and professional, and, especially in a cozy, can deal with societal death.

Moreover, they focus on solving a murder, and these death stakes can be in play for the victim as well as the killer’s motives. The victim may have caused what the villain perceives as death, perhaps the psychological death from the killer’s romantic relationship having been ruptured by jealousy or even betrayal, or professional (vocational) death, again by something the killer perceives as being done to them by the victim. And the killer certainly could be correct.

Modern mysteries can also have a love interest or interests for the sleuth, as in the cases of Stephanie Plum bounty hunter and Hannah Swensen baker and amateur detective. Both deal with long running romantic triangles. Both also regularly deal with potential death stakes for themselves.

So, love and death. Are they indeed the only things worth writing about?

For my part, I’d say they may not be the only things, but they are certainly two of the most important things to write about.

What do you think?

Revisited: WHAT MY HORSE TAUGHT ME ABOUT CHARACTER ARCS

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Kay DiBianca is still on leave, so today I’m sharing her very first post here at TKZ, a guest post, hosted by Debbie Burke.

WHAT MY HORSE TAUGHT ME ABOUT CHARACTER ARCS – Guest Post by Kay DiBianca

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by Debbie Burke

Today, I’m pleased to host cozy mystery author Kay DiBianca who shares her fun and unique perspective on character arcs. Kay is a familiar name around The Zone, offering frequent, insightful comments. Welcome to Kay and the horse she rode in on! 

It was a day for speed. A wind-at-your-back, smile-on-your-face day when a youthful gallop overruled frumpy caution, so we barreled down the dirt trail into the park and around a blind turn. As the bushes on our right gave way and the road ahead came into view, a terrifying specter suddenly loomed up in the middle of the trail, no more than fifty yards in front of us.

Dixie, my high-strung, prone-to-panic filly, slammed on the brakes. I had no idea a horse could stop like that. Two stiff-legged hops – thump, thump — to a dead halt.

I went straight over her head. Turns out an English forward seat saddle is particularly ill-suited for sudden deer sightings.

As I was flying through the air, anticipating an unpleasant reacquaintance with Mother Earth, Dixie began some kind of crazy cha-cha in reverse, trying to flee the tiny deer creature. I was still holding on to the reins, however, so she couldn’t turn and run. Instead, she made a determined dart backward, dragging me along in her wake.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just let go of the reins and save myself from a mouthful of dirt and a painful awareness of my sudden change in circumstances. I’ll be honest with you. I would have let my horse drag me into the next county before I allowed her to return riderless to the barn. I have my pride, you know.

Body-surfing down a dirt trail at the whim of a frightened animal is an excellent way to focus one’s mind.  I’m older now, but sometimes I still get that urge to gallop furiously into the next adventure, no matter what form it takes. But when I recall that day in the park, the awful taste of grit in my mouth, the look of terror in Dixie’s eyes, and the acrid scent of fear in the air, I pull back the reins on my emotions and proceed at a deliberate trot.

Whether dramatic or not, we each have a set of experiences that have transformed the way we view the world. Likewise, we all know the characters we write about must change from the beginning of the story to the end, and the change must be meaningful.

So TKZers: Tell us about a character in one of your novels that went through a metamorphosis. Was it a dramatic, once in a lifetime experience? Or a slow coming to grips with reality over the course of the story? How did you accomplish the change in a way that would grab your readers?

I’m deeply grateful to Debbie Burke for giving me the opportunity to post to the Kill Zone Blog. And thanks to all the TKZ contributors and commenters for allowing me to be part of the journey.

SAVING ONE LIFE IS LIKE SAVING THE WHOLE WORLD.

Kay’s delightful cozy mystery, Dead Man’s Watch, features characters the reader cares about.

Available at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

Words of Wisdom: Anthologies and Contests

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Anthologies, both traditionally published and indie, can be a wonderful opportunity to reach more readers and stretch your writing. I’ve had stories in three anthologies, Underground, Street Spells, and High Moon. I learned from all three experiences as well as found some new readers.

Legitimate writing contests can also be an opportunity to garner some attention and interest in your work.

Today’s Words of Wisdom brings you posts by Michelle Gagnon and Laura Benedict on getting work into anthologies and what was learned in the process, while Debbie Burke provides a terrific resource on writing contests. All three are worth reading in full.

I hope you’ll excuse a little BSP today. I have a short story out in the new Mystery Writers of America Anthology, VENGEANCE, edited by the wonderful Lee Child. Plus I think there’s a lesson to be learned from the long, occasionally tortuous journey this story has had over the past twelve years…

Some background first. This was the first real piece of crime fiction I ever wrote. I composed it while working with the San Francisco Writers’ Workshop back in 2000. I’ve never been much of a short story writer, but at the time I was just diving back into fiction, and figured that playing around with briefer pieces might help me find my voice. So this was one of the first (and only) stories I ever wrote. Shortly afterward, I started working on my first book (the one that never sold), and then, eventually, moved on to writing THE TUNNELS.

I always had a soft spot for this story, but had no idea what to do with it. Filled with hope, I submitted it to a few literary magazines. After it was roundly rejected by them, I shrugged and put it away in a drawer.

Fast forward to 2004. Lee Child was headlining the Book Passage Mystery Writers’ Conference, and at the last minute I scraped together enough money to attend. On the last night of the conference, all the participants were invited to read a short piece of fiction, kind of an informal critique exercise. I wasn’t happy with the opening of my novel yet, and was considering skipping the event entirely until I remembered this story. So I pulled it out of the drawer, dusted it off, and read it that night. All in all, it was well received; Lee attended the reading, and spoke with me afterward about how much he’d liked it. Which was terribly flattering, but again, I had no idea what to do with it. So back in the drawer it went.

Fast forward another seven years, to 2011. Lee emailed me out of the blue and asked if I’d ever done anything with that story from the Book Passage reading. He explained that he was putting together an anthology for the MWA centered around the theme of vigilante justice, and thought my piece might fit in perfectly. He asked if it would be all right to include it. Once I finished turning cartwheels across the room, I said yes.

So this week my little story, the first piece of crime fiction I ever wrote, was published alongside the work of some of my idols, including Lee, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, and Zoe Sharp. To say that I was honored to be part of this anthology would be a tremendous understatement. It really is a dream come true.

And from it, I’ve learned a few things:

  1. a) It’s impossible to judge the true value of a writing conference. Sometimes they might seem like a waste of time and money, but you never know what may come of the contacts you make there.
  2. b) Never empty that drawer. The story that can’t find a home today might bear fruit years down the road (or even decades!)
  3. c) Never give up. I have to confess, when those literary magazines first snubbed my work, I was disheartened and almost tossed in the towel. I really thought the story was pretty great, and discovering that not everyone agreed was crushing. It was hard to go on when it felt like what I was writing might never be appreciated, or even read, by anyone outside my critique group. Eight published or soon-to-be-published novels (and one short story) later, I’m really happy that I decided to forge ahead.

What follows is an excerpt from my story, IT AIN’T RIGHT. The VENGEANCE Anthology is currently on sale at bookstores and online.

Michelle Gagnon—April 5, 2012

My work has been in quite a few anthologies the past few decades, and I’ve edited five and published two of those myself. Yet I have never been involved in such an unprofessional exchange.

Publishing isn’t, “Hey, kids! Let’s put out a book!” Well, it can be, but the process needs to stay professional. And it would seem to me that a primary tenet of professionalism would be: Try not to alienate prospective writers.

Here’s a handy list for creating an anthology:

  • Define your theme. Make it broad, or make it narrow. Be flexible enough to push the boundaries a bit if you need to. The narrower your focus, the smaller your natural audience will be.
  • Put together a budget. Will you pay the writers in cash or copies or both?
  • Get a few writers on board that you know well so that if you will be going to a publisher, you have committed work from writers they recognize.
  • Write a proposal whether you will be shopping it to publishers or not. It will give you good guidelines against which you can measure submissions.
  • Find a publisher or, if you’re game and have some knowledge of publishing, put it out there yourself. How will it be distributed? Through regular distributors? Online vendors?
  • Decide if you want all original work or reprints or both.
  • Plot out a schedule backwards from your desired pub date. Give yourself three-four months before the actual pub date to assemble, edit, copyedit, and format the stories. Writers often miss deadlines. Build in an extra month for dawdlers or disaster. Allow writers three to six months for writing. It might as well be three because 90% of them will write the story in the last available month.
  • Scheduling six to nine months to put the whole thing together is reasonable. This is variable of course. Using all reprints may be faster—but often the writer will need to get permissions from another, larger publisher. And the larger they are, the slower they are. (It took seven weeks to get permission from one publisher for a Surreal South anthology, and we almost had to drop the story.)
  • Establish who will be the contact for all authors. Who will do the mailings and keep track of the files?
  • NOW open submissions for your slush pile, and give folks a few months to come up with stories and write them. If you have a solid core of committed writers, you have a head start. If you give everyone three months to write and submit, you’ll have plenty of time to read and choose.
  • Acknowledge submissions.
  • Get someone working on the cover art.
  • Draw up a contract. Do you want exclusive, or non-exclusive rights?
  • Choose the stories. Have a couple runners-up in case some submissions get pulled.
  • In the name of all that’s holy, send the appropriate rejection and acceptance emails to all of the writers.
  • Assemble the manuscript. Make sure all the rights are covered.
  • Plan advertising (or work with marketing dept.)
  • Write cover copy.
  • Have someone write an introduction that teases the theme and mentions all the accepted stories by name.
  • Make any necessary edits and okay them with the writers.
  • Copyedit the stories, send the manuscripts back to the writers for approval. Give them a deadline for getting back to you.
  • Get a blurb or two if you can. Put galleys up on NetGalley, etc. to encourage reviews.
  • Format, print, distribute.

NOTE: This is not a hard and fast schedule for every anthology. Big ones will take longer. Working with inexperienced writers will take longer. If you’re doing an ebook anthology of reprints or one that is very small, you may be able to do all this stuff in a few weeks.

Lisa Morton, Carolyn Haines, and I all wrote our stories for Haunted Holidays: Three Short Tales of Terror and had the book out in paper and ebook on multiple platforms in three months.

The point is, take your time. Think it through at the beginning of the project. Be friendly but professional in your communications with your writers. Admit it if you screw up, but don’t set yourself up for failure by setting unrealistic expectations for yourself and everyone else involved.

Laura Benedict—January 11, 2017

Why enter writing contests? Here are six reasons:

  1. Contests are incentives to finish your work and submit it to the outside world;
  2. Some offer valuable critique and feedback;
  3. Encouragement, recognition, and validation;
  4. Money and/or prizes;
  5. Awards help marketing;
  6. Intangible rewards.

Writers are often timid about sending their stories out into the world.

Contests however aren’t quite as scary as cold-submitting to agents and editors.You pay an entry fee and judges read your short story, novel excerpt, or screenplay. Some contests offer critiques to improve your craft and pinpoint what needs work.

If you don’t win, heck, neither did most other entrants so it’s not that humiliating.

If you do win, terrific! That recognition boosts confidence and increases credibility when you approach agents and publishers.

There are many reputable contests, but others are questionable or downright dodgy. 

Please note: contests mentioned in this post are not endorsements or recommendations.

Contests may be opportunities for the sponsor to expand their mailing list, offering their advertising and marketing services.

Some competitions require the author to give up all rights to their work. What happens if you create a character who later becomes a merchandising goldmine? Depending on contest terms, your earnings may be limited to a  one-time cash prize with no rights to future royalties. Victoria Strauss’s article cites a contest that solicits writers who want to become Manga scriptwriters. She writes:

Copyright surrender in a work-for-hire situation isn’t necessarily a “beware”, as long as the contract terms aren’t exploitative and you understand the implications of what you’re agreeing to.

In this case, however, the one-time money prize is the sole compensationyou’ll receive for your copyright transfer, from which [the sponsor] can then profit indefinitely. Be aware also that if you win and your script does not get developed into a series, [sponsor] will still own your work. Winning, therefore, has potential benefits–but also potential costs.

Before entering, check out contests with reliable sources like Writer Beware, The Write Life, Poets & Writers, ProWritingAid (this list is a year old and may be out of date), Kindlepreneur, Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).

Run a Google search entering “[name of contest] scam” and look for red flags.

Before entering, always, always, always read the fine print.

What about entry fees? They typically range from free to $100+.

High entry fees raise questions:

  • Is the contest’s purpose to recognize excellence?
  • Or is this another scheme to take advantage of writers?

Valid reasons for higher fees are:

  • Pay honorariums to judges;
  • Fund prizes;
  • Support nonprofit organizations that help writers.

Research the contest, then use your own judgment whether or not the fee is worth it.

On the other end of the spectrum, “free” isn’t necessarily free. 

Debbie Burke—January 16, 2024

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How about you, have you thought about having submitting a short story in anthology?  If you have had a short story anthologized, what was your experience?

Have you entered a writing contest?

Mojo Words of Wisdom

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Have you ever lost your writing mojo? Have you been blocked, overwhelmed by self-doubt, or felt your motivation to write vanish?

If so, today’s Words of Wisdom has you covered with advice from Clare Langley-Hawthorne, Boyd Morrison, and James Scott Bell. While the first two posts are included in their entirety, it’s well worth visiting the original posts to read the comments, and of course, JSB’s post is also worth reading in full.

I’ve been feeling like a bit of a loser of late – perhaps it’s the summer (or the week off from preschool which placed me in writing limbo) – but my writing mojo feels a little dented so I’ve had to claw my way back from depression-dom to start the week off. The only way I know how to beat the writing blues – not a writing block mind you – but that plague of self-doubt that hits you at midnight and which follows you through the day – is to resort to an old-fashioned tried and true method. Bum Glue.

This means that I sit down and, no matter how crappy or disillusioned I feel, I write. What gets typed may be absolute drivel (and it often is at first) but I persevere. I sit down, keep my bum glued to the seat, and write.

Tonight, as I compose this blog, I am preparing myself for the challenge of a week of bum glue ahead of me. I am trying to shaking off the panic and the angst, trying to shove back the “I’m a loser” thoughts and getting ready to face my fears. As Jim so aptly wrote in his post yesterday, I just have to move up the pyramid and the only way to do that is to keep writing.

So does anyone have any pearls of wisdom for me as I take a deep breath, wriggle my behind, and prepare? How do you restore your spirits or reclaim your writing mojo? Or am I the only one who suddenly finds themselves in that deep pit looking up and wondering how to escape?

Any tips on getting the bum glue to stick?

Clare Langley-Hawthorne—August 31, 2009

It only occurred to me recently how apt the word brainstorm truly is. Perhaps it was prompted by watching the terrible effects of Hurricane Sandy, but I’m sure it was also related to my own story problems lately.

I’m working on my fourth Tyler Locke book right now, and I’ve been having a hell of a time wrapping my head around why the plot just wasn’t working. I had a synopsis and basic outline, but the elements weren’t gelling into a cohesive story. No matter what I did with the plot I had, it wouldn’t work. It was as if I were trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from three different boxes. The individual elements were all great, but for some reason they didn’t fit together.

It was the dreaded writer’s block. But I’ve written five novels already, so how could that be possible? Shouldn’t I have the process figured out by now? If I were a golfer, I’d curse my case of the yips. The stuff that should be an easy putt by now was suddenly impossible. The mojo was gone, and I didn’t know if it was a permanent condition or more specific to this story.

Then my wife reminded me that this happens with every book. I always reach a point where I want to chuck the whole thing and move on to something else because I can’t figure out what’s wrong with the story. She recited my familiar lamentations back to me: “This is never going to work.” “I’ll never finish the book.” “Why did I start writing this stupid thing in the first place?”

As Christopher Vogler describes in The Writer’s Journey, I had reached the deepest chamber of the Inmost Cave to face the Ordeal. And the defining element of the Ordeal is the hero’s death and rebirth.

So I had to throw out all the assumptions I had about the story up to that point. I had to look at each and every part of it and decide whether to keep it, toss it, change it, or put it somewhere else. It was time to brainstorm.

As with the most violent storms, like hurricanes and tornadoes, everything in the story was at risk: characters, scenes, settings, action, even premise. Then I unleashed the gale. Some parts were ripped away, while others right next to them remained virtually untouched. Whole swaths of the story were decimated, while others were picked up gently and set down intact in an entirely different place.

When the storm was over, many of the individual pieces were still identifiable, but the overall rearrangement gave the story a completely new life. While real storms bring tragedy, my brainstorming was as beneficial as it was difficult. Yes, there’s a lot of cleanup still to do, but I can build something long-lasting from the wreckage.

So my question for the writers out there is, how do you get out of writer’s block? Do you unleash the brainstorm, or is there a less turbulent method to dislodge the block?

Boyd Morrison—November 5, 2012

I love the NaNo vibe. Writers writing. Newbies trying. Keyboards clacking. Coffee brewing. Possibilities awakening. It’s a major accomplishment to finish a novel. To do it in one month is astounding.

Of course, it’ll only be a first and very rough draft. But it will exist. You can let it sit for a month and then figure out what to do with it. One likely outcome is that you’ll use it as a “discovery draft” that now allows you to structure a re-write. Another is that the novel never sees the light of day. That’s fine, so long as you get some writing lessons out of it. Analyze the draft. Judge your craft. Make a plan to strengthen your skills.

At the very least you will have proved something to yourself. Unless you’re a full-time writer, averaging 1667 words a day is hard. Doing so for a month stretches you. When you get back to your normal rate of production, try to up it by 10% now that you’ve gone through NaNo.

Here are three other NaNo tips:

Plan

NaNoWriMo is catnip for pantsers. But a little planning (starting today) can make all the difference in your final product.

First, take a day to do some free-form journaling on your idea. Who it’s about, why it matters, why anybody should care. Jot down scene ideas that come to mind, in random order.

Second, take one day to define your concept with a three sentence “elevator pitch.” This will be your plumb line, what keeps you from getting too far away from the essence of your story. Even if you go down rabbit trails, you can use this to get yourself back on the main track. (On the form of an elevator pitch, see my TKZ post here.)

Finally, brainstorm a tentative “mirror moment” for your main character. This beacon of light will help you find your way if you get stuck in the dark.

Write

Check out my 10 tips for powering through NaNoWriMo.

Try to get a “nifty 350” words done the very first thing in the morning (or second, after you get the coffee going … hey, maybe invest in a coffee maker with a timer!)

Don’t edit your work except for a quick review of your daily pages. If you can do that review right before hitting the sack, so much the better. Your “boys in the basement” will work through the night and you can dive into writing the next morning.

James Scott Bell—October 15, 2017

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Additional resources:  BICHOK Words of Wisdom

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Along with the questions asked above, have you ever lost your own writing mojo? If so, what helped you reclaim it?