Sorry about this

Among the many things we have to be thankful for this time of year, I hesitate to introduce a note of the opposite (what in my youth would have been called a “downer”) but I’ve had judgment on TOUCHSTONE, and I’m sorry to say, it won’t be out in 2007.

This is due to a number of circumstances, all of them beyond the reach of a mere author, beginning with the delay caused by my husband’s illness (much improved now, for which Thanks are given) and continuing through an already packed-full Random House schedule for fall 2007. As it turns out, the best time for the book appears to be winter 2008--that is, some time between January and April. I hate, absolutely hate not having a book out in 2007, but I reluctantly agreed with my editor that it would be best to delay it.

And it’s not altogether bad, because it means I will have time to make the book what I want it to be. TOUCHSTONE is a book I don’t want rushed into print, and this way I’ll have the time to polish it in a further draft. (Sour grapes are better than no grapes at all..)

I am sorry to disappoint all of you who are so eagerly awaiting the next LRK, but this is one of those times when plans and life crash headlong, and as we know, life always wins.

Q&A tail end

Maybe I ought to finish off the November questions before I find we're in December. Nothing like a national election to distract a person.

Q: Neighbor in the Next Valley (you better not be the one with the goddamn dog that barks all night) asks: Okay if we're not talking about sex any more; how about religion or politics. I guess my question would be though, how much of Mary's opinions and insights are yours or are they based upon the comments/thoughts of historical figures of the times?

For some reason, your description of Touchstone made me think of New York City and what would be more natural than for Mary & Holmes to travel across the continent..

A: About the latter—the next Russell, which I’ll begin writing after the first of the year, will be set entirely in England. Or anyway, I intend it to be set entirely in England, although if you’ve been reading more than a few entries in this blog you won’t be surprised to hear me say that books have a habit of getting away from me, so that my own intentions end up having little to do with it.

However, yes, in the future this might make an interesting book, either flashback to their cross-country journey or a return.

There are many things I like about writing historical fiction, one of which is that ideas “based upon the comments/thoughts of historical figures of the times” are so often useful in enriching the comments and thoughts of the present. TOUCHSTONE is about a man’s search for an international terrorist—in 1926 England.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

(no accents here, sorry—everything turns into Hebrew, where you have to add your own diacritical markings.)

Q: Una writes, as part of a longish post, i think sometimes i would like to become a writer … i am an intensely private person. so much so, that i do not ever keep a journal for long before i dispose of it because of how risky it feels to think someone might read what i wrote, or i might read it later and find it ignorant or stupid, or otherwise unworthy of my high opinion of myself.

i don't know if that has anything to do with the fact that when i set about try to write my ideas for a book or article, that i would want someone to read, or speak them into a recorder, it all simply vanishes... more like the time spent in considering what i would write was an experience itself, than something that could actually be crafted into something to share.

assuming- for the sake of the question- that it is worth sharing, and would be of interest to others, is there anything you can suggest to get beyond this?

A: You want to know the secret to being a writer?

You write.

Beyond that, though, you need to accept yourself in your writing. You need to accept that what you write is going to be bad, and stupid, pointless, and that as a result, it will make you feel bad and stupid and—yes--pointless.

You need to accept that what you write will sometimes give away more of yourself than you’re comfortable with. You accept this by telling yourself, This is a first draft; nobody is going to see it unless I get struck by lightning; I can take out the icky stuff later on.

And as for the vanishing effect of writing, the written experience is not the real experience. There’s real life, immediate and confusing and complicated, and then there’s fiction, which even when it’s complicated has a point to it. That’s because the writer’s job is to aim for effect, not for reality. Even stream-of-consciousness isn’t reality. Everything on a page is shaped for effect.

Is it shaped for the effect it has on others, what you call sharing? It can be, but if you write as I do, the first draft is for your eyes only, and the effect is strictly personal. Only after the first draft is shaped will you stand back and let judgment fly where it will: This is bad. (But at least it’s here, and it wasn’t last year this time.) It will never be good. (But it can be better, and that’s as much as you can hope for.) It’s pointless. (Is it really, or is that just the self-critic in you? If it is truly pointless, why did you go to all the work of writing it? Is there a hidden point in there somewhere you can begin to work to the surface?)

What I might suggest to you is, write as in a journal, and when you’ve finished for the day, don’t reread what you’ve written: Put it away, close it, forget it entirely. Do this again tomorrow, and again every day for a week.

At the end of it, read your first entry, now cold in your mind. What in this passage tweaks your interest? What part isn’t bad, and what don’t you like about it? Are the verbs strong enough, the nouns accurate enough, the sentences succinct?

Not every day’s writing is going to be good or interesting. When you take a bunch of photographs, are they all works of art? But really, it’s just film, who cares if nine tenths of them are duds? (And with a digital camera, there’s not even that concern, the images are the very essence of ephemeral, wiped away as if they never were.)

You need to separate your creative side and your editorial/critical side. Both are necessary, but they get in each other’s way. This is why editors work in offices in New York, writers work in coffeehouses in Seattle.

A writer writes, that’s the only way it gets done. And then she rewrites, that’s the only way it gets good.

Good luck.

Q: WDI asks how, or if, the narrative style (first person in the Russells, third person elsewhere) of a book affects the writing process. Do you have to go to a different place in your head to write "as" the protagonist than you do when you're the omniscient narrator? Does that, in turn, change the way the story unfolds for you? Or is it, as Will Shetterly titles his blog, "all one thing"?

A: There are a lot of technical considerations, of course—how do I present a piece of information that exists outside the 1st person narrator’s point of view? How do I achieve a pleasing degree of variety when the narrative is restricted to one voice? How do I write a 120,000 word novel that doesn’t have every second sentence beginning with “I”?

I wrote Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and subsequent books in that series, first person in Mary Russell’s voice, since they seemed to require the memoir style. I’m not even sure if I could write third-person Russell (outside the small snippets in Locked Rooms) because sharing the intimacy of her mind is such an integral part of the books.

Certainly, the broader the POV the bigger the potential effect. Touchstone moves between omniscience and a tight concentration on one or another of the six main characters, which enables me both to tell a big story and to explore the subtleties of each person’s character from within.

The problem with first person is that you’re trapped behind one set of eyes; the problem with multiple POVs is that you risk diluting the story line and distracting, even confusing the reader.

Does this affect the writing process? No doubt it does, in that the memoir style necessitates a sort of channeling approach, whereas the multiple or omniscient viewpoint requires a more deliberate craft. That, however, is for the first draft, and I would suspect that in the rewrite, any innate stylistic differences are smoothed down.

An end to tolerance

Okay, I think I’ve had enough of tolerance.

Last Friday, Israeli gays gathered for a pride rally in Jerusalem, to celebrate life in general and gayness in particular. The rally had originally been scheduled to include a march through the streets, but that part was cancelled because the religious right threatened to respond with a counter-demonstration, and authorities couldn’t cope with it. So they held it at the sport stadium, where 2000 participants were protected by 3000 police officers, who managed to keep most of the ultra-Orthodox at bay.

Meanwhile, in the other (Arab) part of town, a group of gay Palestinian Americans thought they might put on a rally of their own, to coincide with that of the Israelis. Joining them were nine Palestinian-American gays who had come to Jerusalem for the rally. Except that a couple of locals, who claimed they represented the Waqf (the Muslim religious authority in charge of, among other things, the holy sites in the city) came to their hotel and threatened to cut off their heads if they marched. And when the two locals got one of the Americans alone, they beat the crap out of him, leaving him unconscious in the hospital.

This is an American, from Chicago, the victim of a hate crime on foreign soil. So why isn’t this an international incident? If this had been a straight blonde kid from a Bible-belt college who was threatened with beheading, then beaten, thrown down the stairs, and kicked senseless, would it be relegated to an inside page of the paper?

When one of his friends was interviewed, “Daoud” from Detroit could only say ruefully that America had a degree of tolerance that they were discovering did not exist in East Jerusalem. This comes out as a praise of the US, and I suppose it is, in the same way that saying somebody doesn’t beat his wife is praise, or that a motorist doesn’t sideswipe pedestrians recognizes a good thing. But honestly, why shouldn’t one be able to expect the right to walk down the sidewalk without being run down? As a woman, I expect the right to drive my own car, earn my own money, make decisions regarding my own body; if someone jumped out of an alley and threatened to shoot me if I didn’t get off the street and go into hiding, wouldn’t I be just a tad outraged? Wouldn’t the rest of the country? And if I chose to march in a parade declaring my pride in being a woman, how would that be different from a march declaring my pride in being created gay?

I’m sick of tolerance. We don’t need to “tolerate” gays or blacks or Hispanics or women in politics or people in wheelchairs, any more than we need to tolerate the sky above or trees in the forest or our own left foot. They’re here, they’re as much a part of us as our left foot, they’re not going to go away, so as the old gay rights chant has it, get used to it. Instead of begrudging them their existence, “tolerating” them because the law says we have to, we need to learn to look at their differences—OUR differences—as a part of the texture of life.

Traditionally, Islam has recognized Judaism and Christianity as partners, all three being “People of the Book.” We may not agree with your world-view, but we can learn from it, use it to enrich our own view of Creation. For Christ’s sake, see the humanity.

And I do mean Christ’s sake. There’s a great deal about the Christian message I wrestle with, and disagree with, but one thing I do know: Jesus of Nazareth tried to look past little things like religious differences or a person’s sex to see the God-created person, like the Hebrew prophets before him and the Prophet Mohammed after him.

We don’t have room for mere tolerance in this crowded world. Instead, we need to celebrate the richness of the humanity God has created. We need to turn a disbelieving eye on any thug who uses God as an excuse for his actions. We need to shun anyone who would even consider compromise with criminals whose beliefs put young men in the hospital. And I’m not even a minority, or gay, or red-haired, or anything, I can’t imagine how fed up I would be if I fit into any of the minority categories.

No more tolerance.

The monstrous regime

For the next two years, we will see a monstrous regiment of (three) women, Democrats from California, rising up to give nightmares to the boys in DC back rooms. Pelosi, Feinstein, and Boxer are savvy, they’ve got their agendas in line, and they’re fed up to here.

Time for the old Chinese curse: May life be interesting for the gentleman in the White House.

Tipping points

Sure, the Macaca incident was one of those like Dean’s screech and Muskie’s tears that rode an election into the grave—not that the tears/screech/?? Would have been enough by themselves, but they were the straw that tipped the teetering public to one side, leaving the candidate riding his campaign like Rip Torn rode the bomb in Dr. Strangelove.

Personally, however, I’ve been treasuring the idea that the final nail in Allen’s coffin for the Senate race was his ad that quoted snippets of Jim Webb’s novels as proof that the man was a nasty, bloody-minded pervert. These are novels, dear, not manifestos.

And yes I know it’s not all that simple, one ad or one weird possibly ethnic slur, but who cares? Anyway, it made me think about my own writing, the same way that hearing of arrests and deportations based on donations to dicey Islamic groups and books ordered online make me think about my own Schedule A donations and reference shelves: What have I written that, chopped out of context and given in screaming print, would condemn me to the nether reaches of humanity?

I suppose I’d lose the lesbian vote based on two characters saying they thought the idea of lesbian sex boring. I’d lose the right-wingers if anyone counted how many positive gay characters inhabit my books (I suspect they wouldn’t care if the gays were the bad guys.) Can anyone out there think of LRK snippets that, given out of context, would condemn her to a few years in Purgatory (political or otherwise)?

Or maybe I'm just too chronically politically correct. We native Northern Californians are condemned by our good manners.

Blessings from out of the blue (states)

Both the House AND the Senate?

Thank you, God. Thank you thank you.

Q&A de Noviembre

Thanks for playing, more questions later in the week...

Q: I have read all of your books multiple times but especially the Russell/Holmes series. When will the next in that series (please let there be more on the way!) be written/published?

A: The next Russell will be written next year, published (God willing) in 2008. This is assuming I finish the rewrite of TOUCHSTONE in the next few weeks, and assuming Bantam has a slot for the book in the fall of 2007. Two big IFs.


Q: I've actually been giving the following issue a lot of thought the past few days--and I hope the question is appropriate for your blog. I've recently read your short story, "Paleta Man", in Irreconcilable Differences. Firstly, I loved the story. Secondly, I can (unfortunately) identify. And I have to admit to a certain sense of satisfaction with the story's ending. (I will refrain from clarifying for those who have not yet read the story.) Here is my question: what is your view regarding the idea/act of vigilante justice (which lawyers sometimes refer to as "extra-judicial self-help")?

A: Ah, there’s the difference between fiction and real life, isn’t it? In fiction, you can kill off (as Sue Grafton is famously credited with) an abrasive ex-husband, or your mother-in-law, or that guy who cut you off on the freeway. In real life, not only is there a mess to deal with, and that little business of getting caught, but the reality is, for most of us, “I’m going to murder him” is rhetorical excess. And thank goodness it is, or we’d all be lying in a morgue.

I was on a panel at Bouchercon in September on this topic, namely, Who would you wipe out if you knew you could get away with it? You can probably find the tapes of it on the BoucherCon site, if you’re interested, but the best answer was given by John Connelly, who had just finished pronouncing a heartfelt death sentence on cell phone users when a cheery tune began to play from the front row….

Q: From Yola: Maybe you've addressed this somewhere earlier in your blog, but when you write, how do you focus your ideas? Do you have a general plot and characters in mind and then fill in here and there until you come up with a shaded and alive story with real people? And what do you do with other ideas that drift in and out of your head that may not be related to what you're currently working on?

A: Every book is an exploration. There was a saying popular in my hippie youth, from Kurt Vonnagut, “Unusual travel invitations are dancing lessons from God.” And as with dancing lessons, even if you’re the male, generally you’re not actually taking the lead.

I start off with a general idea of what kind of book I’m doing, as the dancer starts off knowing whether she’ll be doing the waltz or the samba, and let it go. The focus for me is the central plot and characters, since my first draft is the outline process too, and it’s usually later that I work in subplots and red herrings—not always, but in general.

Sometimes I’ll come up with an idea that feels like great fun, but when I begin to fiddle with it, I realize that it’s wrong for this book, and reluctantly set it aside. I have a file for every work in progress called Cuts, which are all those great passages that as I’m going along I suspect are going to be dead ends or distractions. I always think I’ll go back and find them too valuable to leave out, but when I look at them again, I find I was right to chop them.

Questions, class?

Okay, if we're finished talking about sex, let's accept the fact that it's the first of November (oh, all right, it's the second) and open this to Q&A. I'll pick ten or twelve questions so make them good.