It has been a year and a half since my husband passed away after a brief battle with MRSA. We had been married for thirty years and spent everyone of those years together 24/7. The most intense togetherness was during the first 12 years we spent traveling all over the country in our motorhome during the 80s, when it was still an adventure. The most blessedly peaceful were those spent in our home in the desert. But even then, our itchy feet led us frequently away on journeys.
We always traveled together. When there were prostate cancer conferences, we attended as a team, including the many trips to DC to lobby for DOD funding for research. Reunions in San Francisco or in Virginia were attended as a couple. And of course, family visits were always done together.
For the last six months I have become increasingly aware that I needed to get myself back on the road. It is hard to even contemplate traveling without my life's partner, but it is even worse to contemplate a life spent within the walls of our home, as much as I do love the home we built together. My mental health and my sense of self told me that I had to get over the threshold and get behind the wheel of my car and drive. I almost made it to Netroots Nation in San Jose, but could not face those empty miles that Ed & I drove so many times during the last few months of my brother's struggle with cancer. At least not as a first trip.
And then I stumbled across this item on the Mystery Writers of America's website:
MWA University – San Diego
Mystery Writers of America University (MWA-U) is a full-day, low-cost writing seminar designed to teach participants the essential skills needed to write a novel, from the idea stage to the final editing. The focus is on the craft of writing, and the college-level courses are taught by published writers and experienced teachers.
Register NOW for MWA University – San Diego
Date: Saturday, October 12, 2013
What: An entire day of top-notch classes. Novice or pro, you will benefit from hearing the experts discuss their strategies for all facets of writing and publishing.
I have no intention of ever writing a novel, crime or otherwise, but since Limelite
roped me into allowed me the privilege of editing this series a couple of years ago, I have often felt inadequate to the task and have rarely used the word
review to describe my posts. Instead I tend to use
write about as in, "I write about mysteries."
Perhaps attending a workshop dedicated to the craft of creating mystery novels would help me to better understand what it is that I pretend to do around here on a biweekly basis.
Moreover, it would get me behind the wheel of that lovely car for a long drive from the desert to Carlsbad, where I would spend the balance of the weekend with a dear friend and family members. As an added bonus, it would get me out of the house where I have been having tile laid for almost two weeks, leaving me without a kitchen for the last one of them.
And at $50, the price was ridiculous.
The best thing about the three hour drive down was that I could listen to an audiobook on the way. The worst thing was that the car pool lanes were now closed to me. Fortunately traffic was light.
The Westin Gaslamp Quarter, at Horton Plaza in San Diego, served us a continental breakfast during check-in before the lectures started. As I was getting coffee, I met Hank Phillippi Ryan, winner of this year's Mary Higgins Clark award for The Other Woman, which I had been listening to on the way down. She was charming and engaging and clearly loved discussing her work, a review of which is upcoming.
Jess Lourey
Amazingly, and foretelling of what was to come, the conference started on time at 8:55 with an introduction to the day and to the first speaker
Jess Lourey, who spoke about what to do
After the Idea. Jess Lourey is the author of the
Murder-By-Month series and an English and Sociology professor in Minnesota. She is currently working on a young adult series and a novel of magical realism. And please don't ask me what magical realism is, as I don't have a clue.
But Jess was an engaging, funny teacher as she demonstrated a very simple, in concept, but less simple in execution, method of developing a novel from an idea. Her lecture and techniques were directed at mystery writers, but I found it very helpful in thinking about the family history narrative that I am working on for Ed's family. (Recognizing that there are few things more boring than reading family history, I have been dragging my feet on this project for years.) She uses an inverted pyramid structure that starts with the idea itself in one sentence. That sentence is developed, over seven "simple" steps to become a complete novel. Her handout also included a list of Publishing Resources.
Hallie Ephron
Next up, after an exactly fifteen minute long break, was
Hallie Ephron to discuss
Dramatic Structure & Plot. In addition to writing her own mystery novels, Hallie Ephron is the crime reviewer for the Boston Globe. And her nonfiction,
Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock 'Em Dead with Style, was nominated for Edgar and Anthony Awards. Her latest novel,
Come and Find Me, signed by the author, now resides on my bookshelf.
Hallie outlined the basic three act structure and showed how it is best served as an intricate dance with the main characters of the novel. It was a very nuts-and-bolts discussion of what each act should achieve in moving the story forward. It included very specific suggestions for scene writing and bridging as well as writing a satisfying conclusion.
Daniel Stashower
Exactly fifteen minutes after the completion of Hallie's lecture,
Daniel Stashower, biographer, narrative historian and winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony awards, and the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction, stepped forward to talk about
Setting & Description. From the program notes:
"I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday," Raymond Chandler once said, and this seemingly tossed-off remark has much to teach us about the gentle arts of setting and description. This class will guide you through the process and potential pitfalls of choosing a setting, and explore the ways in which descriptive passages can be honed to illuminate characters and themes.
And it did, in an easy mix of lecture and interactive participation.
Included in the $50 fee was a box lunch, that was very good, as well as the breakfast and soft drinks, coffee and teas. We took an hour off to eat lunch and browse the local independent bookseller, Mysterious Galaxy's table. Since I live so far from an independent bookstore, I took full advantage of their presence to stock up on real paper books about the art of mystery writing as well as a couple of mysteries written by some of the speakers. I learned later that Mysterious Galaxy had helped to underwrite the cost of the conference. I have since heard from the Mystery Writers of America that Mysterious Galaxy was invited to the workshop, but all costs were paid by the MWA. Which makes the $50 fee even more impressive.
Harley Jane Kozak
Promptly at 1:30 the schedule resumed with
Harley Jane Kozak discussing
Character. Harley Jane Kozak's
Dating Dead Men won the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She followed that with three more in the series before turning to the paranormal in
The Keepers: LA series. She is also an actress whose work you have seen on television, in movies or the stage.
Since I made my feelings clear about actresses writing novels when I discussed Tana French in Tana French's Dublin, I am not going to rehash it here, but I do think they have the potential to create memorable characters, so I was happy to see an experienced actress discuss character. Which Harley Jane did very thoroughly.
She led us through an examination of what makes a three dimensional character that a reader will respond to, as well as what causes changes in the character throughout the story arc.
Reed Farrel Coleman
After a 15 minute break for milk and cookies, honest, it was a noir writer,
Reed Farrel Coleman who discussed
Writing as Re-Writing. Reed looks like a hard boiled crime writer should look, bullet-headed and burly, with a faint Brooklyn accent and an inability to speak without the use of his hands. Twice nominated for the Edgar, he is a three time winner of the Shamus Award and an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University.
He managed to make an hour lecture on editing riveting. Not sure how he did it, perhaps teaching college students helped, but he was very good. And very witty. I look forward to reading Gun Church, another autographed book that I picked up at the conference. (I will be forever grateful that the fee was low enough that I could afford the half dozen books I took home with me.)
I caught the final speaker, Hank Phillippi Ryan in a size zero suit, passing out chocolates to the attendees just before she began her presentation.
Hank Phillippi Ryan
with chocolate
It was a pretty smart move, considering how fried most brains were by 4:00 o'clock when she began speaking about
The Writing Life. She is a Boston TV reporter who has won 30 Emmys for her investigative journalism in addition to writing two different series featuring journalists which have won her the 2013 Mary Higgins Clark Award as well as two Agathas, the Anthony and the Macavity Awards.
It was her task to wrap up the day with hints and tips for successful writers, or "What I Wish Someone Had Told Me." Included with a dozen other, were the words that social media was a time suck. News, huh? But a writer is in a difficult position since a social media presence is important to sell books, but it can become a terrible thief of time that a writer need to spend writing. She has limited herself to a specific number of minutes every day that she will spend on Facebook and Twitter. And she was not the only writer to talk about the need to limit time on the internet. It seems that most strictly limit the amount of time they play online.
Which is why I know I could never do what they do. The self-discipline that writing a mystery novel entails requires far more than the ability to stop checking Facebook, Twitter or Outlook. It requires a determination as fierce as any athlete's, as well as the ability to manage a real life while immersed in the fictional life they have created for their characters. How they do it is still magic to me, but I do feel that I have a better understanding of how to judge the quality of the magic.
And the experience was just fun. The writers were exceedingly approachable, friendly and loved nothing more than to talk about their work. I don't know why that surprised me, but it did. Nor did I feel quite as out of place as I expected to. The other attendees were all writers who had published or were planning on publishing mystery novels.
Speaking of other attendees, I was fortunate to be sitting next to writer Jeri Westerson, who has written a series of medieval noir mysteries featuring Crispin Guest. I am most anxious to start one of these and there is a tickling at the back of my mind that this character/series has been discussed in the comments of a Readers & Book Lovers diary. Have any of you read any of these? The thought of a hard boiled detective in the era of Sharon Kay Pennman is irresistible. Her latest novel, Shadow of the Alchemist, will be released tomorrow.
The next MWA U will be held in Dallas on December 14th, in case there are any writers or would-be writers interested in attending. It is well worth the $50 fee. For me it was educational as well as serving as a first step back into the world of the living.
Coming home, I realized again that the rest of my life will continue to hold many more of these firsts. Some have already come and gone, the first time I paid the bills, bought a car, hired a landscaper, and flew across the country as a widow. Ed and I were so close and so very happy traveling together that I know he would want me to continue to travel. Even if alone. I also know that an eight hour workshop in how to write a mystery novel would have absolutely bored him to tears, so I would have attended it alone in any case. But he would have loved spending the weekend with our friend and family in Carlsbad. And he would have loved driving my new car. If I would have given him the chance, which I seriously doubt I would have done.
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