A certain kind of story appeals to me above all others. It’s my archetype for mystery: A crime is successfully hidden for many years. The story begins when something sets off a chain of events to expose the old wrong. In the end, justice, so long denied, is restored.

In my writing, I’ve gravitated to this kind of story three times now: in my first published book, in a second manuscript that I hope to publish next year, and my current work in progress, called Blue Lake.

• In Lay Death at Her Door, an innocent man takes the fall for a murder. Twenty years later, he’s exonerated, and the crime comes unsolved.
• In Monster, an ambitious embryologist abandons a deformed child when his rogue experiment fails. Eighteen years later, the child goes looking for her birth parents.
• In Blue Lake, a death in the distant past was once briefly suspected of being a murder, then written off as an accident. A family is destroyed and a crime goes unpunished for decades.

In each case, I have two stories to tell. What really happened a long time ago? And how does the truth come out all these years later? One entire story takes place in the distant past.

Any writer who attends workshops or belongs to a critique group (and that’s just about all of us) is frequently admonished to avoid or minimize back story and flashback. How, then, can you tell the old story in a book like mine? This worried me no end the first time around.

Flashback: In the midst of the present story, we shift briefly to a past event, then resume where we left off. A little bit is fine: At the start of Blue Lake, Regina has been refusing to go home to her estranged family, but she has learned that her father is dying, and she finally changes her mind. [FLASHBACK:]

Mary had called again the night before.

“Just wanted to keep you informed,” she’d said.

“I’m not coming.”

“You don’t have to. It’s okay.” And knowing Mary, she meant it. But it wasn’t okay. She’d have to go, and soon.

Just a few lines—a tolerable interruption, but you can’t do too much of this without fatally chopping up your present storyline.

Back story: We are filled in with information that explains how the characters and plot got to be where they are. In Monster, Detective Gil Tillier is at a crime scene for the first time in a couple of years.

He felt an itch of excitement, like an old racehorse snorting in the pasture at the sound of a starting gate. [BACK STORY:] Not that he was old. On the contrary, he’d been something of a wunderkind: lieutenant at the age of thirty, head of CID at thirty-two. Quit at thirty-three.

That’s one sentence of back story—about as much as we want before we get back to the body on the floor.

The way I think of it, flashback is dramatized, while back story is not. Flashback shows, while back story is told. Both are short interruptions in the story line. Neither technique is adequate for telling the past story in the kind of book I want to write.

Parallel Storylines: I want two full stories, interwoven. Both stories have to be fully dramatized. The excursions into the past must be of sufficient length to pull us all the way in. Often, entire chapters will be committed to one storyline or the other, alternately.

The past and present stories must be equally interesting. In Lay Death, the young Kate’s adventures in Africa and Massachusetts, and her love affair with Elliott in college, have to be worth reading in their own right.

At the same time, the reopening of the investigation into Elliott’s death twenty years later has to be compelling, too. Neither story can be left to languish too long. They have to feed off each other and collide at the climax.

It’s not for me to say if I succeed in these complex plot structures, but I find this kind of book most rewarding  when it works. I want to fully understand how the world got knocked out of balance in the distant past. And then I want to watch how truth and justice win out in the end.

Amazon Top 100 and B&N Top Ten Bestseller Lay Death at Her Door is on sale for the first time in 2014, this week only. “What an ending! All the threads that seem to be unrelated weave tightly together at the end. I can’t wait to read more by Elizabeth Buhmann!” – NYT Bestselling Author Kate Moretti

Rules for writing?

Outline? No outline? Seat of the pants?

Karleen Koen, instructor for That Damned Rough Draft at the Writers’ League of Texas summer writing retreat at Sul Ross University in Alpine, says there are no rules for writing. And she never said the phrase, “We don’t need no stinkin’ rules.” That’s my inner child cutting up.

She said she wouldn’t teach us to write, but would help us learn how to play. If you play, your inner child, your subconscious, will make itself known and your writing will be the richer for it.

And another thing. Writing a novel is hard–real hard.

We are adventurers, embarking on the quest of a lifetime, daring everything on a wild, reckless throw of the dice. Fame and fortune. Or maybe no one will pay attention at all.

According to Koen, a writer’s tools are her words. An artist has brushes and canvas, a sculptor his clay. We have only words to bring a whole new world to life, a world of our own creation. We must lure and seduce readers to enter our world with our use of words.

Not Rules but Suggestions:

Don’t talk your story away. Energy you need for the story goes out at the mouth.

Writers are looking for affirmation. We never get enough.

Grant yourself permission to write badly. The point is to be writing.

Poetry helps writers with their voice. Karleen Koen always reads poems before class begins.

Writing the rough draft is not a time to perfect your prose. Let your subconscious work with you. A rough draft is not linear. The novel is hard. You have to willing to commit to the marathon. Not the sprint.

You have to pay attention to anything that excites you as a writer.

Nobody can see our hard work if we’ve done our work right. It looks slick. Bumps come with writing novels.

Our suffering is invisible to everyone but us.

Magic and alchemy are part of a story. They take the reader to another world.

You need time and space to create.

Don’t compare. Everybody feels bad when you compete

I need to know what I don’t know. I want to get the story finished. Have I bitten off more than I can chew?

What makes a novel? Hook, plot, tension, character, dialogue, scenes, ending, middle, beginning–magic.

Painters have color

Sculptors have clay.

All writers have are words.

Karleen suggests these daily exercises to tempt forth your magic, muse, subconscious, inner child, whatever makes you tick.

Keep a writer’s diary and write about your writing self every day.

Write three longhand morning pages first thing when you wake up every day, no editing. Don’t think. Just write whatever comes into your  head.

Take photographs and write about them. Take pictures of whatever “pings” in  your gut. Write about why.

Don’t let your editor subdue your creator, even in revision.

Don’t share writing with just anyone. Writing is part of our inner child. Too much criticism shuts you down.

Your first reader is very important. All you want to ask the first reader are three questions about your manuscript:

1. What did you like?
2. What do you want to know more about?
3. Where did I lose you?

This will help shape the novel and show where you are off pace.

Cool down between drafts.

Learn to play with words. Be creative and loose.

Find a niche that’s well calibrated to your interests and your talent.

You can only develop your voice by writing.

Enter your story and take us with you.

Know how your hero/heroine is going to be transformed by the end of the novel.

Sometimes revision can lead to beating a dead dog. You’ve been to the well too many times.

You adventurer,  you.

My inner child likes murals. Is there a novel in them?

By Gale Albright

Are you writing a novel? Hoping someday to be published?

For most of us, writing, revising and polishing a manuscript is the work of many months or even years. But there are a number of things you can start doing right now, while you’re finishing your book, to improve your chances for making the leap from writer to published author.

Study the craft of writing fiction. It’s never-ending. Read books, take classes, attend workshops and conferences, explore the internet.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite books on writing:

• The Art of War for Writers, by James Scott Bell
• Characters & Viewpoint, by Orson Scott Card
• Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver
• How to Write a Damn Good Novel, by James N. Frey
• The Art of Fiction, by John Gardner
• Writing Mysteries (MWA), Sue Grafton, ed.
• On Writing, by Stephen King
• Bird by Bird, by Annie Lamott
• The First Five Pages, by Noah Lukeman
• Manuscript Makeover, by Elizabeth Lyon
• Writing the Breakout Novel (or The Fire in Fiction), by Donald Maass
• Story, by Robert McKee
• Don’t Murder Your Mystery, by Chris Riorden
• Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain
• Description, by Monica Wood
• Beginnings, Middles, and Ends, by Nancy Kress

Classes and workshops are available in the Austin area from UT Informal Classes, Writer’s League of Texas, and Sisters in Crime. Margie Lawson offers intense online courses and excellent lectures for download.

A good list of resources for writers can be found on Kimberly Giarratano’s website (Kim is the author if a great YA book called Grunge Gods and Graveyards).

Join the writing community, locally, nationally, and online. It’s worth the investment to join associations like Sisters in Crime, Writer’s League, Romance Writers of America, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Make friends at those classes, conferences, workshops!

Find a crit group or critique partner: You need beta-readers who are writers, not just friends and family. But be careful to work only with people who help and support you. Walk away from negativity. Learn to give and receive feedback. Sisters in Crime recently gave a great workshop on etiquette for critique groups–you can read about it in next month’s SinC newsletter, Hotshots.

Enter contests: Writer’s League, Houston Writer’s Guild, Southwest Writers, RWA, and even Amazon all have annual contests. If the judging is good, you’ll win! 😉

Read in and out of your genre, but especially in your genre. Some say you need to read 300 books published in the last five years in your genre! That’s a tall order. I can’t say I’ve done it.

Begin thinking about your brand (Google that!), your website, and (maybe) your blog. I believe that a good photo is an important investment—especially for those of us who are habitually camera-shy. So much of the book business is conducted online. You need a face.

Use social media like Facebook and Twitter to support your writing. Don’t wait until your book comes out to start. Remember that agents and publishers—and eventually your fans—will Google you.

Start preparing now to step out as the next hot best-selling debut AUTHOR!

Elizabeth Buhmann is the author of Lay Death at Her Door.

By Laura Oles

What’s the answer?

While attending a recent Writer’s League of Texas course, Karleen Koen, the talented historical novelist and our instructor, asked a question so simple yet so important, it changed my approach to writing.

“What is the one thing you wish you had known earlier about writing?”

After sitting silently with the question for a few minutes, the answer came to me, and its appearance brought with it contrasting pangs of relief and sadness.

“I wish I had understood earlier the importance of touching my project every day.”

Like many working on a novel (or two), I have several legitimate reasons for not connecting with my work each day. We’re all juggling jobs, kids (who play a maddening number of sports!), community activities and the daily grind of household chores. We have a hundred reasons why we can’t get to our novel in progress, and these are darn good reasons, too.

But…

These excuses offer little comfort when we realize our page count remains in the same stuck location each week. I know– I’ve been there–carrying the disappointment of wanting to create and yet unable to figure out how to fit it into my daily routine. I struggle with this issue and I’m a working writer in the photographic industry, so I do write each day.

I write a lot.

But not fiction.

And therein lies the problem.

I would lump my writing time into the same space, not realizing that fiction writing and nonfiction writing each needed to have a distinct time slot, a specific area in my mind and in my day. My client work always takes priority, because it has to, but I would then fail to figure out how to protect a separate space for fiction.

Jerry Seinfeld, when asked in an interview about he managed to write so much material in a short period of time, stated that it’s not how much you write but how often. I think this advice stretches across all forms of writing. It’s better to touch your project for fifteen minutes than not at all because each tiny effort creates a modicum of momentum, and momentum is a powerful force in getting to THE END.

I can’t profess my mastery of this skill because, although I’ve been far better at fitting in fiction, I still have off days (sometimes several in a row) and it takes me longer to find that groove. Once I find it, I am more resolved to keep going. And then real life intervenes once again.

For me, smaller steps are best. When I have ideas of cranking out 2,000 words in a stretch, I set myself up for failure. Some random event will conspire to cut into my writing time so that finishing 500 words feels like a failure. My goal for the remainder of the year is to be small but consistent in my efforts, and I mark an X on my calendar for each day that I’ve worked on my fiction. Seeing those Xs add up is a cheap trick to help me keep that momentum. I’ll take whatever I can get during those days when kids are going all directions and work is piling up. I remind myself that small steps matter, they all add up to a finished draft. I know because I’ve done it.

What about you? How do you make time to write when daily life seems destined to keep you from creating?

I think the writing process fascinates writers and non-writers alike. There seem to more questions asked of writers about it than anything else. “Where do you get your ideas? Do you have a writing schedule? Do you have a special workspace?”

When writers congregate over the communal coffeepot, we talk about these things too.

One of the questions I like to ask is, “Do you listen to music when you write?”

I asked this on Facebook and Twitter the other day and here are some of the responses I got. I was curious to see what the answers would be, and if they were similar for writers within the same genre.

Mystery/Thriller –

Gale Albright – I don’t listen to anything if I can help it. I prefer quiet when I’m writing. I am writing EVA in a definite time period, the Great Depression in East Texas in the early thirties. I have thought that maybe I should get some music (probably from the library) of popular songs played on the radio during the Depression, plus old-time church music, etc. I could listen to set the mood. I don’t know if I could write with it on. I haven’t done it, so I could try it as an experiment.

Steve Freeman – Not usually. If I do, though, it has to be instrumental or it’s too disruptive. I usually listen to Hans Zimmer.

Fiction:

Brianna Soloski – I have a play list of songs I never get tired of hearing. As for type…Billy Joel, Carly Rae, Jepsen, Train, and more.

Romance:

Michelle Hughes: If it wasn’t summer I would. Right now I get to listen to screaming. LOL

History –

Jeff Kerr – No

Historical Fiction –

Jeri Westerson – Yup. I like to listen to medieval music or soundtracks to medieval-themed movies while I write… Some of the worst movies have produced some great soundtracks.

Kim Bullock – I have to have silence. This is not always easy to come by.

Fantasy/Sci-fi –

Tonia Marie Harris – I listen to certain music when I’m writing or revising. For my current book, I’ve found myself listening to … post-industrial like Tool or Portishead, but I like classical pieces like Lakme’s The Flower Duet….Living in a tiny house with three kids, three animals, and babysitting full-time, playing music on low helps me focus, rather than detract from my work.

Vaughn Roycroft – Three words. Dead Can Dance.

JC Cassels – I listen when percolating. I use music to set the mood… I bought some royalty free soundtrack music that I listen to while plotting. It helps with pacing the action scenes.

Marta Pelrine-Bacon – Often, but not always. I listen to music appropriate for what I’m writing as if the scene is a movie.

Freelance/Essays/Other –

Katherine Wolbrink- Never. I find it way too distracting. But I have the attention span of a toddler, so…

Patrick Thunstrom – …I listen to trance, techno, metal, or some form of rock, with the occasional foray into classical. I have a “get pumped” list that is fun.

Joel B. Matuszczak – I write about things that happened to me, so I often listen to the music that I listened to during whatever phase of my life that I’m writing about. My taste in music, like the rest of my life, has changed a lot over the years…

Roberta Schirado – Instrumental jazz. The beat seems to focus my attention.

Kit Frazier – Yes, and sometimes I have a movie playing in the background…

I used to listen to movie soundtracks while writing. I found I couldn’t listen to anything with lyrics, especially if I was writing dialogue. I even created a personalized station on Pandora I named, Music for Writing. It’s composed of movie/video game soundtracks. Most are by Hans Zimmer (I love HZ!). It’s great for setting the mood when I’m thinking and plotting tension and action. When I’m thinking about my Texas historical fiction, I listen to the soundtrack to Lonesome Dove. It works for me every time.  But once I sit down to write, I have to turn it all off. I’ve found I need to focus on the words and I already have too many other things swirling around my head.

So there you have it, a totally unscientific survey of a few writers and their music/writing habits. My conclusions?  I guess it depends more on the individual’s personality and not the genre. That and, I feel old because I don’t know who some of these groups are or even the type of music!

Thank you to my writing friends who answered my questions and let me use their answers.

VP Chandler