By
JOHN SCHERBER
WRITING UNEASY RIDER
After writing
twenty-four books I am once again part of a writer’s work group here in San
Miguel. Seven working writers meet once a week to offer critiques of each
other’s work. This is not the kind of group where the members are given a
prompt, followed by twenty minuets of rapid writing, and the comments may only
be positive.
All the
material has been read in advance before the meeting. This is a setting where
anything goes, within the bounds of normal supportive civility, but a thick
skin is a useful garment to wear, since we are all committed to tell the truth
of our reactions. This is how we improve our work.
Martina
The obvious
benefit is the criticism from other writers. This is not the same as an
editor’s view, and that’s good. My experience is that many editors are failed
writers and tend to have a formulaic approach. The phrase we want to hear most in
this setting is, “This part (or character) isn’t working for me,” followed by
the reasons why, and possibly a hint about what might work better.
But there are
also other benefits. One is the need to be insightful about what others are
doing, which requires a thoughtful commitment to understand both their premise
and their technique. This is particularly helpful and challenging when what
they are doing is something that absolutely has never occurred to you.
Stretching to understand it, to generate insight into what would improve an
approach you have never considered for yourself and never would, has the
benefit of allowing you to return to your own work with an expanded
perspective. You have stepped out of your own bubble. We can improve not only our
ability to critique other writers, but also ourselves by doing this.
In this group
several are doing memoirs, one a romance, another is working on a thriller, and
I’m writing the fourteenth mystery in my Murder in México series, titled Uneasy Rider. The romance, the thriller,
and the mystery all fall into the category of genre fiction, which is often
thought to be formulaic (and too often is), but my experience with mysteries is
more flexible. To me, detective fiction has an opening with a crime and a
closing with a solution. That’s as much definition as I require. The area
between, essentially the entire book, is open to the sky and may contain any set
of elements at all that advances the story. The fundamental skills that apply
are little different from those in literary fiction. The needs of pace, plot, characterization,
and writing skills, are all the same, and this open-ended feature applies to
romance and thriller as well.
Uneasy Rider is
mainly set at an upscale equestrian property near San Miguel that I call Rancho
Aria. The occasion of the story is a murder, but like much of fiction, the subject
is the truth. The process of investigation is that of uncovering the truth on
the way to solving the crime, but as the reader discovers, little of this
falsehood is the cause of the murder, it only appears as if it might be. As one
of the main characters, Maya Sanchez, says, “All masks are off now.” This is
the book of mine that has been making its way, chapter by chapter, through the
writer’s work group.
I am now in the
final revision phase, and the group will be going through the later chapters
and helping me get it right. I am aiming at publication in the second half of
October.
More than some
of the others in this series, Uneasy
Rider is a whodunit. It has some deep psychological roots in several of the
characters that I found challenging to develop. I believe that while we may see
someone across the room or on a bus that we would like to use in our story, the
character and makeup of the person who emerges on the page comes largely from
our own mind and experience. While we are specifically no one that we write
about in fiction, we are also everyone, including the villains.
So here comes Uneasy Rider. It’s been a stretch for
me, as many are. Someone once asked my painter/detective character, Paul
Zacher, how he knows when a picture is finished. He replies that he sets aside
his brush when it stops fighting him. I learned this from my own painting, and
it is no less true of writing.
I wanted to
call this piece Uneasy Writer, but I
didn’t, because I am more excited than uneasy, and the fight on this book is
not quite over yet.
Excuse me while
I step back into the ring.
Please visit the author’s website by using this URL:
No comments:
Post a Comment