THE MFA BAD OLD DAYS - August 1, 2023

I wrote full-length mystery novels intermittently throughout my adult life. All of them ended up as first drafts in a filing cabinet. I didn’t analyze why I wrote; I just needed to. Since the process mattered more to me than the product, none of them received the essential next step: intense revising and editing.

In the 1980s, I decided to use my vacation time from my job as a trial attorney to apply for a non-residential MFA in Writing program. It involved two weeks on campus twice a year for two years and included frequent correspondence and input from an assigned author the rest of the time. It seemed the perfect way to get help polishing a first draft.

I submitted several chapters of a novel and expressed my intention to use the program to learn the craft of writing a successful mystery. I never considered short stories. I had enough trouble thinking of an idea for a novel once a year. I was certain I was incapable of coming up with new ideas for multiple short stories.

At the first two-week residency, we met with our assigned authors. I won’t name mine, but each time we spoke, he made it clear he wasn’t interested in genre writing. He insisted I needed to write literary fiction, short literary fiction, before tackling something as ambitious as a novel. I found myself having made an expensive commitment to a program that was unwilling to accept my goals. After my teacher persuaded me that the skills I would learn under his direction were easily transferable to my unfathomable attraction to mystery writing, I agreed to write short stories. I don’t know what adjective best described the stories I painfully produced, but I’m sure “literary” wasn’t it. What they also lacked were the crimes and solutions I longed to include.

It’s my understanding that many MFA programs are now receptive to genre writing, a welcome change from the snobbery of the bad old days.

After two years, I had a manuscript of short stories that earned me my degree, a better knowledge of the craft of writing, and some new friends. I also vowed never to try to write another short story.

I hope to see you again next month when you’ll learn how that vow was broken.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE - July 1, 2023

I can’t imagine a hobby worth doing that doesn’t have its own set of tools, be they as simple as a magnifying glass for a closer look at a new stamp or as powerful as a fiery kiln for a clay pot. I’m sure most people would resist calling their passion a hobby. That makes it sound trivial, frivolous, when in fact, it might be the source of the only comfort in someone’s difficult life.

You can lose yourself in creating, collecting, swapping, whatever it is you desire. It doesn’t matter if its monetary value is zero to anyone else. To you, it’s priceless and, best of all, gives you the excuse you need to accumulate the irresistible extra bits and bobs that you can’t possibly do without. The notebooks filled with plastic sleeves for the stamps (I wonder if anyone still collects stamps and, if they do, what effect the ubiquitous Forever stamp has on their value), the etching tool for creating just the right effect in that clay pot; all the goodies that go along for the ride are sometimes the best part.

Writers’ tools have always attracted me. I’ve never been able to pass a stationery store without going in and buying at least one blank book. I now have a collection of those leather or cardboard bound treats with their lined pages still blank but a beacon of hope that someday I’ll have just the right story to fill them.

Hours have passed while I try to decide on just the right pad with just the right pen because the muse would never show up without the ideal vehicles to carry her words.

Computers have made the physical process of writing much easier but don’t help at all when the inspirational well has run dry. The click clack of the keyboard doesn’t compare with the vision of ink sliding out of the perfect pen onto the perfect page. Nothing says inspiration like a Mont Blanc fountain pen you’ve had for years with its silver point releasing a stream of words in Waterman green ink. It takes on a life of its own, giving you the gift of making your thoughts tangible without a convenient Delete button if you change your mind.

Writing isn’t my hobby. It’s my passion and would be even without the tools of the trade. But it’s so much better with them.

REJECTION DEJECTION - June 1, 2023

I planned to start this new blog on an upbeat. There is a lot to be grateful for, both in my personal life and my writing life.

Personally, it’s now eight months since Hurricane Ian devastated our home of 20 years and most of our possessions. My husband, Brooks, and I were lucky to have obeyed the mandatory evacuation order, although it was a close call. We knew we were at a 7-foot elevation and the Caloosahatchee River was only a block away, but none of the hurricanes over the 20 years we had lived there had done anything more than knock out electricity and topple some trees. Not even a puddle on our property. But when the storm surge projections reached 15 feet, we loaded up one of our cars with some clothes, medications, computers, dog food, and Cooper, our dog, and left. We had the good fortune to have a snowbird friend who hadn’t yet come back south to her non-flood-zone house and offered it to us.

A few days after the storm, we went back to our house to check on any damage. As Brooks opened the front door, enough light came in to illuminate our worst nightmares. The flood waters had reached three feet throughout the house. It receded before we arrived, leaving an inch or two of filthy water, mud, and bacteria behind. Our belongings had floated around the rooms and were soaking wet. Everything below three feet was lost.

During the next few months, with the help of several flood restoration companies, a junk removal firm, and endless hard labor, the house was barebones livable but still needed a huge amount of work. We decided it was time to leave, and four months after Ian, we moved to Washington State where our son lived, and opened a new chapter in our lives, one that included ice and snow and freezing temperatures.

I started this entry by saying I had a lot to be grateful for. That includes surviving the storm and having a roof over our heads the whole time, thanks to the support and generosity of friends. So many people ended up homeless and living in their cars. As we’ve settled into our new home, I am constantly aware we were the lucky ones.

Now for the writing life gratitude. I’ve been writing, on and off, my entire life. I remember writing a short story that involved a mouse and a clock and having a teacher praise it back in grammar school. That did it for me. Over the years, I accumulated a drawer full of first-draft mystery novels. Only one made it out of the drawer and into the hands of an agent. She shopped it around and gave me copies of rejection letters that praised my writing but didn’t feel there was a market for another amateur female sleuth. I was busy with my legal career and didn’t pursue it.

After retirement from the practice of law and the beginning of the pandemic, I turned to short mystery fiction to distract me. I didn’t have the attention span to tackle a whole novel. A new world opened up as I learned there was such a thing as a Call for Submissions for mystery anthologies. My second attempt found a home in Peace, Love, & Crime with “Nights in White Satin,” where I murdered a bride. Since that time, I’ve had 13 more stories published, all but two in anthologies. The outliers were flash fiction in the online magazine, Shotgun Honey. Not everything has found a home, although I’ve learned to send any rejected stories right out again to a different publication. Rinse and repeat. As often as needed. But as I was reminded this morning, rejection still hurts and awakens the imposter syndrome in every writer.

So, I’m allowing myself to feel rejection dejection for one more hour. And then I’ll return to being grateful for the gift of those 14 acceptances as I start to write the next story.

Thanks for taking a look at my new website, and please check in again next month for my next blog entry.