The Pursuit of Truth in Writing

It’s a pleasure to introduce Criminal Minds readers to a friend and fellow author who has a new book out. Holly West is the author of the Mistress of Fortune series, set in 17^th century London and featuring amateur sleuth Isabel Wilde, a mistress to King Charles II who secretly makes her living as a fortuneteller. Harlequin’s Carina Press will publish the latest book in the series, Mistress of Lies, on September 29. She lives, reads, and writes in Los Angeles with her husband, Mick, and dog, Stella.

I can’t remember where I first met Holly West, but, knowing her, it was wherever the fun was at the time. I can remember where I first met Stella. She was curled up next to Holly, staring at me with big, round eyes, a worry line above her cute little nose. Holly’s saga of hard work before her first two Mistress books were published pales next to Stella’s recent trauma, when she had most of her little teeth extracted to treat an infected jaw. Okay, maybe I’m getting too involved with Holly’s and Mick’s dog. Onward, Holly:

By Holly West

As a guest to this blog, Susan Shea assured me that I wasn’t required to answer the Question of the Week. But when she told me the topic—“Is there a novel that you’re afraid to write?”—I decided it was something I wanted to address since my current work-in-progress is just this type of book.

It’s no secret that writers use experiences in their own lives as a basis for some of their stories. My Mistress of Fortune series is set in 17^th century London—seemingly a million miles away from my life in present-day Los Angeles—and I still found inspiration for the books in my everyday experiences. For instance, the plot of Mistress of Lies, which will be published on September 29, involves the goldsmith profession, a craft I studied for many years. My amateur sleuth, Isabel Wilde, lives in a house at the intersection of Drury Lane and Aldwych, very near to where the Waldorf Hilton now stands and where my husband and I have stayed many times. And Madame Laverne, a seamstress who appears in Mistress of Fortune, is named after a dear friend who passed away a few years ago.

All that said, the experiences I used in the Mistress of Fortune series are but small references to my real life. My new work-in-progress (as yet unnamed) is a whole other matter. It’s set in both Los Angeles and a fictional town called Gold Valley that’s based on the community I grew up in and some aspects of it autobiographical (albeit loosely).

It’s the story of an alcoholic actress who, after hitting rock bottom, checks herself into rehab and a counseling session triggers a repressed memory about her mother’s unsolved murder that occurred twenty-five years earlier. Convinced she actually witnessed the killing, she returns to her hometown—a haven of secrets, lies, and corruption—to learn the truth about her mother’s death.

Thankfully, I have no personal experience with murder. But I do have plenty of experience with dysfunction—in my case, it’s the severe depression of a close family member that’s never been properly treated. At its core, this is a novel about a deeply troubled family that can’t face its own demons and the tragic consequences of their denial of the truth. It is multi-generational and seeks to answer a key question: Is it ever possible for younger generations to heal past wounds by looking truth in the eye and facing it, head on?

When you’re writing about something that’s important to you, it feels like there’s a lot at stake. I want to be true to my story without hurting anyone who might recognize themselves within its pages. It is, after all, fiction, and while it might have some basis in truth, it is a highly dramatized version of people, relationships and events. Furthermore, the issues I want to tackle are complicated and sometimes difficult to articulate. Not only do I fear that telling the story might be hurtful, I feel doubt about my own ability to tell it properly. Am I really ready, as a writer, to do such a story justice?

I try not to spend much time worrying about it, however. If I’d given into the doubt that sometimes overwhelmed me as I wrote the Mistress of Fortune novels, they wouldn’t exist. I powered through, even when I had no idea what I was doing. And that’s just how I intend to proceed with this current project.

Fiction is the Lie

Was there a point before you were published when you thought of giving up? If so, how did you get over it and keep going?

By Paul D. Marks

I still think of giving up, but I don’t do it.

Part of the reason we’re writers is ‘cause we’re persistent. Lots of people want to be writers, give up to easily or just don’t’ find time to do it. It’s a passion – it’s not like a hobby that you give up when you don’t have the time. And it’s a passion that you have to do every day like eating.

You write because you have to. Yes, it’s nice to get published. And even paid. But if that’s why one writes you’re in the wrong biz.

It’s kind of like “Ol’ Man River,” tired of livin’, but scared of dyin’. But the river keeps rolling along. As do we. Because there’s nothing else we can possibly do. Sure we might have families, other jobs, other obligations, but we find the time to write because it’s in our blood and in our bones.


We write because we have something to say, some interpretation of life that we want to share. Or maybe we just want to entertain. In “Sullivan’s Travels,” the classic Preston Sturges film, Joel McCrea plays a movie director who makes silly trifles like “Ants in Your Plants of 1939”. But he wants to make a serious film about people struggling, “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou”. Not knowing anything about the downtrodden he has the studio
costume department outfit him like a hobo and he takes off, entourage not far behind. To cut to the chase, so to speak, and through a series of misadventures he finds himself on a real chain gang. And there, watching the prisoners laugh at a Mickey Mouse cartoon he realizes that people just want to laugh and be entertained. And I think that’s what we want to do, entertain. It can be serious entertainment or light entertainment. But ultimately that is the bottom line – we are entertainers.


And how do I get over those doubts about continuing, I wake up the next day, sit at the typewriter (in the “early” days) and type. And if it really is in your blood you just get over it. Just like you do after you break up with the “love of your life.” Sure, h/she’s the one that got away. And you still think about her on occasion. But it’s yesterday. Today is working on that new chapter or character or funny bit or whatever. You just do it.

All of this because ultimately, as Camus said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

Doomed and happy to be so.

by Catriona

"Was there ever a time before you were published when you thought of calling it quits?"

Clare's answer yesterday was spot-on. Writing the first book, pre-agent, pre-deal, pre-anyone actually believing you've got a prayer isn't quitting time. It's the good old days. No deadline, no publicity, no helpful frenemies forwarding bad reviews. Before a writer is published everything in bathed in a golden glow.

Is it pessimistic to think of The Future as the end of hope and every achievement as another door slammed shut?  Possibly. Accurate, though. On a yearly scale, each book is perfect before you write it and then you make it worse and worse until it's finished and the only reason you carry on is to be done with it and get to the next perfect book-to-be. On a career-sized scale, each milestone takes you further away from the fork where you might have chosen the path that swerved the headache du jour.

How I wish I was completely kidding. (How I hope that at least one person reading this is going to know what I mean. (How I fear that some friends might stage an intervention.))

But I sort of mean it. Not for nothing is my favourite bit from Radio Days that bit when Julie Kavner says to little Seth Green: "Our lives are ruined already. You have a chance to grow up and be someone."


By the way, if anyone wants to start an argument about whether the argument about whether the Atlantic or the Pacific is a better ocean is a better bit, go for it.

Anyway, if it's so terrible to combine writing book X with dodging reviews of book Y, promoting book Z, and not counting how little time there is left in the year to write book What Comes After Z, perhaps the question should be: "Was there ever a time after you were published that you thought of calling it quits?"

And in this case the answer is  . . . still no. It took me such a long time to work out that writing was for me and the other jobs I did were so unspeakable (except the one where I worked in a local history library, which was really just research for writing) I've never doubted for a minute that I'm doing the work I was meant to do.

Do I wish I'd worked it out a bit quicker? Nah. I think the only way to get to wherever you are is the way you came, on this wrong path, starting at the fork of regret. That's a sort of sunny side, right?

In the Mood

Do you do anything to get in the mood to write? Do you need anything special beside you?

by Paul D. Marks

Well, if I was Hemingway, I’d drink heavily.

If I was William S. Burroughs, I’d shoot up.

If I was J.K. Rowling, I’d run to the nearest café for a caffeine fix and a dose of writing.

But since I’m me, I don’t do any of those things.

I don’t have any set routines that I go through before writing each day, but I do tend to goof off, uh, procrastinate, on the internet or Facebook. No, make that I do research on the internet.

And research is always fun.  It helps get me in the mood and I can pretend I’m working.

 Sometimes I’ll walk the dog. Or weed, not do weed, but weed the yard. Don’t ask me how that helps get me in the mood.  But it has to be done. Besides, killing weeds gets me in the mood to kill the badguys in my stories.

In the good old days, I might skydive or SCUBA dive.  Anything with ‘dive’ in its name including the Maldives – though I know it’s pronounced Maldeevz. Or take a trip to Paris, Perris, California, or Parris Island, but not that one with the Eiffel Tower. I just can’t swim that far. (Insert SCUBA photo here. Amy wanted me to put a diving pic here.  Unfortunately, those are buried away in one of many boxes somewhere – unlabeled, of course.  And shoved in corners everywhere.  But someday they’ll be gotten out and scanned.  Unless Amy wants to spend four months going through them right now J.  And if you saw our garage and closets you’d know that four months is underestimating.)  So, this is as close as I could come for now:

And depending on what I’m working on, I might listen to music.  That’s probably the most serious answer here and what I really do more than anything. The music often has the same tone and mood as the story. So if I’m working on a dark story I might listen to the Doors or Leonard Cohen. If I’m working on something set around the time of World War II, in the 30s and 40s, I’ll listen to swing music. Sometimes I just listen to baroque, my sort of all-purpose go-to music—which seems to fit any mood, at least for me.  So here’s something to get you in the mood.  I could have gone with the Andrews Sisters, but couldn’t find a live version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaceJDGRHQ

And do I need anything else beside me, besides of course computer, phones, pictures of wife, pictures of Beatles, pictures of Dylan, Stones, Doors and Siouxsie Sioux and lobby cards from various movies? A can of cherry Pepsi. Gat. Cat. Dog. And pic of Dennis Hopper flipping the bird from Easy Rider. No, that about covers it.

Now that I think about it though, who is Hopper flipping the bird to?—I’m the only one here.

*          *          *

And now for a little BSP: My contributor’s copies of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s November issue just arrived. My story “Howling at the Moon” appears in the Black Mask section. This is my first story in Ellery Queen, so I’m pretty amped about it.  Also happy to be in the Black Mask section, carrying on the tradition of other Black Mask writers such Chandler and Hammett, though I am no way putting myself in the same category as them.  Also glad to be in the same issue as fellow 7 Criminal Minds blogger Art Taylor, and Facebook friend Bill Crider’s column.  Will post again when the issue actually hits newsstands.

  

One, Two, Three...Go!

Do you do anything to get in the mood to write? Do you need anything special beside you?

(from Susan)

Other than a tall drink? Yes:

1.     Have written the day before.

2.     Have read what I wrote the day before.

3.     Resist the urge to trash what I wrote. Light edits only.

4.     Clear enough junk away from the computer desk so I don’t get distracted or depressed by expired coupon for free pizza, a postcard from Hawaii, the “To Do” list of household chores, and that rave review of someone else’s book.

5.     Place mug of cold coffee or glass of lukewarm fizzy water next to computer and promise myself not to spill it on the keyboard.

6.     Turn off Internet connection and email notification or forget about getting anything done.

7.     Read Richard Diebenkorn’s note to himself about beginning a new painting (which I keep on a board in front of me):

 “Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.”

• 
  

Let It Bleed

Did you ever have any doubts about your decision to be a writer?

by Paul D. Marks

Every minute of every effing day!

The end.

Well, the end of the first part.

The Other Part:

I think every writer—at least this version of EveryWriter—has doubts about our decision to be a writer. It’s like those Facebook memes that go around: This is what my friends think I do as a writer. But what we really do is toil in the salt mines of our minds. I’m not saying it’s the down and dirty work of toiling in real salt mines. But it’s also not as easy as some people think.

Like Red Smith said, “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

That’s all there is to it.

My writing life has been all over the map. From op-ed pieces to radio scripts and script doctoring to short stories and novels. And though it’s always been a roller coaster, I was always glad to have the opportunity to express myself and be creative. Despite the idiots one sometimes has to deal with.

I like the writing—not so much the biz side of it.

So let’s talk about the...

...Doubts and Reasons to Quit:

1) No one really understands what you do. I made my living rewriting other people’s scripts and optioning my own spec scripts to various people. One of the hardest parts of my film work was that, as a rewriter, there was no screen credit, so my dad could never figure out what I did for a living—and certainly didn’t understand how it all worked. Couldn’t take his friends to Westwood and show them my name on the silver screen. That was frustrating, but not as frustrating as dealing with some of the personalities. But did that (no screen credit) make me doubt my decision to be a writer? Hell, no. I just started writing short stories and novels. You get credit there...most of the time.

2) No one respects what you do: I once had a producer threaten to send his friends in the Mossad to get me when we argued about a script I was working on for him. I was warned about him before I started, but I thought I’m a brave soul, I’ll give it a shot. He’d hired me to write a script based on his idea—then hated everything I came up with, even though it was exactly what we’d talked about, but it wasn’t him, his writing, in every nuance. Hell, he should have written the damn thing himself... But he couldn’t and wouldn’t. No he’d rather just threaten me. So, of course, I sat up every night with night vision goggles, a CAR-15 (it was a while ago), flame thrower, a couple-a cruise missiles (Tom Cruise Missiles ‘cause he could protect the hell out of me) and an AWACs circling overhead, and lay in wait for them to swarm the hill behind my house. A .50 cal would have been better than the CAR-15, but since they never came I guess it didn’t matter. Maybe they’re still on their way and I seem to have misplaced the CAR-15. But did the Mossad threat make me doubt my decision to be a writer, hell no. I just bought myself a new Kevlar vest.  : )

3) Everyone thinks they can do it better: And then there was the Golden Turkey Leg. I had a spec script that dealt peripherally with Voodoo, but it wasn’t “supernatural”. Another producer wanted to make it more mystical, scary, more Voodoo-ey, sci-fi, sleazy, seedy, make-Ed-Wood-look-like-a-genius-bad, and to that end he wanted me to add something about some golden object that was magical and mystical and for want of a better word I called it “the golden turkey leg”—well, not to his face. He also wanted me to bring a character back from the dead—now that’s Voodoo...ey—turning a pretty good thriller into a grade Z schlockfest horror story that would even make Roger Corman at his cheapest cringe. Then, as if it couldn’t get any weirder, he knew the “perfect” guy to do the theme song: Michael Bolton. And when I say he “knew” Michael Bolton I mean he really did; they were buds or something. And no offense to anyone who likes him, but he’s just not my taste. Give me Ian Gillan and Joey Ramone. So maybe I’m glad that that one never got out of development hell. And he wanted Armand Assante (whose name he kept mispronouncing as “Assant,” leaving off the “ay” at the end) to play the lead. He would have been great for the part when he was younger, but I had nightmares about the producer approaching him, mispronouncing his name, and the actor being so offended he would refuse the part. Then to top it all off, my wife and I were at a toy show in Pasadena (one of my hobbies is collecting old toys) and we ran into said producer, who’s there with his wife and kid, maybe around six or seven years old, selling old dolls. So, he asks me to look after said kid, who at least was a sweet said kid, so he and his wife can walk around the toy show, unfettered. The worst part is he wasn’t even selling the kind of toys I was looking for. So in addition to working on screenplays, I’m also a great babysitter, I just don’t cook or do windows, except Microsoft Windows. And another one bites the dust, another one that never made it to the silver screen, but at least I got paid. But I plan to turn them all into novels someday. They’re already “outlined,” as the screenplays are sort of like outlines. Were this producer’s ideas better? Well, if you like Golden Turkey Legs, I suppose so. But did that make me doubt my decision to be a writer? Hell no, I’m a glutton for punishment.


Reasons to Stay:

Because you can’t do anything else, literally, despite the BS. So you just open that vein and let it bleed.

Or as the Clash said, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”—“If I go there will be trouble, And if I stay it will be double.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnCVBertf0

They call her the switherer.

Nope. Not once, not ever, have I doubted or regretted my decision to become a writer.

And that's from someone who makes Hamlet look impulsive, someone who could second-guess for her planet; someone who could squarely be called the Anti-Piaf (theme song goes like this: "Ouiiiii, le tout de le touuuuut! Ouiiiii, je regret-uh le touuuuut . . .)

I have trouble making decisions.

But since I resigned from my job, sharpened my pencil, and wrote "book 1, chapter 1, page 1" in January 2001, I've never wanted to do anything else.

In all my wildest daydreams, I'm still a writer - in a tropical paradise, or with a castle that a long-lost relative bequeathed to me, or of an Oscar-winning movie script that I got to co-adapt, along with Emma Thompson, from my own novel - but always a writer.

Every other decision is hard to make and harder to stick with.  I find it impossible to decide where to eat out, which film to see or what holiday cottage or hotel room to book.

The household of which I'm a member has put in place some rules for deciding.

1. How two people decide where to eat.
Person A* suggests five places.
Person B narrows it down to three.
Person A says the name of one out of the three.
Persons A and B eat there.
*A and B are alternating roles.
(Or they live in a Scottish town where "five places to eat" is just crazy talk)

2. How two people decide what film to see.
Persons A and B meet for coffee in walking distance of all three cinemas in town.
When the coffee is drunk, Person A or B looks to see which film at least one of them wants to see starts next.
Persons A and B go to see that film. And if they've just missed one, they meet a wee bit earlier the next day.
(Or they live in a Scottish town where "three cinemas in walking distance" . . .)

3. How two people choose a holiday cottage/hotel.
Person A picks three desirable features. e.g. quiet, walk to beach, warm sea.
Person B picks three desirable features. e.g. pretty, good seafood, within budget.
Person A looks on internet until a cottage/hotel with all six features is located.
Person A books that cottage/hotel.
Person A* stops looking on internet.
*Person A is me.