Is it good to take a break from writing?

I traveled to Chicago last week-end to be involved in one of my other loves — singing. With rehearsals close to eight hours a day, there was little time for writing. I managed a few lines in my journal before gong to sleep, but that was all. But did I forget about writing? No. I thought about it all the time. I thought about characters, situations, and settings that I could use in future writing. I listened to conversations and observed people. I experienced the week-end.

If you make a commitment to write, I don’t think you can ever take a break. You may take a break from actually sitting at the computer and putting in your daily quota of time or word count, but the ideas are always churning in your mind. And you always have a pen and paper with you, because you might want to jot something down for future use.

Writers live in an inner world of words and ideas, and it is a world that never goes away. So I take a break when my life goes that direction, but I am always a writer. The stories are there, and I will write them.

I used to be a teacher in another life time, and that profession was the same. I was constantly looking for ideas and materials that I could use in my classes, even when I was on vacation. What other professions are life-consuming like writing and teaching? Do you need a break once in a while, or is it something you love so much you want it to consume you?

 

Still Pretending

I became a writer because I love to pretend. 

I was an only child until I was almost five, and we lived on a farm seven miles from a town nobody (almost) has heard of. We had no TV, but we had books and I had an imagination.

I often entertained myself my making up stories, with me as the star, of course. At some point I decided to start writing the stories down.

I am still pretending. That’s where stories come from — the wonderful world of “what if.”

Now I sometimes use my imagination as a tool to learn more about a character in a story I am writing. I spend a couple of hours “being” my character. I try to walk like her, eat what she would eat, even choose my clothes with her tastes in mind. (Of course, it could be a male character as well, but some of the choices would be a bit of a stretch.) 

It’s fun! I still enjoy playing that I am someone else. And it is good preparation for going back to write about the character. I know her better, because I have been inside her skin.

Does anyone have any other tricks for getting inside the mind of a character?

Missing Papayas

In my book The Gate House, the main character Nara has moved to England after growing up on a island in the Caribbean. Besides the warm weather and the ability to wear sandals everyday, Nara misses the tropical fruit. She often laments, while preparing the full English breakfast for guests at her aunt’s bed and breakfast, that eggs are sausage are fine, but a colorful plate of tropical fruit is what she craves any time of day.

Having lived in the tropics myself for seven years, I can feel the longing for fresh fruits and vegetables year round. And even though bananas, pineapple,papayas, mangoes, and even more exotic offering like starfruit are available in most supermarkets, the taste is much more intense when the fruit has not traveled on a ship to reach the store.

In Costa Rica, where I lived, papayas were a staple on most tables, and one of the main ingredients in a fruit salad. There was actually a time when I grew tired of papayas, we ate them so much. And they were not the small Hawaiian papayas that are most common in the U.S. These were the grand-daddies of papayas, often more than a foot long and no light weights!

Fresh papaya is delicious, and healthy, too. But if you get your hands on one of these giants and want to try something different with it, here is a recipe for papaya bread that was given to me by a friend in Costa Rica. Apparently the the enzymes in the papaya interact with the baking powder and baking soda, so follow the directions carefully. I have made it many times and it is moist and yummy!

Papaya Bread

Cream together until light: 1 c. sugar and 1/2 c. butter

Add 2 eggs and beat until fluffy.

Add and mix: 1 c. mashed ripe papaya, 1/4 c. chopped walnuts, and 1/2 c. raisins

Sift together: 1 1/2 c. flour, 1/4 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. soda, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ground allspice, 1/2 tsp. ground ginger

Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Pour batter into greased & floured 9×5″ loaf pan.

Bake at 325 F. for about 1 hour 5 minutes.

Do you enjoy reading about food in a novel? Do you include details on food in stories you write?

Time to Write; What to Write

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.- William Campbell Gault

There have been probably thousands of blog posts, articles and even books written on how to find the time to write. And it is a true challenge for those of us who are not to the point in our writing careers where we can devote the majority of our day to uninterrupted time in front of the computer. Most of us have demanding families, day jobs, and all the chores and errands that go along with life in the modern world.

But still we want to write. Well-meaning writing coaches coaches advise us to get up early, stay up late, write on our lunch hours, go out to a coffee shop or the library for an hour or two. All of these suggestions work — sometimes — for some people. But what if you are just too darn tired to get up early or stay up late? Or you have to run to the drug store on your lunch hour? Or you need to be home with children or waiting for a plumber, so the coffee shop is out?

The solution I have found is two-fold. One — I write all the time. Early, late, at home, at work, occasionally in a coffee shop. I have my spiral notebook or my net book computer with me. Whether it is a few minutes or a nice solid hour, I write. I work as a substitute teacher, and I actually wrote the better part of a novel while walking around the classroom supervising high school students. And they thought I was making notes about their behavior!

The second part of my solution is to write what means something to me. I am in the position right now where I am finishing up a few projects, and looking for something new to work on. I had a couple of ideas for follow-ups to things I had written, but they weren’t calling to me. I couldn’t get started. I have also been toying around with the idea of writing about my parents and how they met at the beginning of World War II. I have letters, scrapbooks and a short memoir that my dad wrote, so I have the basis of their story. I sat down yesterday and today and wrote a sizable chunk of the beginning of their story. Each day, I couldn’t stop until I finished what I wanted to say.

How do you create time to write? Does what your are writing influence how much time you spend?

A Good Book I Read Lately

“Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They
read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t
buy any more. The first page sells that book. The last
page sells your next book.”
                         MICKEY SPILLANE

I am a sucker for a good mystery, especially one set in Italy. Besides the sheer pleasure of getting lost in a good book, as a mystery writer, I love to see how other writers in the genre practice their craft. There is probably room for as many mystery novels as there are writers with unique mystery voices. This is one of the best and most unique that I have ready late.

The Potter’s Field by Andrea Camilleri

Translated from the Italian, The Potter’s Field in the latest in the series featuring Inspector Montalbano, a police detective in the fictional town of Vigáta, Sicily.

The story begins when a local man finds a dismembered body in a plastic bag in an area called “‘u critaru,” which is Sicilian for “the clay-field.”  Even as the police officers fight a driving rainstorm to reach the site where the body was found, their personality quirks illustrate the relationships of these men. Montalbano must identify the victim, find the killer and deal with personality conflicts in the police department at the same time. The first of those tasks turns out to be comparatively simple, due to skillful forensic work when a dental bridge is found in the victim’s stomach.

The case becomes much more involved when the victim is found to have connections to a local Mafia boss. To complicate matters further, one of Montalbano’s officers has been in a particularly bad humor for some time, and his romantic entanglements also have a bearing on the case.

With all these pressures going on in his life, Montalbano begins to dream of retirement, but he is able to see through the complexities and identify the betrayals, as he connects the potter’s field where the body was found to the Bible and the betrayal of Judas for thirty pieces of silver.

This is the first in this series that I have read, and I felt that I missed out not knowing the background. However, Camilleri’s descriptions of the foibles of the police officers often had me laughing out loud, even as I read the gruesome details of the crime. Only an author with true knowledge of Sicilian life could create a story which reflects the unusual setting, as well as the human weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that are universal.

Where Do I Set My Story?

“There is no happiness in love, except at the endof an English novel.” (Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers)

The passage through Dover Castle at the right just can’t help sparking my imagination.

How Does an Author Choose a Setting

Why did I set The Gate House in England?

The simple answer to that question is — because that’s where the story is. But obviously there is more to it than that.

Setting is one of the crucial elements of fiction, but it is not arbitrary. A writer cannot pick up the plot and characters of a story from one location and drop them down unchanged in another. Even though the characters are what make readers care and keep turning the page, setting shapes the characters as much as the other influences in their lives.

I think my fascination with setting comes from my love of travel. I often “see stories” when I visit a location away from home. Different locations evoke ideas of different kinds of emotions and plot ideas. Washington, DC, where I spent a recent week-end, is a setting full of enormous political power and history. A story set there must somehow touch on those elements. A trip to Lincolnshire, England, where my husband’s family originated, inspired The Gate House, when we spent an unplanned couple of nights in a bed and breakfast of that name. This setting called me to create a story of mystery and the layers of history that are so present in England.

Setting can almost be considered another character, as the time and place of the story interact with the other elements. Literary themes and human emotions may not change over time, but how the pieces fall together can create unique and compelling stories.

Do you every choose a novel based on the setting? Are there certain setting you prefer?

Solving Mysteries at the Library

I spent yesterday afternoon hanging out with the reference librarian at Haverford Township Free Library in Pennsylvania. Although spending time at a library is not a new experience, this was a special event.

As a member of Sisters in Crime, an organization that promotes writers and readers of quality crime fiction, I participated in this event in order to find out how librarians solve mysteries everyday. Haverford Township is in suburban Philadelphia, and there was a steady stream of library clients of all ages during the three hours of the Saturday afternoon whenwas present.

(At left is Keegan Fink, reference librarian at work.)

While sleuths in mystery fiction often rely on their hunches to solve a crime, I soon found out that librarian frequently rely on that same intuition to figure out what a client wants when he or she asks a question. For example, people often approach a librarian saying, “I’m looking for a good book. What do you suggest?” The librarian then needs to ask a few questions to direct the reader toward a book that would be of interest, because everyone has a preference of what they like or do not like to read. They are often just looking for something new.

I also learned that at the Haverford library a client can “book a librarian” for an hour for help with a specific problem. Some common topics are writing a resume and help with technology. Many people who have new e-readers come to the library for help in learning how to use these devices.

I loved the lively atmosphere of the library, and the willingness of the staff to answer questions and just generally be of help. When a client asked, “Do you have a magnifying glass?” Sure enough, the reference librarian pulled one out of a desk drawer.

My conclusions: People are reading more everyday, both traditional books and e-book. Libraries are on top of the newest technology, but still maintain a wonderful person-to-person outlook.