Rough is Smooth and Smooth is Rough by Gabriel Valjan

 

How rough or polished are your first drafts? Do you dare show us?

 

My first drafts are rough as sandpaper.

 

There are times when I know my destination, while other times I have only a vague idea on how to proceed from Point X to Y. Sometimes  I’ll be sitting at my desk like Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny rolling ideas around in my head, the way he used those metal balls in his hand. When I polish the writing, it’s for internal logic and coherence and, because I write a series, character arcs across books.

 

I try to offer readers something unique. I try to resist certain conventions, and fads. I’m tired of the PI with a drinking problem or anger management issues. My writing takes a little This and That from the canon. Yes, I include the mystery genre in the Literary Canon, except my version of it accounts for diversity and other languages. The mystery genre is not the milkman’s kid. If Oedipus isn’t both mystery and noir, then I don’t know what is.

 

I’m not pure noir. If there’s darkness in Shane Cleary, it’s not him; it’s the world of 1970s Boston. My writing is more hard-boiled, possibly perceived as noir, because I rely on dialogue to advance Character and Plot. Dialog is a weak spot for most writers. There’s been a tradition for terse and snappy dialogue. However, it has degenerated into sarcasm, and can border on misogynistic and racist. I’m particularly attentive to realistic dialogue. Profanity is ubiquitous in contemporary literature, and I think readers have become desensitized, so if I use the F-word, you will feel its impact. I’m the same way with violence.

 

‘Rough’ to me is when I have to stop and think about what I’ve read for logic or clear imagery. If I have to pause, then it requires editing. If what a character says seems contradictory to their personality, I revisit and revise. I try to smooth out my pacing. I strive to lay down paragraph after paragraph of fluid prose. I’ll often utilize two to three paragraphs of exposition and then break the scene or introduce dialog. I tend to compress details to essentials for the story. It’s not unlike how a diamond is formed from a lump of coal. Too much prose and too many details invite confusion and frustrate fans of mysteries. Is all that I’ve read a clue? 

 

My imagination thinks in scenes. I hear and see characters talk and react, and I do my best to commit it to paper. When I’m not confident of direction and destination, the writing process will reveal the answers. The ‘extras’ are after the fact. To quote Naomi Hirahara, “I have to pay attention to inserting red herrings and effectively braiding the problem-solving elements of the plot.”

 

Writing a series has compelled me to write what I call ‘treatments,’ and they are rough, indeed, often lacking subplots. I write and leave material for my characters to breathe. Case in point, I wrote four ‘treatments’ the Shane Cleary five years ago after I finished writing the first book, Dirty Old Town. The first novel established Shane and his moral universe. The remaining ‘treatments’ varied from 30-40K for word count, which I wrote over the course of one summer and then put away. A few months before my next book was due, I thought about subplots to flesh out the remainder of the book. Bonnie, for example, did not exist for Hush Hush. I created her.

 

To circle back to my earlier statement about the literary canon, I pick and choose to make my writing new and different. Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone had Reggie the dog. Shane has a cat named Delilah. She is my hat tip to the cozy mystery tradition since she is a companion, a manifestation of his conscience, and she provides levity where most people would look to open a vein.

 

As for smoothing out the wood, rounding out the edges, that’s called editing, and I’m worse than Medea when it comes to my darlings.

Drafts Are Ugly Things

 Q: How rough or polished are your first drafts? Do you dare show us?

-from Susan

 

Writers who can plow straight through a really rough draft, ignoring the inevitable major and minor problems, word choices, dropped clues, etc. impress me with their steely willpower. Over the years, I have learned not to obsess every day about what I wrote yesterday, or the day before, or since the first page. But I still go back and read yesterday’s work if only to set myself on the same path. And when something screams at me, I can’t help it. I stop and fix it even if the first shoe that dropped was 50 pages ago. 

 

I guess I’m afraid I will forget the mistake if I let it go for now. Yes, notes - right now, I’m looking at a piece of paper that says (among other things) “pg 67 – key for storage area or why not?” Why not indeed. My WIP is due in a couple of weeks and, truth be told, I do not know the answer. At least I know where to find the reference to it! Also this from the same notes page: “SDLCODP – organized crime. Elite.” Because it stopped me in my tracks when I realized it wasn’t going to work as slang for the Paris Prefecture’s organized crime unit, it sits there, and I have had to do a work around.

 

The other side of that piece of blue paper has two columns of numbers. Spanning several generations, trying to give my characters in the multi-generational part of this story had me so confused I finally decide the only way to be sure what I wanted to do was believable was to show each year visually. 

Abir Mukherjee, an accountant in his previous life, would lift a lip in distain if he weren’t such a lovely man, but, hey, rather this than getting lousy reviews on Amazon because she would have been his great-great-grandmother, you idiot!.

 

By the time the initial draft is done, it’s halfway decent except for the mistakes I made, like leaving out an essential piece of a scene, giving the same person two entirely different names, or realizing a clever red herring I planted in the first section has faded into the wallpaper by the climax, never to be mentioned again.

 

Writing is brutal, infuriating business at times. But it’s better than waiting tables at a busy restaurant, something I sucked at in college, so I’m sitting – as Annie Lamott says, “butt in chair” – until this final draft is ready to send.

 

 

 

An Object at Rest from James W. Ziskin

The business and creative sides of writing can feel like being on a teeter-totter. How do you manage to keep a balance?

 

The simple answer is that I don’t keep a balance. Over the past few years, any energy I might have felt for the business side of writing has evaporated. It’s hard enough to find the time and the inspiration to write, let alone to come up with new ideas to promote my career.

 

As part of my self-promotional strategies, I used to attend writer conferences every year. Bouchercon, Left Coast, ITW, California Crime, New England Crime Bake, Malice Domestic, and Maine Crime Wave to name a few. I enjoyed re-connecting with old friends and making new ones, learning from the wonderful writers on panels, and sharing my flask of Dewar’s with thirsty colleagues. (I’m looking at you, Leslie Karst.) But since 2019, I’ve only managed to make it to New England Crime Bake once and Maine Crime Wave twice. Granted, there was the pandemic, but even so. I used to attend four or five conferences a year. Now?

 

My attendance—or lack thereof—is symptomatic of something greater going on inside me: inertia. I know I should do more to promote my brand or my books, but somehow not much happens. I’ve done a handful of signings, but those are a struggle. The return on investment seems minimal. I would need to hit dozens of bookstores and libraries to have any real effect, and I’m not feeling it.

I used to spend lots of effort searching for creative promotional ideas. I recommend you pick up a marvelous book called Promophobia, edited by Diane Vallere and published by Sisters in Crime. More than sixty of the finest crime writers working today contributed to this self-help volume. Click here for the link.

My own favorite promotion was for Cast the First Stone. I bought every die-cast Volkswagen bus I could find—blue if possible to match the cover of my book—and added the title to the roof. People went crazy for it. I must have given away twenty-five of them. It was an expensive promotion. What it did for my sales I have no idea. Probably nothing.

 

Another side of the business that every writer dreads is requesting blurbs. It’s hard to screw up the nerve to ask someone for their time (about ten hours for a novel) and a couple of lines of praise (if they like it and want to attach their name to it). Those lines don’t necessarily come easily either, so I’m immensely grateful each time. For me, when I write a blurb for another author, I spend a couple of hours at least crafting a thoughtful comment. It’s important to pay it forward.

 

Other business activities, such as maintaining tax records, are less arduous. We do those anyway for all our income and deductions, so I won’t complain about those.

 

If this post comes across as slightly deflated and defeated, I apologize. I know the business side of writing is essential, just not very sexy. Maybe I’ll go to Bouchercon this year to raise my spirits. That would be fun. And there would be plenty of tax preparation to be done once it’s over. Business, n’est-ce pas?

 

Maybe I’ll feel better about the business side soon, but for now I’m going to concentrate on writing. I have three or four book ideas percolating in my head, and it’s time to take care of those.

 

 

Balance — that’s the thing

The business and creative sides of writing can feel like being on a teeter-totter. How do you manage to keep a balance? 

by Dietrich

I set a block of time to write every day, yet there are those situations when that takes some juggling. I think the routine and repetition is important, and I like to treat writing like my day job — only with a lot more enthusiasm. I’m raring to get started wherever I left off from the day before. And I actually look forward to Monday mornings.

While the business side of writing is key and very important to me, I won’t let it muscle away the time set aside for writing. The phone’s off, the earbuds are in, the “I’m in writing mode — keep out” sign is on the door (not really), and there’s absolutely no email or social media while I’m writing. So, unless I smell smoke … 

Generally speaking, the afternoon and evening are a better time for getting back to people and taking care of the business side. Of course there are those times when something comes up and I need to switch things around, but generally this is how it goes.

Let’s face it, it’s more fun to write than to tend to business, which is why a lot of us writers suck at the business side. Aside from the novels, I write here at Criminal Minds every couple of weeks, and then there’s my own blog, Off the Cuff, where I interview other authors about their upcoming books. Aside from that, I like to take part in any worthwhile writers’ events (live as well as online) that come my way. While I have organized many of my own events, I like to count on the qualified professionals out there to do aspects of the business side where I’m a lightweight or just plain totally lost, like publicity and on-line marketing.

TIFA MOTIVE Crime & Mystery Festival
with Sam Wiebe, Catherine Graham and Lisa de Nikolits

Of course, there are times when it’s good to shake things up. As I’m writing this, I’ve just unpacked from a trip to Toronto, taking part in the fabulous TIFA MOTIVE festival, and I now feel like the batteries have been recharged after taking part in some great events and spending some time with my publisher and some writing pals I haven’t seen in a few years, and connecting with some new ones too. And that’s just the kind of thing that feeds the creative side, and keeps me feeling positive and inspired too. 

Decisions, Decisions

 

Terry here, weighing in on our topic this week: The business and creative sides of writing can feel like being on a teeter-totter. How do you manage to keep a balance? 

I’m not sure I actually keep a balance. I’m never going to spend the time that being a really good business person requires, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I SHOULD DO. 

I know what the creative side of writing means for me. It’s letting my interior child out to play and being excited by the idea she comes up with. Following her lead to write my books, working hard and enjoying the process. I'm willing to put a lot of time and effort into this, and I get a lot of intangible satisfaction from it. 

But what exactly is the “business” side of writing? Here are some examples of decisions a writer may have to make regarding the business side of writing. 

 1) What to write: You may have to choose between writing a book on a subject that is popular now or one that your agent and editor says is a dead end, but that you are really excited by. 

2) You may have more than one agent interested in representing your work, and you have to decide between one who is known for securing “big” deals, but whom you don’t think you fit well with, and one lesser known whom you really like. 

 3) A choice between a publisher that offers a bigger advance and one that isn’t able to offer as much upfront—but the big advance publisher is reputed to do a poor job of supporting their authors, while the “lesser” publisher is known for being very supportive. 

 

4) You may have to choose between being published by a publisher you don’t particularly respect, but is the only one who made an offer, or publishing independently. The business decision here is huge, and involves whether you are willing to learn how to publish your own work effectively, or if it’s likely to drive you crazy because it takes so much effort, and then may not pan out? 

 

5) Choosing to do your own promotion versus hiring someone. You have to weigh the pros and cons. Will the money you spend be realized in sales? But also, will you feel good knowing that you have hired a professional to boost your efforts? 

6) Choosing which social media outlets to become involved with. It’s almost a given that you need to have a presence on social media, but which one? You may loathe Facebook, but your research tells you that if you are engaged with your Facebook friends, they make a good target for your promotion. Or that may be true of Instagram, or Twitter, or any of the lesser known social media sites. Making that choice is not only a business decision, it’s a personal one. And that’s true of a lot of these decision. 

7) You maybe despise public speaking, but you know that speaking at bookstores,

book clubs, local social clubs, and other venues is a good way to get the word out about your books. You have to make that choice. 

In both your creative and business sides you have to weigh what efforts will be most likely to be satisfying, not just monetarily, but emotionally. To make the decision best for you may require doing some research, and even then it can come down to knowing yourself well enough to know how much time and effort you are willing to put into each one. 

 Here’s a real life example. I attended the California Crime Writers Conference this weekend. It’s expensive (although not as expensive as some) and time-consuming. So how do I decide whether attending a conference was worth it? I weigh how much it supported my creativity vs how much it may lead to better promo opportunity. 

Here’s the trade-off: It may have been expensive in time and money, but the panels were amazing, including this one I was part of, 

and I made some wonderful connections with other authors. These are connections that may not ever bring me any monetary gain, but they give me great satisfaction as a person. I learned a lot, some of which may be useful, some not. But even the things I learned that may not bring me monetary reward, brought me intangible rewards. Plus, being with other authors makes it possible to brainstorm new ideas for both the creative and business sides of writing. 

Susan Shea, Deb Crombie and I had a ball spending two hours brainstorming twists and turns for our works in progress.

Bottom line, I don’t spend as much time and effort on making good business decisions as I do on creative decisions, but I try to stay aware of what I MUST do, and not worry too much about what I COULD DO. That's the best balance I can strike.

Finding Balance

The business and creative sides of writing can feel like being on a teeter-totter. How do you manage to keep a balance? 

Brenda here.

When a writer is perfecting their first novel and dreaming of finding a publisher, they may be surprised to discover that writing the book is the easiest (albeit not easy) part. Once a work hits the shelves, the publicity and marketing work begins, and it can consume a lot of time. Finding the proper balance takes a bit of planning.

That said, I'm not convinced that I've achieved the proper balance! I tend to focus on the writing if I have a streak going or the editing if I'm immersed in that. I do a lot of marketing prep work leading up to a book's release, but this peters out the longer the book is in circulation. I always feel as if I'm not doing enough.

For example, When Last Seen, second in the Hunter and Tate mystery series came out April 1st of this year. I've all but finished trying to get reviews and media, although an article in my local paper came out last week. I've luckily been approached by different bookstores in my city since its release to do signings this time around, and have one scheduled in two weeks. Book clubs have also been contacting me and I'm dropping in on a new one this week. All this to say, I remain open to opportunities to promote my books, but I've moved on to writing the third book in the series and this will take up more and more of my time in the upcoming months. Marketing will have to chug along on its own steam :-) Happily, my books are getting better known and word of mouth is helping immensely.

I have a personal blog where I write about my writing week and I used to post every Saturday. Now, I take the summers off, stopping in April and starting up again in September. This is a good way to let people know what I'm up to and to report on events, but it takes up a lot of time. Again, I'm working to keep a balance between keeping readers interested and not burning myself out. The summer break gives me time to refresh and focus on my writing.

So, my answer to this week's question boils down to pockets of marketing with bigger pockets of writing and editing over the year. The balance is continually shifting. I'm always open to publicity opportunities but have become selective about what and when. Ultimately, there is no magic formula; marketing often involves throwing out feelers and waiting to see what unfolds. It's a bit like life really - juggling commitments and focusing on what needs doing before moving on to the next pressing task. It takes persistence, flexibility and a willingness to adjust priorities. At its best, writing and marketing goals work in sync without undue pressure in either camp.

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

Facebook & Instagram: BrendaChapmanAuthor

Twitter: brendaAchapman

These Books Are Not For Burning by Josh Stallings

Q: The building’s on fire, what books do you save?

A: Easy, the books that matter are my signed editions. This year Thomas Pluck gifted me with signed first editions of most of James Crumley’s oeuvre. Tom knows how important Crumley is to me. The Moses McGuire trilogy is a love letter to Crumley’s tarnished drunken knights. Three books were missing, Dancing Bear, luckily my friend Steven Hertzog gave me a signed first edition years ago. That leaves only A Right Madness and The Wrong Case, (weirdly these are his first and last detective novels,) I will find them sooner or later.

So after I make sure Erika, our sons, and the four legged beasties are safe, I will run back in for the Crumleys and that’s it.

Charlie signed this to our son Jared after seeing his punk band play.

Ok that and the books Charlie Huston signed to me and my family. He has been a friend and supporter since I first stumbled onto the crime scene. That’s six Crumleys and seven Hustons. Nothing else.

Except for November Road, a brilliant book, and Lou Berney signed it with a wonderful note to Erika and I. 

Looking on my shelf Bad Boy Boogie screams, “Yo gonna let me fry?” How could I leave signed Thomas Pluck books behind? 

I have signed copies from my oldest best mate, fantasy writer Tad Williams. Young Americans is dedicated to him for good reason. We lived through so much, and more to go.

It’s been said that book are old friends. These are old friends written and signed by dear friends. Picking up Monday’s Lie, I remember Jamie Mason signing it at Bouchercon San Diego. I moderated a panel she was on. I had no idea we would remain good friends over the years. 

Every book here has memories attached of the book and the writer. When Erika couldn't make a conference, Catriona McPherson signed a copy of Scot Free to her.

The first time we met Terry Shames was at Noir Bar Los Angeles, she signed a copy of her first book to Erika. She remains one of my favorite writers and people. So yeah, her books are coming.  

What about Eric Beetner or Gary Phillips’ books? Johnny Shaw? Todd Robinson? Sara J. Henry? Hillary Davidson? All great writers and old friends. Yeah, their books are coming along. 

Stuart Neville added a drawing to his signature. As did Scott Phillips when he signed Ice Harvest. Got to keep those.

I have a copy of Chandler’s “Farewell My Lovely” published in Russia and signed to me from actor Victor Wong. He was in a movie I wrote and edited that was shot in Russia. This book has personal value and the back where it explains english idioms to Russian readers is priceless.

And the books of Ian Ayris, my brother from another world. Ian signed April Skies to me  praising my memoir, “It helped me more than you will ever know.” I feel the same way about his work.  

Ok, tally up time. I count thirty six heavy books that must be saved. Maybe I can drag those out of a fire in one trip… maybe… until Erika chimes in, “What about the children's books we read to the boys?” I look at the covers and remember reading to Dylan and Jared. I read Where the Wild Things Are so many times I could read it with my eyes closed, and I did some nights. 

I just asked Jared if he remembers any particular books he was read. “Yeah, Where the Wild Things Are, Everyone Poops, and Goodnight Moon.” The children's books survived the move to the mountains and the downsizing of our life, they will not burn. Not even hypothetically.

Erika’s beautifully bound with original art work Folio editions? Yep. Those are simply too beautiful to let burn.

Books have been a part of my life since before I was me. They are attached to memories, they are gossamer threads that help me drift back. Winnie the Pooh is a very little me lying on my father playing with a Steiff bear and hearing the words rumble up deep and rich from his chest. 

Peter Pan is my mother reading to us from the very book she was read to as a child. It was faded and magical. My mother was Wendy and we were her wild children.

What books would I save? 

All of them, clearly. Wouldn’t you?

Who knew? (I knew.) by Catriona

 Reading: The building's on fire - what books do you save?

As Susan said on Monday, this is not a theoretical exercise for those of us who live in northern California. In the summer of 2020, the wildfire evacuation line got within three miles of my house (the fire itself was five miles off, but clearly visible day and night). I put all paperwork from birth certificate to tax receipts in one suitcase and a selection of clothes for the two of us in another. That's what Case 1 and Case 2 stand for on this evacuation plan, which I wrote then and still have on my desk.

Two things: first, Rachel coming third isn't an indication of her not being at the top of "save me" list - honest! - it's more that I didn't think of her as a thing to be packed, rather as a member of the household to be included. Also, would you look at that? No books.

The sentimental items that got a mention here are my two most cherished paintings - one a portrait of my late grandfather and one a commissioned landscape of our old house in Scotland - and then, in hopeful but realistic brackets, all the other paintings, drawings and numbered prints, since they are genuinely irreplacable.

Today - well, Monday when I read Susan's post - is the first time I've ever considered saving books from a fire. The interesting thing that came out of the pondering was that it reconfirmed something I've always believed: I'm a reader first and a writer second. 

Whenever people say they can't read while they're writing, it makes me more sure that, if that was true for me, I wouldn't be a writer. (Like when one year of English literature at university made me dislike Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh and I promptly switched degrees.)

This mental exercise confirmed my hunch. Read on . . . First, I thought about saving the five books that made me a writer. I'm looking at them in a wee pile on the other side of my study right now:

Pride and Prej, Catch-22, I Capture the Castle (and in such a lovely edition, right?), The Water-Method Man and Gone With The Wind. These are five books that I read at a sitting - yes, even the doorstop - and that left me excited and inspired, with a transformed idea about what a novel could be. 

But I wouldn't save them. For a start, it's one thing to be honest about the fact that GWtW blew seventeen-year-old me away that weekend in the 1980s. It's quite another to save five books out of thousands, at the age of fifty-seven, and let one of them be actual Margaret literally Mitchell. Um, no. (Plus I could get a nice Capture ...)

And what of those thousands of other books? Lots of them are lovely editions, many of them are signed, some of them are treasures from childhood. Through the Bible, by Theodora Wilson Wilson exerts quite a pull, because of the inscription written at Christmastime 1942, when my grandad gave it to my mum (way to pick a present, Mack!), Or the fragile copy of Wee Magreegor, which was the first book an adult ever loaned me. My best friend's dad - Ralph Beer - handed it to me with great solemnity and I carried it over the road to my house like a sleeping baby. I was touched when Catherine gave it to me for keeps, many years later, after Ralph died.

But if I opened that glass-fronted bookcase where Wee MacGreegor lives along with all the other beautiful vintage books I've collected - everything from O.Douglas to Erle Stanley Gardner - in all their kitsch glory, I'd be a goner.

Nah, there would only be one choice, really. The TBR shelves. If the flames were licking at the door, I would scoop all the books I haven't read yet into a wheebarrow and trundle them out to the truck, where Neil would have the engine running and Rachel would have started sharing her heartfelt opinion about the how her day was going.

See, I know what I've read and I could replace it (or not, you know, if it was a slog at the time) but I've got no firm grasp on what I've bought but haven't got to. I'd like to be able to pick up where I was before I was interrupted by the disaster, and keep reading.

I'm a reader. And here's the final proof. I was halfway through writing this post before it even occurred to me that a second wheelbarrow trip could get me every edition of everything I've ever published. They're on a set of shelves in my study, nice and handy. But I surprised myself. There's only one thing in this last picture that would definitely be in the truck that dreaded day.

Cx

 

No hard choices here... by Cathy Ace

Reading: The building’s on fire, what books do you save?

NOTE: I shall assume every life is saved, and there’s no danger involved with rescuing “things”, because I’m sure we all agree that things don’t matter at all if anyone’s health or wellbeing is in jeopardy.

First of all: 

NOT BOOKS – sorry! – but all the albums containing photos I haven’t yet saved digitally. Yes – not words at all, but images that are irreplaceable. Why? I recently spent weeks sorting through ALL my family’s 70+ photo albums, and have digitally saved hundreds of photos for myself, recording the history of my family, and my life. Thus, the power of such records is front and centre of my mind. (A couple of examples of photos I saved appear below.)

My great-great-great aunt who was Postmistress in Hay-on-Wye
(yes, the family connections to the places I set my WISE Enquiries
Agency Mysteries go back that far)

Then:

Books signed by authors who are no longer living.

My laptop and separate hard drive, because I also have a lot of books stored there, including all the working documents of all my own books!

My Kindle (so a couple of thousand books right there!)

I drag my arm along a shelf of books and hope they all land in a suitcase…not because I can’t buy these books again, but because these specific volumes have been with me for DECADES, and have my soul imprinted on their pages alongside the words of the authors.

The early-nineties, with my maternal grandmother

After that? There are books the (still living) author has signed, or has even signed specifically for me: I’d like to say these were higher on my list of priorities, but if I lost them, I could make it my mission to repurchase the books and get new signatures – so that’s almost a win.

For me? Books are replaceable, the memories associated with specific volumes aren’t.

So there we have it - people, photos, special books, digital books, irreplaceable books, books. 

Want to find out how I use my family's history as an inspiration? Well, that's woven throughout my work, so you could start anywhere - but on the 24th July, the 8th WISE Enquiries Agency Mystery will be published...just saying!

https://www.cathyace.com/

Of Fire and Forgiveness by Gabriel Valjan

The building’s on fire, what books do you save?

 

In loco parentis. The Latin phrase means ‘in place of a parent.’ Today, I am the writer asked to rescue someone else’s child, and anyone who knows me knows I’m a driven person, an impatient person, especially with myself, and I dislike (intensely) talking about myself.

 

Like the mother asked who is her favorite child, my answer speaks volumes (couldn’t resist the pun). What a person reads may betray their moral values (or lack thereof); their fantasy life, or how they see the world and people around them. Except for the last point, the same could be said about a peek inside a refrigerator, into a person’s closet, and their DVD collection. All of this, of course, presumes evidence in plain sight, books in physical form. Now that there are Kindles, we can hide gigabytes of evidence

 

My library is where I write. Writing is monastic, lonely, and daunting because there are no guarantees that what you write will be read. My library is private, personal, and communal in that I can turn to authors on the shelf.

 

To answer the question, I need to provide context. I write crime fiction. Unlike writers who research crime, use their imagination and say, what if? I have known criminals and I’ve known victims. When it comes to this duality, the hardest lesson to learn is Forgiveness of self and others; for this reason, the author’s whose book I would save is Elie Wiesel’s Night.

 

I first read his Night in French after I had taught myself the language so I could read my favorite short story: Flaubert’s “The Legend of Saint-Julian the Hospitaller.” The story contains one of the most stunning sentences I’ve ever read. If you’ve read Flaubert in the original, you know he’ll send you to the dictionary often. After Flaubert, I explored French literature. I read Elie’s Night, first in French. The language is simple, stark, and the volume, slim, though the subject matter defies language and speech. I told Elie as much and it prompted Elie to disclose something that had embarrassed him and caused him shame.

 

The precursor to Night was written in Yiddish and massive, at over 800-pages. The French and subsequent English translation are anorexic by comparison, at a devastating 200-pages. Night, the first in a trilogy, documents life in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Elie Wiesel had survived both rooms in Hell.

 

If there was ever an example of ruthless editing, Night is it. Elie admitted that he owed his publication in French to the novelist (and already a Nobel Laureate) François Mauriac who relentlessly shopped La Nuit among French publishers. Note: Elie was a polyglot, and he wrote in French. Initial sales were flat, but momentum did pick up with reviews and interviews. The rest is literary history.

 

Elie’s crime, by his own admission, was how he had treated Mauriac. Horribly.

 

When the two men had met, Mauriac was 70 and Elie, 27. Mauriac helped shape the French text, made suggestions, but honored Elie’s final decisions. Elie was emphatic about Mauriac’s support. Mauriac called publishers and showed up at offices, copy in hand. Elie was not forthcoming about what he had said to Mauriac, but he told me the old man remained resolute, stoic and steadfast. Elie said he had acted disrespectful to a man who had no reason to help him, a man who risked his reputation on his behalf. Elie called his behavior shameful displays of youthful arrogance and a profound lack of gratitude.

 

I suppose it’s conjecture on my part, but I think the younger Elie was responding to French antisemitism and Catholic indifference to Nazism—and for those who don’t know Mauriac is one of France’s great Catholic writers, considered the greatest novelist after Proust, and the only writer within the French Academy to publish essays against the Nazis. He would later become an outspoken critic of Franco in Spain. When the two writers met, however, Mauriac had not known about systematic extermination within the concentration camps. Elie’s writing cured him of that ignorance. I suspect Elie’s anger circled around these facts and, at a subliminal level, Mauriac had become the father Elie had lost [among other family members].

 

Elie said he learned forgiveness from a Catholic, by example.

 

Mauriac never harbored any recriminations. He wrote the Foreword to La Nuit.

 

François Mauriac died in 1970. Elie Wiesel died in 2016.

 

I admire the love, respect and friendship between these two writers. My copy is a personal connection to both men. I remember Elie Wiesel as a rumpled version of François Truffaut as Detective Columbo. He carried the sadness of the world with him. He learned to smile, yet he always had a tear in his eyes when he spoke about Mauriac. His capacity for self-awareness, his choice to extend compassion to himself, and forgive himself, has endeared him to me.

 

His memory has been a blessing.