We writers learn many specialized words. Words for our craft, including point of view, story arc, and pacing. Legal words such as subpoena, defendant, and waiver. We learn forensic words, sports language and many more.
But we all speak a private language, though we may not realize it. I’m talking about family words.
I first learned about family words from Paul Dickson, the author of “Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families.” If you can get your hands on this book, grab it.
Dickson describes family words this way: “Every family has them. The words that only you use, your own secret language. For instance, one family has coined the word ‘lurkin’ for any sock that has lost its mate because ‘you know the other one is ‘lurkin’ around somewhere.’”
My personal favorite from Dickson’s book is “Grabacabbage,” someone whose name you don’t know or can’t remember. As in, “I saw that Grabacabbage kid from Cedar Court skateboarding through traffic. He’s going to get hit.”
My family also had their own words. Many centered around food. Here are a few:
Mustgo. Leftovers. As in “must go today or you’ll eat it tomorrow.”
Bread sandwich. My grandfather’s scornful name for a sandwich with only a thin slice of meat. Grandpa liked to pile on his meat and cheese.
Sunday ham. When unexpected guests dropped in around dinner time on Sunday, Mom would serve up an informal spread of potato salad, chips and lunchmeat. The cold cuts were the everyday stuff packed in our lunchboxes: baloney, pickle loaf, salami and braunschweiger, Swiss and American cheese. One of us kids would be sent to the local convenience store for ten cents’ worth of ham – usually about three slices. The Sunday ham would be draped on top the platter. Only the guests could eat it. If they didn’t, Dad got the Sunday ham in his lunchbox. We kids weren’t allowed to touch it.
FHB. (Family Hold Back). Used when we had voracious visitors, and there was a sudden shortage of hamburgers, steaks, or pork chops. The meat was reserved for guests. Once they were served, we kids could eat. If there were two chops or burgers left, they went to the guests under FHB rules.
My family gatherings had their own special words.
Organ recital. When my great-aunts visited my grandmother, these formidable women would repair to the kitchen for coffee cake and what my grandfather called the organ recital. Grandpa would flee to the living room and watch the ball game.
The organ recital was for women only. Kids like me were banned, but I found a place where I could eavesdrop on the gruesome details.
My aunts were permanently upholstered in black and wore Enna Jettick shoes. During the organ recital, my aunts would discuss their aches, pain and operations in loving detail.
Better yet, they talk about other people’s operations. Especially the hopeless ones. Aunt Marie would say, “The surgeon opened Eddie up and found a tumor the size of a grapefruit. There was nothing they could do, so they sewed him back up and sent him home.” I don’t know why, but tumors were always the size of a grapefruit.
As the afternoon wore on and the coffee cake disappeared, the labor contest would commence, and the women would one-up one another with horror stories about how long they were in labor during childbirth.
Is it me or is it hot in here? A euphemism for hot flashes. No woman would ever admit she was in menopause, much less suffered hot flashes. Instead, she’d ask this question. The other ladies would declare the heat was getting to them too, and fan themselves dramatically with napkins and magazines. The hostess, who was usually the same age, understood what that question meant, and adjusted the room temperature to December in Iceland.
Mutton dressed as lamb. An age-shaming remark aimed at an older woman dressed like a young girl. Today, Kris Jenner, Charo and Madonna are often sniped at as mutton dressed as lamb. I doubt they care. They’re laughing all the way to the bank.
Short arms. My grandfather’s term for someone who avoided reaching for a check. As in, “I’m not going out with that short arms and get stuck with the dinner check again.”
Tuberoses. My grandmother’s nickname for any mournful chiming clock. Apparently, when she was younger, tuberoses were a popular funeral flower.
Pasture pool. A golf game.
What are your family words, TKZers? Do you use them in your writing?
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It’s here! A Scarlet Death, my new Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery. Buy A Scarlet Death hardcovers and ebooks at:
I was going to jump back with a writing-related post, but let’s be honest. We get those all the time here at TKZ, but how many firsthand posts about a 3 week trip to New Zealand are in the archives?
(Also being honest – I haven’t gotten back to the wip. I printed out the first 25 chapter, which is as much as I’d written before I left, and read them on the rare occasions we had free time, and did my markups. They’re still in the envelope I packed them in.) Another “almost writing” thing? I actually remembered to keep a journal this time, although I have no intention of writing a book based on this trip. And, another moment of honesty—most of my notes were ‘travelogue’ and not the sorts of things I’d use in a novel if I’d planned to write one. Not to mention my longhand has degenerated to the point of bordering on unreadable.
So – New Zealand was a definite bucket list trip. The only improvement would have been to have Scotty beam me to Auckland and then back at the end of the trip. More details here and here.
We covered almost the entire country, as you can see by the map. The tour lasted 18 days. We also arrived a couple of days prior to our tour to allow for potential delays and to get over jet lag. (There’s a 19 hour plus a day time difference between Auckland and Colorado on the way out. We get that day back on the return trip.)
For me, I’d say one of the things I’d want to remember wasn’t so much the experiences, amazing as they were, as it was the education. It was heartening to go to a museum and see group after group of schoolkids with their interest and enthusiasm about the exhibits, all of which were extremely well done. They’re the future.
We were on an organized tour, and didn’t spend a lot of time at any destination, but we covered a lot of destinations. Not just end-of-the-day, here’s your hotel, but numerous stops along the way. Sometimes just for photos—and the scenery was stunning—and sometimes for tours.
Want to follow along? I’ll give you a minute to grab a map or its digital equivalent.
We started in Auckland, but set out for Paihia and the Bay of Islands the next morning. En route, we stopped at Glow Worm Caves and the Waitangi Treaty House where we had our first introduction to the Maori culture and history. (Not my favorite subject in school, and definitely never had classes that touched on the Maori).
Maori Treaty House
Learning about the Maori culture and seeing the efforts being made to keep it alive—and/or recover it—was another positive. Because—going back to something I learned in my college anthropology class—when two cultures collide, the one with the higher technology will overtake the other. Guess who lost out when the white man showed up? That’s pretty much a universal truth.
The Bay of Islands would be a must-see place in the North Island, especially if you can cruise through the “Hole in the Rock”, which we did. We also spent a little time at Otehei Bay on Urupukapuka Island, and some time exploring the town of Russell. (You finding all these locations? How’s your Maori?)
(Clicking should enlarge images.)
Fog lifting
Bay of Islands
Bay of Islands
Hole in the Rock
Urupukapuka Island
We had a fun ride on the Glenbrook Vintage Railway, run by volunteers in period dress, and offering a light tea service. From there, by coach to Rotorua with a stop at the Hamilton Gardens.
Glenbrook Vintage Railway
Hamilton Gardens
Kitchen Garden
Rotorua is another “must” stop, although a bit odiferous from all the sulfur. We walked through a redwood forest, stopped at the Blue and Green Lakes (although the lighting wasn’t conducive to the markedly different colors between the two.
The Te Puia center was a “don’t miss.” A kiwi breeding center, geysers, bubbling mud, a fantastic buffet dinner and Maori entertainment. All well done, but the bottom line is this is a school where they’re trying to keep the Maori arts alive. Students are vetted, and they take very few each year.
Geysers and Bubbling Mud
Maori Carving
Maori Culture Demos
The next day was spent in travel. We took the Northern Explorer train from Hamilton to Wellington, which was our southernmost stop in the North Island. There are a lot of sheep and cows in New Zealand. And green. Everything is so green. Ferns everywhere, many the size of trees.
Greenery
Tree Fern
Sheep
For our final day on the North Island, we took a gondola that rose a whopping 120 meters. (For someone who lives at 9100 feet, this was barely a hill), but at the top, we enjoyed a view of Wellington and roamed the Wellington Botanic Gardens, followed later that day with a guided tour of the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. Another educational and interesting experience, with more exhibits focusing on the historic culture and how it can coexist with the current day. Artists created their “updated” version of a meeting house.
Wellington Gardens
View of Wellington
Artists’ Meeting House
That’s it for the North Island. If there’s interest, I can report on our South Island adventures another time.
Okay, a little about writing so I don’t feel too guilty. Although I’m not planning a novel set in New Zealand, the people on the tour provided lots of character fodder for other books. The woman whose cackle would put Phyllis Diller’s to shame. Her husband called her his locator beacon. Or the woman who kept “losing” her husband. “Has anyone seen Tim? Where are you, Timbo?”
Then there was the woman who was severely visually impaired, yet who, with the help of her husband—and everyone else in the group—did and saw everything. I felt it was inappropriate to ask what her specific conditions were—she had other physical issues, but she took pictures with her phone, and said she enjoyed the views, and she talked about many other trips she and her husband had taken.
Or the Brit who refused to try anything new when it came to food, and subsisted on potatoes and “puddings” for much of the trip. The man who was first off the bus, roamed the farthest to take pictures (with his phone), and the last back on. The elderly couple who wore matching clothes and held hands as they walked. Or the one who seemed to wear one of the same two shirts every day, but when I brought it up—obliquely—she said she had four of them.
The floor is yours. Comments? Questions? Personal adventures?
How can he solve crimes if he’s not allowed to investigate?
Gordon Hepler, Mapleton’s Chief of Police, has his hands full. A murder, followed by several assaults. Are they related to the expansion of the community center? Or could it be the upcoming election? Gordon and mayor wannabe Nelson Manning have never seen eye to eye. Gordon’s frustrations build as the crimes cover numerous jurisdictions, effectively tying his hands. Available for preorder now.
Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”
The English language is full of quirks that are downright puzzling.
Take, for instance, the term a pair of pants.
Okay, a pair of shoes, a pair of glasses, a pair of aces—they all make logical sense. Two related objects make a pair.
But when was the last time you saw someone wearing a single pant?
Where did that weirdness come from?
According to Quora, it originated when people wore pantaloons, which were two separate pieces of clothing, put on one leg at a time. Eventually someone sewed them together, creating a singular garment, but the plural term stuck. The first recorded use of pants was in 1835 as a slang abbreviation for pantaloons.
Britannica says scholarly references don’t back up the sewn-together theory. Instead, they use the term, plurale tantum.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines plurale tantum, which is Latin for “plural only,” as a “noun which is used only in plural form, or which is used only in plural form in a particular sense or senses.” Bifurcated items (things that can be divided into two), such as pants, fall into this category. Think of items that are usually referred to in plural—often preceded by “pair of” or something similar, even when there is only one item: pliers, glasses, scissors, sunglasses, tweezers, etc. So, pants is a type of noun that is used only in its plural form, even when there is only one item being discussed.
I dunno if I buy the plurale tantum argument. Back in the 1800s, few people could read, let alone comprehend Latin. I tend to believe the sewn-together legend as the more likely origin.
Since TKZ readers and wordsmiths focus on crime writing, let’s look at a couple of plurale tantum examples that are used as weapons.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
According to Merriam-Webster, a pair of scissors originated from “Vulgar Latin”:
…caesorium referred to a cutting instrument, and this Latin word was singular—even though the cutting instrument it named had two blades that slid past each other. When the word was borrowed into Middle French, French speakers gave it both a singular form (cisoire) and a plural form (cisoires). The plural didn’t refer to multiple cutting implements, however; it was modeled on the two blades of a single caesorium.
We began calling an individual scissors a pair to emphasize the matched cutting blades. There’s precedent for it. Before we called them scissors, we called them shears, and pair was used with shears for about 100 years before scissors arrived on the scene.
Alfred Hitchcock chose a pair of scissors as the weapon in his 1954 classic, Dial M For Murder.
The versatile tool was likely developed in Europe during the Bronze Age to handle and shape hot metal. An early Greek illustration shows the god Hephaestus at a forge using pliers.
Wikipedia says Hephaestus is “the Greek god of artisans, blacksmiths, carpenters, craftsmen, fire, metallurgy, metalworking, sculpture and volcanoes.”
In the 1973 film Charley Varrick,Walter Matthau and cohorts rob a bank that turns out to be a repository for mob money. Mobsters go hunting for Matthau’s gang. In the scene below, a villainous character tries to obtain information from a hapless banker who was in on the heist. The villain threatens torture with “a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
According to the British Film Institute, Charley Varrick influenced director Quentin Tarantino who coopted the line about pliers and a blowtorch for Pulp Fiction (1994), delivered by the menacing Ving Rhames.
“Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness.” –Julia Cameron
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April 8, 2024 The date of the great eclipse when a wide swath of the United States will be darkened as the sun and moon perform a heavenly pas de deux.
Memphis will see only a 98% covering, so my husband and I plan to travel with some friends to Arkansas to experience the full beauty of the show.
This will not be the first time we’ve observed a total eclipse. Way back in 1970, there was a total eclipse in my hometown of Savannah, Ga. I remember the experience well, but not for the reason you may think.
Unfortunately, the day was cloudy, but as the moon moved between the Earth and the sun, the clouds would occasionally break and give us a series of snapshots of the phenomenon. When the moment of totality arrived, the clouds once again opened, and we saw the black disk, then the bright flash of light as the moon moved on to continue its course. But that still wasn’t what astonished me.
It was the darkness.
Standing on the front lawn of my parents’ home, I looked down the street and saw a wall of black shadow racing toward us. It wasn’t like a cloud that covered the sun. It was a dark, menacing presence, rushing forward to devour the light in its path until it overtook us, and suddenly all was night.
Even though we understood what was happening, I had a sense of primordial awe that I have never forgotten.
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Authors of mystery, suspense, and thrillers are well acquainted with darkness. It’s a symbol of the unknown, and that usually means fear, anxiety, loneliness, or panic will grip the main character and get the reader’s heart pumping a little harder.
“All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.” –John Ruskin
A character walks out into a black night and senses a presence that he can’t see, or comes face-to-face with his own demons in the dark night of the soul when all appears lost. That heart-stopping look into the abyss rivets the attention and keeps the reader turning pages.
Here are a few examples.
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We probably all studied Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven in high school. Fear and doubt consume the poet as he contemplates his own loneliness late at night. Then he hears a sound and thinks it’s a visitor knocking. He opens the door and sees … nothing.
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
The murky setting on the moors gave Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles a sense of mystery and foreboding.
“As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness. ‘My God, what’s that, Watson?’”
A sense of impending doom in Dean Koontz’s Midnight builds as a woman goes for a run on the beach in the middle of the night.
“Suddenly, as she was passing a pair of forty-foot, twisted cypresses that had grown in the middle of the beach, halfway between the hills and the waterline, Janice was sure she was not alone in the night and fog. She saw no movement, and she was unaware of any sound other than her own footsteps, raspy breathing, and thudding heartbeat; only instinct told her that she had company.”
Last week Kris introduced us to the Edgar finalists in her post. The first sentence of All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby hints of a violent past returning to haunt a small town.
“Charon County was founded in bloodshed and darkness.”
* * *
So, TKZers, there you have it. The Art of Darkness. How do you represent darkness in your books? Do you have any examples from the works of others that illustrate either physical or metaphorical darkness? Have you ever seen a total eclipse of the sun?
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I don’t know how much access I’ll have to TKZ during the day, but I’ll respond to comments whenever I can.
“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.” –Yousuf Karsh
Private pilot Cassie Deakin has a lot of opportunity to develop character while she hunts a killer.
He was 44 years old, an alcoholic, and had just been fired from his job because of his drinking. The Depression was in full tilt. Married, with savings running low, he had to find a way to make a living.
So he decided to become a writer. Ack!
Because of his background in business (he’d been an oil company executive for thirteen years), Raymond Chandler approached his new vocation systematically.
He started with an adult education course called Short Story Writing. He read pulp magazines, especially the famous Black Mask, with an analytical eye on what the writers did in their stories. He would make a detailed synopsis of a story by, say, Erle Stanley Gardner, then rewrite it in his own way, compare it with the original, then rewrite it again. That’s not a bad method for learning the craft.
What he didn’t see a lot of was style, a certain “magic” in the prose. (This reminds me of John D. MacDonald’s goal of “unobtrusive poetry.”)
Thus he began to type on strips of paper half the normal size. This forced him to put down choice words, and if he felt they didn’t work he could toss out the 15 lines or so and start again.
He kept notebooks, jotting down potential titles, story ideas, characters, and his observations of people, especially the clothes they wore and the slang they used.
His writing routine was based on time, not output (he was admittedly slow on the production side). He sat at his typewriter for four hours in the morning, until lunch. If the words didn’t come, he didn’t force the matter. If a writer doesn’t feel like writing, Chandler said, “he shouldn’t try.” (I have to disagree with the master here. But who am I to cavil? In 1939 he published The Big Sleep, got a bunch of Hollywood money, and became famous over time.)
He wrote to please himself and the reader. He once said in a letter, “I have never had any great respect for the ability of editors, publishers, play and picture producers to guess what the public will like. The record is all against them. I have always tried to put myself in the shoes of the ultimate consumer, the reader, and ignore the middleman.”
Of the two writers he was most associated with, he had this to say: “Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did he did superbly. But James Cain—faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat.”
And get this, from a 1947 letter: “I wrote you once in a mood of rough sarcasm that the techniques of fiction had become so highly standardized that one of these days a machine would write novels.”
Ha! (He also said technique alone could never have the “emotional quality” needed for memorable fiction. Looking at you, AI.)
For Chandler, the priority order of fiction factors seems to have been: style, characters, dialogue, scenes, plot. He was not a plotter. Far from it. In a 1951 letter to his agent, Carl Brandt, he wrote: “I am having a hard time finishing the book. Have enough paper written to make it complete, but must do all over again. I just didn’t know where I was going and when I got there I saw that I had come to the wrong place. That’s the hell of being the kind of writer who cannot plan anything, but has to make it up as he goes along and then try to make sense out of it. If you gave me the best plot in the world all worked out I could not write it. It would be dead for me.”
There are definitely plot holes in Chandler, the most (in)famous being who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep? When Warner Bros. was doing the movie, they sent a wire to Chandler asking who the murderer was. Chandler replied, “I don’t know.”
But here’s the thing. We remember Chandler, and place him atop the pantheon of hardboiled writers, because of what he emphaszied—his style. I mean, look at some of these gems:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Ana’s that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. – “Red Wind”
Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish, and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles. – The High Window
I lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief. – Farewell, My Lovely
There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream. – The Long Goodbye
She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight. – The Little Sister
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. – Farewell, My Lovely
“I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.” – “Spanish Blood”
The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. – The Long Goodbye
So, my writer friends, what do you think? Is style the secret ingredient over plot and character? We usually talk about the importance of character within a plot, or vice versa. But Chandler workedhard for that “magic” in his prose and, well, his books are still selling!
I believe all writers have an inner critic, also known as Resistance and the inner troll, which does its best to sabotage your writing. Getting past that inner critic is crucial to your writing success and happiness.
Today’s Words of Wisdom looks at outwitting the inner critic, how to attain flow state when you write more (take that, inner critic!), and how to overcome demoralization which happens to many writers for a variety of reasons, with excerpts from insightful posts by Joe Moore, Brad Morrison and James Scott Bell.
In an experiment, scientists measured the brain activity of jazz musicians as they performed a memorized piece of music, and then measured it again when the musicians did an improvised piece. Different brain regions lit up, according to the type of performance being given. During the improvisation, the medial prefrontal cortex–the part of the brain that allows self-expression–was more active. During the memorized piece, the dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions–the brain areas that monitor and correct performance–were more active.
In other words, in order to be creative, we’ve got to silence our brain’s inner critic.
For a writer, it’s not always easy to silence an internal critic. Take me, for example. I’m perfectly capable of stalling for days over a single paragraph, even a particular sentence. I’ll rewrite and rethink, tweak and prune, until I’m practically clawing at the walls of our house.
Recently I’ve developed a coping strategy for my internal critic, which I’ve named Harpy Harriet. When Harpy starts whispering in my ear, telling me things like, “Man, your writing sucks. You suck. Whatever made you think you were a decent writer?”, I merely type a little placeholder, and move on. Inevitably, when I return to that spot after having forged ahead in the manuscript, it’s much easier to write the revision.
But Harpy is a sly, cunning opponent, always scheming to get the better of me. She keeps changing tactics. Recently she’s tried to convince me that my medical issues have done a Flowers For Algernon number on the creative parts of my brain, rendering it incapable of producing decent prose. The only way I’ve been able to reassure myself is by going to my critique group. My group members don’t know anything about Harpy–they just tell it like it is about my prose. And so far, everything seems normal. I’m not like Charlie, regressing to a creative IQ of 68. I’m okay (at least as far as the writing is concerned). I can tell Harpy to take a hike.
Flow is a concept first proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow describes a state of euphoria and intense focus that is achieved when you are fully immersed in the task at hand. You tune out the world because you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing. For me it’s easy to remember times when I was reading a good book or playing an immersive video game and my wife had to call my name several times before I could pull myself out of the experience. It was like I was really there. I was in flow.
Writing can produce the same experience for me, but it’s more challenging to produce the flow state. However, when it happens, it’s a sweet feeling. For musicians it’s called being “in the groove.” Athletes talk about being “in the zone.” You’re in the flow state when you’re teetering on the edge of competency, when your ability is perfectly matched to the challenge.
Flow has three prerequisites:
1) The goals must be clear. – I think this is why it’s so hard for writers to get started on a book. My characters’ goals aren’t clear to me at the beginning, so it’s hard for me to write down what’s happening to them. On the other hand, at the end of the book I usually get in the flow and write very quickly because I know where the characters are going.
2) The feedback must be immediate and clear. – I’m also a stage actor, and the feedback when I’m performing couldn’t be more immediate. You can sense how an audience is perceiving you, particularly with a comedy. But with writing the only feedback we get is from our editors and online reviewers days, months, or years after we’ve typed the last word. That’s why the feedback writers require to continue is not the readers’ kudos, but their internal drive to find out what happens in their own story. I often hear that concept expressed as someone’s “need” to write.
3) You should have the proper balance between the perceived high challenge of the task and your perception that you have the high skills to complete the task. – This prerequisite could be the problem for many new writers; the challenge often exceeds the perceived skill level for a newbie. Writing a 100,000-word novel is a daunting task if you’ve never done it before. That’s why I think in terms of scenes instead of a whole book when I’m actually writing. If I know what’s happening in that one scene, I can get in the flow.
It’s not surprising to hear that the list of character traits Csikszentmihalyi lists as most important for achieving flow are the traits you’d expect to find in successful writers: curiosity, persistence, low self-centeredness, and a high rate of performing activities for intrinsic reasons only.
If you can find the flow when you are writing, you probably won’t have any problem producing novels. The key is setting up your environment so that you minimize distractions that will keep you from entering the flow state. Checking email and Facebook will take you out of flow, so turn those apps off or write somewhere where you can’t access them. And I highly recommend listening to wordless music.
For a writer, demoralization is always lurking, waiting to be a soul killer. We can’t let that happen.
We’re talking here about the mental game of writing. (Someone should write a bookabout that.) It’s every bit as important as the craft. Without the right brain settings our writing will stall, drift, flame out or otherwise suffer. All writers must be ready to meet the challenge of demoralization.
The main cause of which, the philosophers and theologians tell us, is expectations unfulfilled. We set ourselves up to desire a result, and want it so deeply, that when it doesn’t happen devastation is inevitable.
Buddha figured this out and proposed a solution: get rid of all desire!
The Stoics, on the other hand, accepted that we all have desires and dreams and worries and fears. Their key to happiness is learning how to focus your thoughts onlyon what you can act upon, and forget the all the rest.
The Roman writer Cicero explained the Stoic position by considering an archer who is trying to hit a target. The archer can decide how assiduously to practice, which arrows and bow to select, and how to care for them. They also control their focus right up the moment they let go of the arrow. But once the arrow leaves the bow, nothing at all is under the archer’s control. A sudden gust of wind might deflect the best shot, or the target—say, an enemy soldier—might suddenly move.
Hitting the target is what you’re after, so it’s what you pursue. But success or failure does not, in and of itself, make you a good or bad archer. This means that you should not attach your self-worth to the outcome but only to the attempt. Then, you will achieve what the ancients called ataraxia: the kind of inner tranquility that results from knowing you’ve done everything that was in your power to do.
For a writer, then, what is out of your control is how your book does in the marketplace. What you can control are your work habits, study of the craft, and interactions with editors and beta readers. On a daily basis, it’s you and the page. You control what words you put down, and how many.
When the book is published, you control what marketing methods to pursue. You can spend money on ads, put out the word on social media, notify your email list, and beg your mom to buy copies for the entire extended family for Christmas.
But after that, it’s out of your hands. The Stoics would say: Don’t give any thought to outcomes. Eradicate such musings from your mind as a good gardener kills weeds.
Bonus resources for today’s Words of Wisdom, three books I’ve found very helpful in overcoming the inner critic and focusing on what is within your control as a writer:
Does your inner critic create problems and obstacles for your own writing? What strategies do you use to outwit this foe?
Is flow state something you actively seek to create for yourself? What has worked for you?
Have you faced demoralization as a writer? How have you overcome it?
Bonus question: is there a book or resource you’ve found helpful in overcoming the inner critic, creating flow state, or improving your own morale as a writer?
“I got a fever. And the only prescription is more cowbell!” –Christopher Walken (as Bruce Dickinson on SNL)
“The act of writing is, for me, like a fever — something I must do. And it seems I always have some new fever developing, some new love to follow and bring to life.” — Ray Bradbury.
Is writing for you a fever, a pastime, a hobby, a vocation, an obsession … or something else?
What are you doing to add more cowbell to your writing?
Kill Zoners — It’s my pleasure and privilege to welcome a great guest to our blog. Ed Hill is a prominent Canadian painter and storyteller. He’s a prolific artist and writer who’s guided me as a life mentor and protected me as a police colleague to which I’m forever grateful. Please welcome Ed Hill to the Kill Zone.
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Garry Rodgers and I have been friends for well over 40 years. When he asked me to submit an article for The Kill Zone, I was well aware my thoughts would be read by any number of accomplished novelists. While I consider myself a writer, particularly within the realm of my discipline of being an artist, I could find writing in such company as this, a bit intimidating.
But I don’t. My writing is about emotion, spirit, energy, and a very direct link to my artistic creations in the form of paintings. As I finish a painting, my work is only truly completed when I “paint” the final bit with words.
You see I’m a painter first, and being a writer is but a part of my artistic expression. A bit of history will help explain. In the mid 1980’s, in the middle of a 34-year Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) career, my painting journey began. I was taught by an indigenous artist. And as such, much of what I learned was from the indigenous perspective.
It was from those origins that I found the value and reality of writing a story with each painting. A visit to my website www.edhillart.com will show that each image has a story, and that story is as much a part of my painted creation as the painting itself. In fact, whenever I sell a piece of my work, the story is always attached. I tell anyone who owns a piece of my work that unless they know the story of the image, they only have half of my artistic creation.
I suppose a bit of cultural history might be in order here. Within the indigenous culture virtually every painting, sculpture, totem pole, beadwork, or song has a story. Just ask. Within the very natural surroundings that we all live in, the indigenous culture has a story. And so, from the origins of my painting career my indigenous teacher, Roy Henry Vickers, taught by example. Every painting he does is accompanied by a written story.
When I started painting in 1985, I wrote a story with the very first image I created. You’ll find the image of my first painting at my website under the title of “Old Man”. And ever since, every painting I’ve done has a story. Some are emotional. Some are poetic. Some are a protest. And some can even evoke a spiritual connection for the reader.
Old Man by artist Ed Hill
The painting and the very act of creating it dictate what the story will be. Indeed, over the years I’ve written so many stories that they could be compiled and published as book themselves. Some people in fact have told me that they have used my website as a “book” while they’ve taken the time to view the paintings and read the hundreds of stories attached.
As I have taught my painting techniques to many artists over the years, I’ve always touted the value of composing a story to be a part of their painting I’d be generous in saying that perhaps 5% of my students practice that teaching. So many find it hard to express their thoughts and emotions.
As any of you reading this article know, it takes discipline to sit down and write. Not everybody has the commitment, energy, creativity or that unique and special discipline to be a writer. As the old saying goes, “If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”
As writers, I know you write from experience, but you also create from emotion, from a place of energy and creativity. You write from an inner need to get it out there. When that writer within has a story to tell, your inner muse is always calling to you. And so it is with me as an artist.
When I have a painting in progress, I often tell my wife as we are away from my painting, that I can “hear it calling to me”. And therein lies the story. You see, for me, the story develops and reveals itself as I paint. Seldom do I paint an image with the title and story realized ahead of time. In the many hours of painting, lost in the Zen of creativity, I let my brain wander. I may be painting an image I’ve seen for decades, yet now I have chosen to paint it.
Why?
Why now?
That’s when the story begins to whisper. And as I paint and compose the image, so too the words of my story flood my brain. Hard to explain, the story comes in an inspirational, creative, and even a “spiritual” surge from within. I’m not overstating that. The story comes from the very spot within me that the painting comes from. It’s a part of my artistic creation. When composing my story, as I write, I paint with a palette of words.
Sometimes the title is evident almost immediately. Other times, only as the paint dries and the words of my story turn into sentences does the title take shape. And when it does, the title in particular is compelling. It must be.
Titles such as “Get Over It”, or “Covid Blue” are good examples of that. To understand those titles, you have to read the story. And when you read the story, you’ll then refer back to the painting. The energy of that loop is complete.
Covid Blue by artist Ed Hill
Get Over It by artist Ed Hill
The image is the very first contact anyone usually has with my creative expression, but the title is what turns their gaze to the story. And I’ve watched from afar at shows where someone will study my painting, turn to the story, then back to the image with their eyes opened to the very intention and spirit of the painting. And speaking commercially, quite often it’s the story that connects the viewer to the image, and that results in a sale.
Often, I can sit in my home with a coffee and just revisit the many paintings I have hanging on my walls. I’m always taken back as to the “why” of a particular painting. I marvel at the very creation, and many times realize I could never do that painting as well were I to try it again. That painting was a product of a moment in time, a moment charged with circumstance, serendipity, and emotion.
I “use” my paintings a lot for that purpose. I find a soothing comfort in just revisiting them and savouring the colour, composition, light and dark, and very presence of the image itself. But so too, I will read the story attached just as often. Those words painted into the composition of the story have an everlasting energy. It’s an energy that never grows old.
My family have instructions. When and if my time comes to be in a bed someday as I approach the end of my life’s journey, they’re to read to me. They’re to read those stories of emotion, spirituality, and creativity. For those are the touchstones of my life.
I know those words, even if my eyes are closed to the paintings themselves. I know too that those words will resonate with a positive energy that’ll have some meaning and comfort to me. When the lights do inevitably go out, it’s those words that I want to take with me.
I close these thoughts by referring the reader to one of my paintings titled “Forever”. I think the story of “Forever” applies to my written words. And so too to yours. Created with our energy and inspiration—as writers—our words will long outlive all of us. They are FOREVER.
Forever by artist Ed Hill
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Bio — Born in Paris, Ontario in 1948 and later moving to Peterborough, Ed Hill’s journey to becoming a distinguished artist began in earnest after a career in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which he joined at age 20. His artistic ambitions, which had been a mere dream since his high school days, began to crystallize in the mid-1980s after moving to Tofino, British Columbia, and meeting the renowned artist Roy Henry Vickers.
Under Vickers’ mentorship, Hill honed his skills and developed a distinctive style, producing his first notable work, “Old Man.” His art, deeply inspired by the landscapes of British Columbia, seeks to evoke the profound emotions tied to the region’s natural beauty.
Now retired and living in Gibsons, British Columbia, with his wife Joy, Hill continues to explore and depict the “West Coast” essence, aiming to capture the moments where nature and the observer’s inner world harmoniously align, hoping his viewers anywhere can feel the unique “music” of British Columbia’s landscapes through his work. Visit www.edhillart.com.
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Kill Zoners — Painting with words. How does this resonate with you? Do you “see” your writing as it’s imagined and unfolds? Could you captivate your story in one image as Ed does with his? Let’s discuss, and please share how you paint with words.
Yesterday’s excellent post by PJ Parrish about the first pages of this year’s nominees for the Edgar Allan Poe Mystery Award brought me back to the year when I served as a judge for best novel of the year. I looked at it an an honor–a rite of passage, of sorts, in the same vein as jury duty. I would set aside hundreds of hours of my life over the coming year as a means of paying tribute other writers, in service to this artform that I love so much.
Of necessity, much of the process is veiled in secrecy. As such, I have no idea if my judging experience bears any resemblance to that of any other review committee. And, to honor commitments I made to keep the process quiet, I won’t just keep titles to myself, but I won’t even mention the year in which I served. (Hint: It was a long time ago.)
We’re talking a lot of books. Every hardcover mystery, thriller, or genre-adjacent book published between January 1 and December 31 of the year under review. The number that I recall is 492, all delivered to the front door. The UPS driver got a very good Christmas bonus that year.
“Best book” is an absolute. This was the first speed bump for me. Best is best, hard stop. The standard is not really, really good, or “Wow, that’s an original take!” Best is “none better.” No silver medals here. It’s daunting.
The books don’t arrive all at once. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. During the first few months of the 12-month submission period, I received books at a rate of a manageable trickle. Easy-peasy. Well over 100 arrived during the month of December, a good number of those squeaking in just under the New Year’s Eve deadline. Bummer for those authors.
Judging is done by committee. As I recall, I was one of 7 judges on the best novel committee that year, each of us representing a different corner of the suspense writing universe–cozies, thrillers, hardboiled, etc. I don’t know if that’s typical, but I though it was a touch of brilliance. We were well wrangled by an under-appreciated and overworked committee chair. I forget the details of how it all worked exactly, but as tranches of books arrived, each of us would provide ranked lists of our favorites (top 10 at first, winnowed to top five toward the end), which often bore little resemblance to each other.
Confirmation bias is real. For me, it boiled down to best being best. Given the numbers involved, if what might have been the greatest book ever written didn’t become interesting before page 20, it surrendered its shot at being absolute best. (Ironically, if that book had been one of the initial submissions in the slow times, it might have had a shot. If it had been submitted in the December tranche, it would have been lucky to have a 10-page fuse.) Other judges refused to consider books written by certain famous names. Hey, judges are people, too.
Production values matter. This one is really an aside, but its an important one. There’s a look and feel to a well-produced book–factors that go above and beyond the quality of the writing itself–that have a big impact on the overall reading experience. Font size, binding, paper quality, and I’m sure a bunch of other qualities I don’t understand make a subliminal difference to a reader. Something for all of us to keep in mind.
It’s all friendly until the end. As I recall, our final submission deadline for nominees was sometime in early February. Seven judges, each reading roughly 500 books, represents 3,500 individual reading experiences. There’ll be disagreements. By this time, though, the obvious non-starters have been eliminated, and we were down to the last 20-30 books that not only were all very good (okay, I didn’t particularly like two of them), and we have to narrow it down to a total of one winner and four runners up. Exactly four, not five. In my year, the winner was the book that was common to each of the judges’ top-five lists, though not necessarily in the top slot. As for the runners up, that’s where the fighting occurred. My top two picks don’t appear anywhere on the final list. I’m confident that other judges can say the same thing.
So what do awards mean in the end?
Having won the Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original in 2016, I can tell you that it means a lot to be recognized by one’s peers. It’s humbling. And I deeply appreciate the honor.
But being involved in the process taught me that “best” does not, in fact, mean “best” because such a standard cannot exist in an arena as subjective as art. What “best” really means is engaging and entertaining enough to rate inclusion on lists that also include other writers whose works I admire and whose talent I envy.
The final takeaway is this: Cliche notwithstanding, the true honor lies in being nominated in the first place.
I’ve begun my annual Edgar banquet chairman duties. I enjoy this a lot because it forces me to pay close attention to some of the best writing our genre has to offer. This year, as in the past, I thought I’d share the openings of the six nominees for Best Novel. Some really seasoned vets in the mix and a couple you might not know. I tried to break the excerpts off at logical places to give each writer enough time to find their narrative legs. All typos are mine, by the way. I had to hand-enter these. Curse you, Amazon…
Let’s take a look at how they have chosen to open their stories. My comments follow each excerpt.
Flags On The Bayou. By James Lee Burke.
Morning on the Lady of the Lake Plantation can be grand experience, particularly in the late fall when the sky is a clear blue, and the wind is blowing in the swamp, Spanish moss lifting in the trees, and thousands of ducks quacking as they end their long journey to the South. However, in this era of trouble and woe it is difficult to hold on to these poignant moments, as was the case last evening when our Christian invaders from the North lit up the sky with airbursts that disintegrated into curds of yellow smoke and descended on the grass and swamp in configurations that resembled spider legs.
A twisted piece of hot metal landed no more than ten feet from the chair in which I sat and the artist’s easel on which I painted, but I did not go inside the house. I would like to tell you that I am brave and inured to the damage cannon fire can wreck on the bodies of both human beings and animals. But that is not the case. There’s a Minie still parked in my left leg and I need no convincing of the damage Billy Yank can do when he gets up his quills. The truth is I both fear the wrath of our enemies, as I fear the wrath of God, and at the same time wish that I could burn inside its flame and be cleansed of the guilt that I never thought would be mine,
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Well, you know you’re in Burke-landia from the get-go, right? This is a writer renowned for his lyricism, and we are firmly in the narrator’s point of view here. I admire, as always, Burke’s descriptive power. I love the image of “curds” of yellow smoke, and I am a sucker for a vivid sense of place. But such a leisurely build is not everyone’s cup of tea, including mine. The pace is slow and deliberate, thanks to the long paragraphs and phrasing. I do like the way Burke gently reveals details about his narrator — he’s a wounded vet who now finds peace in painting. And that last subtle line is terrific — he needs to be free of a guilt that he might feel is not rightly his. That last line would make me set aside impatience and read on. How about you?
All The Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
Charon County was founded in bloodshed and darkness.
Literally and figuratively.
Even the name is enveloped in shadows and morbidity. Legend has it the name of the county was supposed to be Charlotte or Charles County, but the town elders waited too late and those names were already taken by the time they decided to incorporate their fledging encampment. As the story goes, they just moved their fingers down the list until they settled on Charon. Those men, weathered as whitleather with hands like splitting mauls, bestowed the name on their new town with no regard to its macabre nature. Or perhaps they just like the name because a river flowed through the county and emptied into the Chesapeake like the River Styx.
Who knows? Who could know the thoughts of these long-dead men.
What is known is that 1805 in the dead of night a group of white landowners, chafing at the limits of their own manifest destiny, set fire to the last remaining indigenous village on the teardrop-shaped peninsula that would become Charon County.
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Another slow, measured opening that, like Burke’s, centers around the sense of place. Cosby has chosen to establish Charon County as a character, including an overt mythological reference to Charon, the ferryman who carried souls over the river Styx that separated life and death. Nice, that. Sort of forebodding. We don’t get a clear sense of who is narrating here. I suspect, unlike Burke’s, it’s omniscient. I like the pacing: The opening graph is long but relief comes with the break “Who know?…” Then we get the kicker graph that tells a village and its people was brutally wiped off the earth. A couple fine images here, including “weathered as whitleather.” Had to look that up: Whitleathering is a special tanning process that keeps leather white. I would definitely read on.
The Madwomen Of Paris by Jennfier Cody Epstein
I didn’t see her the day she came to the asylum.
Looking back, this sometimes strikes me as unlikely. Impossible, even, given how utterly her arrival would upend the already chaotic order of things at the Salpetriere — not to mention change the course of my own life there. At times I even forget I wasn’t present at that pivotal moment, for I can see it so clearly in my mind’s eye: The bloodstreaked clothing and skin. The wild eyes and unnkempt hair. The slim legs, bare of stockings, covered with bruises and mud. That single bare foot — for she had lost her boot at some point — as white and fragile as an unshelled egg. My mind replays her screams as the orderlies drag her from the ambulance, an otherworldly mix of falcon and banshee interspered with strangled pleas: nonono, don’t TOUCH me and I will kill myself and — most chilling of all: They are coming. Do you hear me? THEY ARE COMING! I marvel at the sheer physical strength I saw — or think I saw — her displaying, at the way she fought so viciously against the men attempting to drag her into the administration building that they had to briefly lay her down to attend to a wrist she had bitten, a cheek she had scratched, a kick she had successfully landed to a loathsome man’s privates…It’s all etched into my head with such clarity that, more than once, I’ve consulted the journal I kept at the time, scanning through its scribbled pages to affirm that these “memories” are, in fact, not memories at all. That rather, they are imaginative reconstructions, woven together from various medical reports and doctors’ musing, and from snippets gleaned from those who did witness her arrival — or else were party to it, and bore the injuries to prove it.
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Do you notice a pattern here? We seem to be getting all slow-build, contemplative narrations. No action to be found. I found all six entries to be of the same nature. With Epstein’s, I am a little put off by the dense second paragraph. When I read it cold the first time, I didn’t care for it at all. By having to retype it for this post, I was forced to slow down and consider it more carefully. I love the opening line and the fact the writer chose to set it off by itself. But that big chunky second graph is a lot to chew on. Lots of descriptive memories embedded. Too many? What do you all think? Again, like Burke’s opening, we are locked into the narrator’s memories. Everything is in the past. I’m guessing Epstein is using an unreliable narrator here — she’s in an asylum, says she never saw the patient, and even admits her “memories” might be false. Intriguing, if a bit turgid for my taste. Not a fan of all those colons, elipses and dashes. And I found some points repetitious, especially her telling us several times she actually witnessed nothing.
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
You may not remember me, but I have never forgotten you, begins the letter written in the kind of cursive they don’t teach in schools anymore. I read the sentence twice in stinging astonishment. It’s been forty-three years since my brush with the man even the most reputable papers called the All-American Sex Killer, and my name has long since fallen to a footnote in the story.
I’d given the return address only a cursory glance before sliding a nail beneath the envelope’s gummed seam, but now I hold it at arm’s length and say the sender’s name out loud, emphatically, as thought I’ve been asked to answer the same question twice by someone who definitely heard me the first time. The letter writer is wrong. I have never forgotten her, either, though she is welded to a memory that I’ve often wished I could.
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I like this opening best. Yes, we are in narrator’s memories AGAIN. But Knoll keeps things tight and moving along, taking us quickly back to the present with the image of holding the letter at arm’s length. There’s a lot of good tension building here. We know immediately we’re dealing with a serial killer. We know the narrator has a relationship to her. We know it’s haunting her. Tight and tense. Well done, I say.
An Honest Man by Michael Koryta
The yacht appeared nine weeks after Israel returned to his father’s house, and even from a distance and under the squeezed red sun of dawn, he could see that the vessel was in trouble. Adrift, rudderless, a possession of the sea rather than a partner of it.
Like anyone who’d grown up on an island off the coast of Maine, he’d seen boats drift before — five of them he would later recall for investigators — and in four of those circumstances, the boats had been empty. In the fifth, a child had been aboard, alone after cutting the lines at a dock and letting the tide take him. The boy’s goal had been to teach his parents a lesson and Israel supposed he’d succeeded, because the boat was in the rocks before they got to it.
So five times he had watched the meandering, listless behavior of a boat without a human hand to direct it, that drunkard’s drift, and five times no one had been hurt. The sixth time would be different.
Why? What was so different about this one? the investigators would ask.
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Again, we are getting another slow build, the storytelling unfolding through a narrator’s memories. Must be a trend. The action has ALREADY HAPPENED and thing are now in the hands of investigators. Given that I had read the similar approaches of the other nominees, I was longing for an active opening by this point. But I like this opening. It creates tension via the idea that Israel (the narrator) has seen many “drunkard drift” boats before (nice line, that) — but there’s something really hinky with this sixth boat.. I’d read on, but I am really longing for some present-time action and less remembrance. Which leads us to…
The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger
The Alabaster River cuts diagonally across Black Earth County, Minnesota, a crooked course like a long crack in a china plate. Flowing out of Sioux Lake, it runs seventy miles before crossing the border into Iowa, south of Jewel, the county seat. It’s a lovely river filled with water that’s only slightly silted, making it the color weak tea. Most folks who’ve grown up in Black Earth County have swum in the river, fished it pools, picnicked on its banks. Except in spring, when it’s proned to flooding, they think of it as an old friend. On quiet nights when the moon is full or nearly so and the surface of the Alabaster is mirror-still and glows pure white in the dark bottomland, to stand on the hillside and look down on this river is to fall in love.
With people, we fall in love too easily, it seems, and too easily fall out of love. But with the land it’s different. We abide much. We can pour our sweat and blood, our very hearts into a piece of earth and get nothing but fields of hail-crushed soybean plants or drought-withered cornstalks or fodder for a plague of locusts, and we still love this place enough to die for it. In Black Earth County, people understand these things.
If you visit the Alabaster at sunrise or sunset you’re likely to see the sudden small explosions of water where fish are feeding. Although there are many kinds of fish that make the Alabaster their home, the most aggressive are channel catfish. They’re mudsuckers, bottomfeeders, river vultures, the worst kind of scavengers.Channel cats will eat anything.
This is the story of how they came to eat Jimmy Quinn.
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This is a prologue. Nice and short, thank goodness, because you know how much I dislike them. Krueger, like Burke, is known for his ability to create a memorable sense of place. It’s his hallmark. Again, a slow build, a leisurely fat first graph to tell us where we are — this river is special, Kreuger is stressing, so special you fall under its spell. But then things start to turn darker. The water “explodes” with jumping fish and the worst are the rapacious catfish. And that last line — set off in its own paragraph, please note! — what a good kicker. This opening reminds me of David’s Lynch’s famous opening shot from Blue Velvet: To the accompaniment of Bobby Vinton’s romantic song and chirping birds, the slow-mo camera reveals an ldyllic suburban street with children playing, white picket fences, red roses. A man angrily battles a snake-like garden hose and has a stroke. Then the camera burrows into the grass, the music is replaced by awful gnawing sounds and we get creepy close-ups of devouring beetles. Like that, Krueger sets up a lovely normal then plunges you into cannibal-abnormal. Bill, I didn’t know you had it in you, man.
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead.
From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson. It was the Jackson 5 after all who put Ray Carney back in the game following four years on the straight and narrow. The straight and narrow –– it described a philosophy and a territory, a neighborhood with borders and local customs. Sometimes when he crossed Seventh Avenue on the way to work he mumbled the words to himself like a rummy trying not to weave across the sidewalk on the way home from the bars.
Four years of honest and hard work in home furnishings. Carney outfitted newlyweds for their expedition and upgraded living rooms to suit improved circumstances, coached retirees through the array of modern recliner options. It was a grave responsibility. Just last week one of his customers told him that her father had passed away in his sleep “with a smile on his face” while cradling in a Sterling Dreamer purchased at Carney’s Furniture. The man had been a plumber with the city for thirty-five years, she said. His final earthly feeling had been the luxurious caress of that polyurethene core. Carney was glad the man went out satisfied — how tragic your last thought to be “I should have gone with the Naugahyde.” He dealt in assessories. Accent pieces of lifeless spaces. It sounded boring. It was. It was also fortifying, the way that under-seasoned food and watered-down drinks could provide nourishment, if not pleasure.
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See what I meant about the narrator-memory trend? Must be something in the drinking water this year. I like the cleanliness of Whitehead’s style — no fussy colons and commas, a good mix of long and short sentences. Note that even though both graphs are longish, that long-short mix helps the pacing. The voice feels authentic, weary-wry, and that’s what drew me in here. (I should have gone with the Naugahyde!) I like this guy Carney and I want to know what pushed him off the “straight and narrow.”
Whelp, that’s it, crime dogs. Would love to hear what you all think about these openings. All our lines are open to take your calls.
And just because this is my post and I love this opening so much, here’s Blue Velvet.
I was going to jump back with a writing-related post, but let’s be honest. We get those all the time here at TKZ, but how many firsthand posts about a 3 week trip to New Zealand are in the archives?
We covered almost the entire country, as you can see by the map. The tour lasted 18 days. We also arrived a couple of days prior to our tour to allow for potential delays and to get over jet lag. (There’s a 19 hour plus a day time difference between Auckland and Colorado on the way out. We get that day back on the return trip.)
He was 44 years old, an alcoholic, and had just been fired from his job because of his drinking. The Depression was in full tilt. Married, with savings running low, he had to find a way to make a living.
