Author Archives: Karen Whalen
Blame it on Tana French
I read to fall asleep. If you also indulge in that pastime, you may be familiar with the situation when you just can’t put down the book so you read late into the night when you should be sleeping and then when you stop reading you cannot go to sleep. Insomnia is not the outcome I want when I read in bed.
A week ago Friday I started reading The Likeness by Tana French. As with any of her books, right from the first enticing chapter her characters looped their arms through mine and transported me into their world. Realizing I had reached my bedtime reading limit the next night when I almost dropped my iPhone several times after I dozed off, I closed the Kindle app ready for a good sleep. The reading potion had worked it’s intended magic.
Or so I thought. I tossed. Covers off. I turned. Covers back on. The last time I looked at the clock, it was 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning. I blamed my inability to sleep on the nine boys who were having a sleepover at my daughter’s house next door, celebrating my grandson’s thirteenth birthday. There wasn’t much sleeping accomplished that night by anyone in the house as the nine boys roamed outside in the yard and in the park across the street then retired to the room about three feet from our casita. By the sounds of it, a good time was had by all!
Sunday night we were all in bed early. I was close enough to the end of The Likeness that if I could stay awake long enough I’d be able to finish it. My favorite part of reading a mystery is when I hit my “sweet” spot–about 75% of the way through the book-which means all my questions will be answered by the time I fall asleep.
By midnight I had reached the end of the book. Exhausted from Saturday night’s abbreviated sleep, I should have easily snored my way into dreamland at that point.
The last time I looked at the clock was at 2:30 a.m.
I blame it all on Tana French (not on teenage boys or plain old insomnia). Her psychological twists and thriller turns must have made me too worked-up, or anxious, or over-stimulated, to fall asleep. With that in mind, on Monday evening I found an innocuous historical mystery with which to read my way to sleep. Worked like a charm. Guess I don’t need Tylenol PM just yet.
Icebergs in Arizona
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
—Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon
Gabby has me diving into the freezing cold water of the North Atlantic, searching for the seven-eighths of my book that is underwater. Although just a meager portion of the seven-eighths, this is what I’ve uncovered:
- Subplot. I’ve fleshed out a murder subplot that wasn’t in the original NaNoWriMo novel. I wasn’t certain I even could use it when it appeared but I’ve grown to like it. I’ve been massaging it, expanding it, and I can see its potential as both a red herring and a means of inserting more of the backstory of some characters.
- Murderer. I’ve changed the murderer. This is big!! And it’s involved reworking not just the murder itself but also relationships among the characters. This change helped me flesh out the relationship between a mother and daughter, going back eighteen years to the daughter’s conception.
- Conflicts. You can never have too many of those, can you? Possibly in your real life but not in a book. My NaNoWriMo conflicts were superficial but now I’ve created some meaningful ones that will help Gabby develop into a well-rounded, mature woman.
- Family history. I’ve delved further into the history of the paternal side of the protagonist’s family, starting with the life of her great-grandfather. One of the perks of being an author is that you are in control of what happened generations ago that affects your living characters. It’s more fun, and easier, than using Ancestry.com.
- Whodunit? Most recently I have visited with each of my characters in order to discover who he or she thinks is the murderer. Through these conversations, I have learned more about my characters’ flaws, as well as gained some insight into where I need to place clues.
At this point, working with the separate parts of the structure of the novels means that I will have to fit all of this information together to form the novel. It is going to be like taking the pieces from numerous jigsaw puzzles and jamming the pieces together to create one much larger puzzle, all the while looking under the sofa and the coffee table for the missing pieces that make up the dreaded hollow places.
During all of this, I haven’t written one word that increases the word count of the novel. And that’s okay. For now.
Celebrating Toilets on International Women’s Day
In a show of solidarity with women in the United States and around the world who are observing International Women’s Day, I considered a boycott of my blog post for today.
However, as my writing is a hobby and nothing more–I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to– and not wanting to demean this cause, I am proceeding with my post. A radically different post than originally planned. (Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory can wait. Is there anyone who thinks Hemingway should be written about on International Women’s Day?)
Originally, I assumed– a gross mistake on my part–that this is a cause focused in the United States, where “A Day Without A Woman” is the rallying cry, urging women to strike by not working, whether paid or unpaid, or not shopping (except in small businesses or female-owned businesses). If you have to, or want to, work or shop, you can wear red to show your support.
A quick search on my phone left me in shock. And awe. And with the realization of how uninformed I am about women’s issues around the world even though I consider myself a feminist from way back. While we in the United States focus on the enormous contribution of women to the economy, women in other parts of the world are concentrating on more basic concerns.
Like toilets.
Today’s “New York Times” mobile article International Women’s Day: Calls to Action, Words of Praise and Rallies describes how Iceland, Russia, Egypt, Georgia, South Korea, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Manila, Kenya, Ireland, Poland, Italy, Hong Kong, Turkey, among other countries, observed the day.
And then there is India. Where a hole in the ground constitutes a family’s toilet. Where three hundred million women defecate in the open. Where these very women are susceptible to sexual assault.
That’s when I started crying.
My economic contribution to this cause will be to donate money to an organization that helps women in India dig toilets for their families.
And my husband and I are wearing red today.
A good book makes you think
I know I’m taking a chance when I download “bargain” books from BookBub, Choosy Bookworm, and Amazon, or pick up used books at my favorite Arizona bookstore, Changing Hands. I may end up with a book that doesn’t appeal to me, to put it nicely. Looking on the bright side, it can be motivating to realize that if that book can get published, surely I will have no problem getting my novel into print.
That was not the case with the used book on writing I recently bought, “The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing” by David Morrell. I am only 36 pages into the book and I have already gotten my $8.50 worth. (The other used book on writing included in that same purchase, for just $6.50 and to remain unnamed, was barely worth that amount. Even so I read the entire book.)
On page four of “The Successful Novelist,” Morrell states that the correct, and only, answer to his question, “Why do you want to be a writer?” is “Because you need to be.” “Writers write.” A real writer would squeeze writing into any time available, even if it’s just fifteen minutes a day.
The sign of a good book is that it makes you think. (I made that up. I think.) Reflecting back over my younger writing years, this is what I think my writing life should have been. When I was young and energetic, busy with my family, work, and volunteer activities, I should have found a way to say “no” to just one thing. And then locked myself in the closet. (That’s correct. When I wrote in 1987 my very first draft of the book, “Anne,” from which my other books have spawned, I put a desk in my clothes closet. In our open concept house, this was the only place I could escape from the activity and noise. The bathroom was my second choice.) If I’d been smart enough to lock the closet door and write for fifteen minutes each day, by now I actually might have a book completed and, dare I say, published. Thirty years later.
As I ruminated over how quickly those thirty years have passed with so little writing to show for them, the accountant in me picked up my phone, clicked on the calculator app, and started punching in numbers. If I had spent just a half-hour every day writing, 365 days a year, for thirty years, I would have racked up 5,475 hours writing.
I tried to relate that number to something tangible, such as how many books 5,475 hours of writing equates to. Due to the fact that I don’t have any completed, full-length novels to my credit, I can only draw a parallel to my NaNoWriMo experiences. In the month of November I can write 50,000+ words, without writing every day. I estimate that I spend three hours a day on average writing like crazy during the month, which totals ninety hours. For a first draft of 100,000 words, I quadrupled those hours, 360 hours total. In half-hour increments, that equals 720 writing sessions of a half hour each, or pretty darn close to two full years.
Back to the 5,475 hours that I could have spent writing in the past thirty years. If I divide those hours by the 360 hours to produce a rough draft, I could have easily whipped out fifteen rough drafts. Instead of the four unfinished drafts I have, I could have fifteen. Unfinished. Rough. Drafts. Sounds about right.
P.S. Please go back and read Heidi Wilson’s latest blog post. She issued a challenge. Read the comment section for a hilarious response from Judy.
We all have secrets–don’t we?
I noticed a couple of links to blog posts on Facebook today. Possibly there were more but it was hard to pick out what was a blog post, what was a news (real or fake) article, and what was a personal post. Any post that wasn’t about Elizabeth Warren, Betsy DeVos, or the New England Patriots didn’t have much of a chance of getting noticed today.
One of the links was to a blog about benches. Yup, those uncomfortable wooden couches you sit on in the park. I read the tantalizing first line of the post and continued scrolling. But it did make me think, always a risky proposition.
When Heidi, Eleanor or I write a new blog post, the link gets posted on our personal Facebook pages so that our friends can get to it with just a click. I’m wondering how many of our friends “Like” our blog posts without reading them then quickly proceed to the more appealing posts of puppies, babies, donkeys, and a moose standing on top of a car.
Hey, I’m OK with that. If you aren’t interested in reading about writers, writing, books, and authors, you shouldn’t waste your time reading our blog. BUT if we were to make our blog more personal, a little sexier, might we make loyal readers out of you? Keep in mind, we are three gray-haired ladies in our sixties so you might want to temper your expectations .
While I wait for the green light from Eleanor and Heidi to spice up our content, I have some updates for you.
“NCIS New Orleans” tonight on the leak of sex tapes: we all have secrets. I believe that is true, whether the secrets are current or just partitioned off in our memories. (Feel free to reveal yours in the comment section.) I’m developing secrets for all the potential suspects in my novel, Gabby. I think you’ll like them–my suspects as well as their secrets.
Speaking of Gabby, I’m making progress but I haven’t added a word to my NaNoWriMo novel. How is that progress, you ask? I’m working on what I call the infrastructure of the novel. I’ve summarized the novel into a fourteen page timeframe, which helped me find errors in the timing of plot events. The timeframe summary is also useful for inserting and moving scenes instead of fumbling with 154 pages. At Eleanor’s suggestion, I set up an Excel spreadsheet with the dates and times of day on the left side and my characters across the top. Each cell contains a summary of where each main character is during that time period and what he or she is doing. It makes babysitting all of my characters easier. Still a long ways to go before I am ready to rewrite my first draft.
Arizona is heating up…slowly. We are looking at two days of eighty-plus degree weather then a cool down and some rain. Looking forward to when the temperature stays above seventy-five. I love walking out the door at night or in the morning and not getting hit with a blast of cold air. And when the sun is shining, which it does a lot more than back in New Hampshire, it always feels warmer than the thermometer says. I’ll admit, the cooler weather has kept me in the casita chained to the bed. Writing.
Thank you, Hercule Poirot
The room at the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul where Christie may have written her novel
Eyes focused on a gouge in the old wooden table in our meeting room in the library, I reluctantly shook my head when my writing group asked if I had read Dame Agatha Christie’s novel, Murder on the Orient Express. I was bombarded from all sides with instructions to read the novel. Posthaste. I nodded my head, finally able to make eye contact with the other five members of the group.
In preparation for my snowbird flight to Arizona (total travel time from door to door: twelve hours), I downloaded the novel onto my Kindle app. I travel with at least four new novels on my Kindle because you just never know. What if I don’t like one or two of the books? (That’s not an uncommon occurrence.) What if we are stranded in an airport for an extra day or two? (With the weather we are having this winter, that was a distinct possibility.) What if I read really, really fast and I run out of books? (Combine this with the first two scenarios and I would be faced with a travel disaster, right up there with lost luggage.)
The short flight from Manchester, NH, to Baltimore, MD, leaves just enough time to get settled and drink a cup of coffee yet I pulled out my Kindle from my bag as soon as my seatbelt was buckled. A commitment is a commitment, after all. I had just started to unzip the Kindle carrying case when the woman sitting in the aisle seat forced me into a conversation.
I usually keep my eyes and mouth turned away from my traveling neighbor but for some reason I was driven to mind my manners and responded when spoken to. (Was I avoiding Ms. Christie? Unimaginable.) Turns out we had much in common: parents with dementia, parents in nursing homes, daughters with weddings, Sandbridge, Virginia, and much more. We talked and laughed all the way to Baltimore, where we said farewell.
Once my husband and I disembarked and found our gate, lunch became our number one priority. I walked around the terminal several times then settled down with my phone to see what I had missed while at 35,000 feet. All the while, the novel gnawed away at me. Was I running out of time to finish it before we touched down at Sky Harbor airport?
Confession time: I overestimate how much I can accomplish in the time available. I didn’t want to fall victim to this character flaw one more time.
Luckily, my aisle neighbor for our final leg of the flight was a man. I find that when men sit next to me on an airplane they ignore me, except for the occasional unintentional elbow jab. Once again I brought out my Kindle, fired it up, and started to read. Aside from a short nap (mouth open—I am my mother) and one trip to the bathroom, I spent the flight to Phoenix devouring Murder on the Orient Express.
As I came closer and closer to the resolution of the crime, I thought “this is an enjoyable book but who in the world could have done it?” Once I reached the end of the book, I realized that never in a million years could I have figured out the ending without the assistance of the admirable Hercule Poirot.
There is more good news beyond the fact that I finished the book before the wheels touched down in Phoenix. In November of this year, a new film adaptation of the book will be released. Once again, I anticipate that I will be glad that I read the book first.
It’s mostly about Christmas
Our tree at 2 below. Don’t let the sun fool you!
December is not my month to write. November-even with Thanksgiving, Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday, my birthday, and Clam Bake-finds me writing like a whirling dervish dances. (Thank you, NaNoWriMo.)
Though December is a bust creatively, organizationally I need to be on top of my game. (I think this requirement applies to at least 50% of the adult population in the US. You know who you are.) It’s mostly about Christmas, naturally:
- Designing and ordering photo Christmas cards. (No signing as our names are printed on the cards. Nice.) Addressing the card envelopes. (Who did I mail cards to last year? Where is that list?)
- Designing and ordering photo family calendars. (Just a gazillion texts to daughters and searches on my phone and Facebook for the perfect pictures.)
- Shopping for presents. (Pretty much just for my mother. Phew…)
- Writing checks for grandchildren’s Christmas presents. (It’s such a relief to put the burden for buying presents onto my daughters.)
- Shopping for those ingredients-eggs, flour, sugar, nuts-that I don’t normally keep on hand so that I can make cookies with my two local grandchildren.
- Baking cookies without my grandchildren.
- Keeping my husband away from the cookies before I have a chance to hand them out.
- Trekking to the local tree farm to buy the Christmas tree. (My Fitbit appreciates all the extra steps I garner looking for the perfect tree.)
- Perfectly decorating the damn perfect tree.
- Buying gifts for the Yankee swap and making food for the writing group party. (That’s it, one non-family holiday party to attend. No more dashing through the snow to get to those parties crammed into the two weeks right before Christmas.)
- Watching “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Love Actually,” and all the Hallmark Christmas movies (several times).
- Scheduling and planning the family Christmas party.
- Checking the weather forecast two weeks in advance of the party.
- Rescheduling the family Christmas party for a day when we aren’t forecast to get lots of snow followed by freezing rain.
- Enjoying the holidays!
This list is nothing compared to what it was when I was a working mom with three daughters at home. (About the age that they are now.) And that’s something I’m grateful for. As I’ve gotten older, I am less able-and willing, I must confess-to juggle all of the additional demands that a busy holiday season can place on me. And as I look back over those years of hectic Christmas celebrations that seemed to last for the entire month of December, I wonder if a simpler holiday season would have been a better option for my family.
Now, what really complicates my month of December isn’t Christmas. It’s the amount of preparation it takes to spend the next four months in Arizona. That list just might compete with Santa’s “Naughty or Nice” list. Totally worth it.
Does it get any better than that??
I apologize for leaving so many of you in suspense–I “won” NaNoWriMo on November 29, writing 54,810 words of a novel, with an ending! Still another 40,000 plus or minus words to add for it to be a complete novel. That’s net words, not total words. For every word I add to the novel, I anticipate deleting or replacing at least two words. This is all supposition on my part, as I have never completed a full-length novel in my life. Ever.
After I ran out of the outline I developed in October and I had to transition from plotting to pantsing my NaNoWriMo novel (creatively titled “Gabby” after the protagonist), I anticipated that the writing would become tortuous. It didn’t.
While writing from an outline (plotting) was faster than writing without one (pantsing), it just wasn’t as much fun. For me. Pantsing allowed me to develop plot turns and character personalities, as well as add new characters, as “Gabby” took on a life of her own. I found myself writing what the novel asked for, what the plot needed, what the characters were calling for, and not what I had predetermined through an outline.
I know, I know, I have just created an outline of my novel by writing a first draft. I get it. If I had only spent that time writing an outline instead of a first draft of a novel, I would now be ready to write a not-so-rough draft of the novel. One that is closer to being ready to publish than “Gabby” currently is. But I know it wouldn’t be the same novel. (And would I even be able to stick to an outline for an entire novel?)
With “Gabby,” I experienced a major breakthrough. I allowed my husband to read it. No one, except for my dear writing group members, has ever read anything that I’ve written. He read it, said he loved it, and claimed he was not biased in the least. The biggest compliment from him? He said I had him on the edge of his seat, anxiously turning pages to find out who did it. Does it get any better than that??
Surviving New England Crime Bake, NaNoWriMo, and Babysitting
Already the middle of November and this is my first blog post of the month. That means you’ve had two full weeks of not listening to me extol the pleasures of NaNoWriMo participation soon followed by my wails of despair as my word count lags behind my goal of 1,667 words a day.
This year was going to be different, of that I was confident. First of all, I started with a detailed outline of approximately the first ten thousand words of the minimum fifty thousand words required. Imagine the shock of this pantser turned plotter when I discovered that writing from the outline was easy. When the outline ran out, I transformed back into a pantser. And the writing transformed into it’s normal state: hard work.
I didn’t let that minor obstacle slow me down. Ignoring most everything else going on in my life, I focused on my novel, racking up well over the daily minimum word count. The New England Crime Bake, an annual mystery conference for writers and readers, was coming up, November 11th through the 13th, and my goal was to spend those three days in Dedham, Massachusetts, without even thinking about my NaNo novel. Except for those moments of pure inspiration when I had to jot down a note for my novel, I almost achieved that goal.
I don’t recall anyone mentioning NaNoWriMo at Crime Bake…There was plenty else to talk about, many wonderful people–published authors and wannabes like myself–to meet, and much to learn. Hallie Ephron’s master class, “The Character Web,” provided a unique way of looking at character development. Julie Hennrikus, Bruce Coffin, and B A Shapiro, among others, enlightened and entertained. My attention never wavered from the Guest of Honor, William Kent Krueger, during his talk, “High Roads and Low: A Writer’s Journey.” He looks like the twin of one of our writing group members–and even Kent agreed!
Eleanor, William Kent Krueger, and Karen
As soon as I returned from a weekend away with adults I was immersed into babysitting for our two New Hampshire grandchildren for a week. Luckily they are in school all day, as I needed a full day to recuperate from Crime Bake as well as a full week to get caught up on NaNoWriMo. Enough said.
This afternoon, typing away on my laptop, I happened on the “Ultimate Survival Alaska” show on the National Geographic Channel. I’ve never seen this show before, and technically I wasn’t watching it, I really was working on NaNoWriMo. I quickly identified with some of the competitors struggling to win their race. One of the women fell into the whitewater she appeared unequipped to handle. She floated down to her raft that another team member had stopped for her and climbed into it. They took a break on shore where she emptied out her boots of water and removed her wet socks. I realized that if they could put themselves into physical danger to win a race surely I could write a book sitting on my couch in the comfort of my home with the furnace running and a snuggly fleece blanket wrapped around my legs, a hot cup of tea for sustenance.
I can do this.
View from the courtyard
Nothing but blue skies and sunshine
It’s 90 degrees and 100% sunshine where I am in Arizona–and yet I’m sequestered inside, lounging on my bed as I try to conjure up a topic to blog about that simultaneously edifies and entertains our loyal readers.
In the Valley of the Sun there are no changing leaves to wax on about–no doubt you have had your fill of the foliage, whether as a leaf-peeper yourself or via all of the pictures posted on Facebook. There is no question that this was a stellar year for colorful foliage in New Hampshire and Vermont.
Green-thumbed residents in Arizona are planting their gardens, though the sun continues to blister the tender arugula and basil plants. Back home it is time to weed-whack the perennials or continue to cover them at night with sheets as we try to eek out a few more weeks of blossoms.
We have seen numerous vees of ducks and geese, presumably ones that have followed us here from brrrr chilly New Hampshire. Unfortunately, my husband (if I can drag him onto the plane) and I, unlike those real snowbirds, must return this week to furnaces and wood stoves, sweaters and gloves, delaying our true winter migration until after Christmas. In Arizona it is still shorts and sandals, air conditioning and ceiling fan weather.
Our grandchildren are out scorpion hunting–and killing–at night with black lights. The good news is after six days here we no longer check our bed at night for scorpions and we aren’t afraid to walk around indoors without our shoes on. Outdoors–that’s another story.
Our mode of transportation is an open air Jeep Wrangler. The other day I was caught without my sunscreen as the sun beat in through the open roof. (Luckily, I never leave home without my zippered, hooded sweatshirt in tow, just in case we venture into a store or restaurant with the a/c thermostat set at sixty or lower. I plan to launch a campaign to “encourage” businesses to raise their a/c thermostats. Sorry, I digress….) With what I considered a clever defensive move, I whipped on my sweatshirt backward with the hood covering my face. Instant protection. And immediate embarrassment to my husband as we stopped at a ubiquitous stoplight and the women in the car to our left and the man to our right gawked and laughed. At me. (This appears to be a case where ” you really had to be there” to appreciate the humor of the situation.)
With any luck I’ve entertained you. Or made you envious. The edification will have to wait. I’m still on vacation.
Eleanor Ingbretson
Karen Whalen
llandrigan
Heidi Wilson
Mike M
Thursday Night Writes 