Hemingway slept here

From Hemingway’s home in Key West to the train platform at King’s Cross Station, readers love to visit the haunts of their favorite writers and the key scenes from their favorite books. What literary pilgrimage have you made (or would like to make)?

by Dietrich

Great books create vivid scenes in our minds and can transport readers to different places and times. And that can be truly inspiring.

A literary pilgrimage can mean different things for each of us. A trip to some far off destination could be a jumping off point for a new novel of our own. Maybe it’s to see some historic sight or location from a favorite novel, or curiosity might draw us to visit a famous author’s home. Jane Austen’s readers may flock to Bath, England. Fans of Anne of Green Gables could feel a pull to Avonlea in Prince Edward Island, seeing the sites that Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote about.

Photo: A. Kalteis

Standing out front of Jack London’s Dawson City cabin (pictured) , relocated to his hometown at Jack London Square on Oakland’s waterfront, I pictured his adventures during the times of the Klondike gold rush, and imagined how he wrote The Call of the Wild and White Fang in that tiny space. 

I’ve been to Kerouac’s Bixby Canyon where he wrote Big Sur. I’ve visited Hemingway’s house in Key West where he wrote A Farewell to Arms, and I’ve stayed at the Clarion Hotel in Toronto where he resided when he worked as a journalist for The Toronto Star. 

Steinbeck’s Cannery Row in Monterey is a magical place, and the area is one of my favorite places to visit. I’ve seen the late great Ferlinghetti while browsing the aisles of City Lights in San Francisco, and I’ve sipped a cup at Caffee Trieste, where Mario Puzo penned The Godfather. And I’ve been to Bukowski’s old stomping grounds where he lived in Hollywood. I’ve driven along Casey Key in the Sarasota area of Florida where Stephen King likes to spend the winter months.

All of these places are cool to see, and as I said, an author can surely draw inspiration from experiences like that.

What literary pilgrimage would I like to make? It would be awesome to drive the preserved sections of Route 66, originally opened in 1926, the Mother Road as Steinbeck called it in The Grapes of Wrath. Although decommissioned as a highway in 1986, what’s left of the route is now labelled as a scenic byway with ‘Historic Route 66’ signs. Many roadside memories and signposts remain to remind travelers of the bygone times when the route was developed for long-distance car travel. It winds from Chicago to L.A. …

Pilgrim, I'm Not

 

From Terry: Here’s our weekly question: From Hemingway’s home in Key West to the train platform at King’s Cross Station, readers love to visit the haunts of their favorite writers and the key scenes from their favorite books. What literary pilgrimage have you made (or would like to make)? 

 I have been to Hemingway’s home in Key West—although I was never a Hemingway fan. I just happened to be in Key West and thought, why not? There were lots of cats. That’s what I liked best. 

 I’ve always thought visiting scenes from favorite books, or homes of favorite authors was a bit hagiographic. It’s interesting to see the historical settings for writers from the eighteenth and nineteenth century—the writers’ cramped quarters, their tiny writing desks, their painfully slim writing implements. But as a pilgrimage, it leaves me flat. That said, I’d love to get a peek at William Shakespeare’s home and writing arena. But to do that, I either have to imagine it, or find a handy time machine. 

 But there are writers’ landscapes I’d love to explore: the landscape of their imaginations. Many writers tell us how they imagined their books. For example, we have William Faulkner telling us how he developed The Sound and the Fury from one, simple image of a little girl climbing a tree with muddy drawers. 

Delve into the biographies of a lot of writers, and you can parse out how their stories emerged. And it’s often based on their geography—William Faulkner was steeped in Mississippi, as was Eudora Welty. Leo Tolstoy IS Russia. William Styron, Virginia. What about mystery writers? Michael Connolly is wholly of southern California, Catriona McPherson, Scotland, but also in a hotel in the U.S. Susan Bickford is entwined with upstate New York, Sarah Paretsky, Chicago, Laura Lippman, Baltimore. William Kent Krueger, Minnesota. 

 And Deborah Crombie, England. What? No, that’s wrong. Deb is from Texas. 

Authors can write about places they love, as well as places they are from. Cara Black, Paris; Susan Shea, French villages. Jeffrey Siger may be from Pennsylvania, but he writes about Greece. 

 There are other authors, though, whose minds I’d like to get inside, although only for a visit. Authors who seem to base their books on geography of the mind. I’d love to know how David Mitchell first envisioned Cloud Atlas, with its extraordinary leaps in time and characterizations. I’d be curious to peek into the mind of Henry James. Was his mind as orderly as his meticulously-crafted novels? And in mysteries, I’d like to know where Jo Perry came up with a dead detective with her sidekick dog. 

 As for me, it’s not hard to figure out that I grew up in Texas in a landscape that inspires me to this day—politics aside!

On Location

From Hemingway’s home in Key West to the train platform at King’s Cross Station, readers love to visit the haunts of their favorite writers and the key scenes from their favorite books. What literary pilgrimage have you made (or would like to make)?

Brenda here.

Great question this week! 

My husband Ted and I made a trip to France at the end of April this year and stayed for most of the month of May. In planning the trip, I happened upon the site describing the bar where Hemmingway famously drank in Paris. The bar is touted as the "genteel haunt of the American writer, with leather armchairs, sepia photos & a honed cocktail menu". Our itinerary was adjusted to include a drink there, "no matter the cost".

Our first full day in Paris, we set off on foot as we always do in a new locale. We toured the outside of the Louvre and walked along the Seine and the Champs-Élysées before deviating off to the shopping and restaurant district. It seemed every clothing store had a guard stationed in the doorway, and no wonder. Even a clutch purse in the window was 5000 Euro. At last we reached Bar Hemmingway in the Ritz Hotel at 15 Pl. Vendôme in the midst of all these très expensive shops, but alas, it didn't open until 5:00 p.m., and we were not about to hang around for four hours, being given the evil eye by all those security people. Instead, we found an outdoor café a few blocks over and sat with a glass of wine to people watch.

In the meantime, Ted also began tracking the scenes from the Bourne movies and had his own list of places we should visit. Top amongst them was standing in the middle of Pont Neuf where one of the scenes from the Bourne Identity was filmed. Here is Ted, happy a a clam, standing in the exact spot!

Before our trip, we'd also spent some fluffy downtime watching the show 'Emily in Paris' (since we were going there), and Ted researched venues but couldn't find any real set locations to visit. His buddies (Ted is a sheet metal worker in the roofing and construction industry) still can't believe he watched two seasons :-)

I've since heard that Hemmingway drank in lots of different cities around the planet, so there's still a chance we'll make it inside one of his bars. Until then, we'll have to content ourselves with practising in our own local establishments.

I'm sure some of my other literary heroes made it to the Eiffel Tower -- I know lots of movies have filmed scenes there. Seems like the perfect place to end this post.

Ted & Brenda in Paris

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

Twitter: brendaAchapman

Facebook & Instagram: BrendaChapmanAuthor

STRUCTURAL NIGHTMARE: the dense plot from the denser mind of a writer on his latest novel By Eric Beetner

Why did I do it to myself?

I am an outliner, but this isn’t about the eternal battle lines between plotters and pantsers. For my latest novel, There and Back, the 36th novel I’ve completed (some co-written, some very short, some under pen names, some so bad they’ll never see the light of day) I came up with a story that I liked quite a lot and I wanted to follow it where it led.

The trouble became that it led to those two words all writers should dread: dual timelines.

In the novel a group of young tech execs get sent on a wilderness retreat for “team building”. When tragedy befalls the guides and the urbanites are left stranded in the woods, not everyone makes it out alive.

But then half the novel is about their adjustment back to civilization and how difficult it is for some to make that adjustment. And there are secrets about what really happened out there.

The best move was to slowly dole out the events in the woods while seeing their progress back at home. It meant a complicated mix of reveals, concealments, tragic deaths, cliff-hangers and call backs. My outline soon looked like the murder board on an FBI serial killer investigation. It no longer made sense, even to me. And I was the one making it all up! I was supposed to be in control, but I realized I wasn’t.

I had to step back and dig deep into my screenwriting background. I went from my 3-page handwritten scrawl of a bullet-point outline and transferred everything to 3X5 notecards. One for each scene. Color-coded for events that happened ‘out there’ and ‘back home’. With the cards laid out I could literally stand back and see the whole book in front of me.

More than once I had to revise when I discovered, “No, that can’t happen yet or it will spoil the reveal over here.” Or “Damn it! He’s already dead!”

The constant back and forth was meant to keep the reader on their toes in two places and times at once. Just when you think you know who did what out there, I needed to switch it up to keep the surprises coming. When you think you know a character, I wanted to show a different side of them in the pressure cooker of fighting for their lives, or the tough re-adjustment to life back at home after such an ordeal.

One of my pet peeves in a mystery novel that relies on withholding certain information, is when the heavy hand of the author is on the page. The convenient “I can’t remember”. The frustratingly placed chapter break. The realization 300 pages in that if someone had just said that in chapter 1 we could have avoided all this nonsense. I’ve read several huge best sellers and felt cheated by the author’s manipulation of the plot to inject what, to me, become a false suspense. I wanted to avoid doing it myself. It meant a constant policing of how and where I revealed information about what happened “out there”. That meant shifting those damn notecards around a lot. I had to course correct along the way when things got too convenient or what I thought would be too frustrating for the reader. You need to feed them at least an appetizer before the meal. You can’t starve them for story under the guise of suspense. Suspense only sustains for so long before the air leaks out of the balloon. 

I ended up with over 50 cards pinned to my wall. I wrote and re-wrote cards, swapped them out, moved them in the timeline. But without this painstaking process, I wouldn’t have been able to keep this dual timeline straight. I’d never attempted a structure so complex, and even though it worked and I’m very happy with the results, I’m not sure I ever would again. I suppose I proved to myself that I could do it, but let’s just say that I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.

What about you? Have you ever bitten off a story idea that got away from you? Have you ever needlessly complicated your own life with a story structure you needed an PhD to decipher? Or is it just me?

Without the aid of a finishing school, by Catriona

Have you met your literary hero at a conference, or other event? Or have you maintained your author crush from afar?

My meeting with my literary hero was a calamity of uncool that I can laugh about now, years later.

I had always known of Mary Higgins Clark, of course - I worked in a public library and she was one of those prolific authors you navigate by when shelving - but it was when Harlan Coben said he learned plotting from reading her books that I started devouring her considerable oeuvre. 

I fell in love, as if I'd tripped at the top of a staricase, carelessly place at the edge of a cliff. Splat.

Everything about her fictional world entranced me: the chessmaster moving around of her chracters; the effortless-seeming shuffling of POVs; the shameless nods to beloved bits of real New York; the love letter to Catholicism that was always there somewhere . . . 

I was equally beguiled by her real life too: the determination it took to get started - rising at five to write before work, as a young widow with five children; the polish of her author photos in whch she never wore fewer than five pieces of serious jewellery; the loyalty (I thought) of staying in her hard-scrabble, blue-collar New Jersey town - I didn't know what Saddle River was like.

I adored her.

Fast forward to Bouchercon in Cleveland, 2012. I was nominated for a Macavity award for best historical novel for THE PROPER TREATMENT OF BLOODSTAINS, to be announced at the opening ceremony in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. Heady stuff, right? I took a look at the other names on the shortlist, though, and concluded that I, who had never won anything, certainly wasn't going to win this and so didn't have to worry about what I might say.

Guess what happened? Correct. (Which is why I still say to every nominee "Never assume. Even if the others on the shortlist are Shakespeare, Jane Austen and God - write your editor's name on the back of your hand.")

I had no names on the back of my hand and I was so flabbergasted I thanked one person - Janet Rudolph - who handed me the award. Her I thanked for having such pretty hair.

Afterwards, my friends assured me that the acoustics were terrible and no one had heard what I said. It didn't seem likely to me that the acoustics in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of fame were terrible, but I clutched the comfort anyway.

The next morning, I was headed for the desk in the hotel lobby to ask for a replacement key because I had left mine in my room, and I noticed that I was neck and neck with none other than Mary Higgins Clark and her "spouse extraordinaire", John Conheeney. I didn't want to push in front of her so I swerved to one side and slightly backwards. Subtly, I hoped. Actually, however, I got my feet tangled in the easel displaying a huge poster advertising the librarians' tea with . . . guess who . . . Mary Higgins Clark. I managed not to fall over but the easel and poster came clattering down.

MHC turned to see what the noise was, clocked me, and said, "Contratulations, honey!" Then she paused and, with perfect comic timing, added, "Boy you were surprised, huh?"

I've loved her even more ever since, for turning a mortifying moment into a happy memory. 

M is for Memories... by Cathy Ace

Have you met your literary hero/Author at a conference, or at an event? What was that experience like, or have you maintained your Author crush from afar?

When I began this crazy writing life, I decided to throw myself into the business and attended as many conventions as I could. This means I have met many writers whose work I had admired for years, and have also met many writers whose work I had never encountered until after I’d met them, but – when I read what they wrote – I adored their writing too.

The difficult thing is to name all those I’ve met whose work I love…because I’m bound to leave someone out, and then both I and they would be mortified. So I’m going to play a bit safe and mention an author whose work was known to me for decades before I got to meet her, and who has now – sadly, and too soon – left us.

Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone books were like catnip to a girl who grew up reading Nancy Drew: the PI’s pluckiness matched Nancy’s, but it was overlaid with a professionalism much more suited to the 1980s, when power shoulder pads, big hair, and breaking glass ceilings was what all we young career women were about.

LOOK at those shoulder pads!!!

I was working in London through the 1980s and 1990s, setting up my own business in 1989 and selling it ten years later when I’d grown it to be the biggest of its type in Europe. I lived in the world of Filofaxes, breakfast at the Savoy, lunch at Claridges, tea at the Ritz, and dinner at the Criterion. The National Theatre would be fitted in on a quiet Wednesday evening, and the National Gallery would be somewhere I popped into to gaze at a few of my favourite works between meetings. I drank enough G&Ts to fill the Thames, drove a natty white Mazda MX5, and belonged to private clubs where the paparazzi lurked, hoping to find someone with a title teetering out in the wee hours, looking more than a little disheveled. And through all this it was Ms. Grafton’s books that were my go-to read on the endless flights, and layovers in airports.

OMG...my "ludicrously expensive handbag" phase
(they're all plant pot holders now, FYI)

Kinsey Millhone taught me to use the loo when I could (because who knew when you might get another chance), to eat when I could (ditto), to always have access to a Little Black Dress (though, in my case, it was a bouncy black pant suit) that could take one anywhere. She taught me that planning is necessary, but the ability to act when faced with the unexpected was critical. She taught me that a woman can be a true professional, but also needs to be able to accept help when she needs it, and to lend a hand when possible.

I had learned such lessons throughout my life – yes, it’s the sort of parenting I had – but having “lessons” backed up by a character I enjoyed spending time with meant a great deal.

In November 2013 I attended Bouchercon in Albany. It was the first convention I ever attended. Sue Grafton was the guest of honor, and I stood in line to meet her. Actually, I joined the line late…and ended up being the last person she met (I had to hold a sign telling others I was the end of the line!). A couple of months earlier, Margaret Canon at The Globe and Mail had reviewed my second Cait Morgan Mystery, The Corpse with the Golden Nose, as “…a murder with touches of Christie or Marsh but with a bouquet of Kinsey Millhone.” At the time, I’d been floating on a cloud…and, with a heart thumping, I blurted out the quote to Ms. Grafton herself when I met her. 

Noting I was her last signing of the day, she relaxed onto a high stool – she’d been standing for hours – and smiled. She asked me about my writing, my characters, what I hoped for…and was so gracious in her encouragement. “You’re just beginning to understand how much work it all is…” she began, then talked to me as though I were a human being worthy of her attention for some time…with me probably grinning like an idiot every moment.

2013...fangirling!

I took her wisdom with me, and continued to read her work with delight and awe. Her death was a blow to many, not least her readers, but moreso to her family, of course. As Toastmaster at Left Coast crime in Vancouver in 2019 I had been due to be honoring Sue Grafton as the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award – instead, I had the sad, but great, honor of working with her daughter, Jamie Clarke, to prepare and host a memorial event which took place during the convention, in Jamie’s presence.

The honor I'd never have chosen...preparing Sue Grafton's
memorial, with her daughter

I wish I’d had another chance to talk to Sue Grafton about how my writing had changed, and how my writing had changed me, in the intervening six years, but – as it was – having a chance to share my love of her work with others, was the best I could do.

If you'd like to find out more about my work, you can do so at my website: https://www.cathyace.com/

  

A Literary Crush by Gabriel Valjan

Have you met your literary hero/Author at a conference, or at an event? What was that experience like, or have you maintained your Author crush from afar?

 

 

The month is July and the year, 2004. The place is the now extinct Borders in downtown Boston. Little Scarlet, the ninth Easy Rawlins novel, is out. I was nobody, and less than a foot away from me stood Walter Mosley, waiting while the staff set up the table for him to sign books. He seemed tired, perhaps preoccupied, possibly nervous, but that can’t be, I tell myself. The man has been riding the waves of success. His Devil in the Blue Dress had been made into a movie, and then President Bill Clinton had praised the book and been seen carrying it as he walked down the steps of Air Force Once.  Walter Ellis Mosley had arrived, stingy fedora and all, and I was anxious to read his latest book.

            While we waited, I opened the book. I read the dedication page and said, “Oh, shit.”

Not words he might’ve expected, so he said, “What’s wrong?”

I replied, “You dedicated the book to Gregory Hines.”

            Knowing what I know about publishing and production schedules, I know that Walter had added that dedication as the book was going to press. Mr. Hines had died in August 2003. I couldn’t help but think of the last time I’d watched Gregory dance with his hero, Sammy Davis, Jr. It was an impromptu performance that night in 1990. Davis was visibly ill and frail, and yet he had set aside his pain and let his feet remind us what music can do for the spirit. They danced. Sammy was gone two months later. Then Gregory was gone.

            I said as much to Walter. His response? ‘Gregory was like a brother to me.’

            I was not a writer then. My first publication, a short story, was far in the distance; my first novel, even farther. While I admired Walter’s Easy Rawlins and dangerous sidekick Mouse, I’m grateful to Walter for bringing me back to reading. I’d been in the trenches, decades into reading, and I’d come to experience burnout. Few stories held my interest, and not because I was impossible to please. Literary fiction, in my view, was a lot of nothing happening and everything described in excruciating detail. MFA programs were in vogue, and almost everything from MFA grads were novels about an MFA student writing his first novel, trying to get it published against a backdrop of artistic angst, petty and jealous colleagues, and frustrated academics.

            There’s also the reader’s archaeological memory. Read enough, and you begin to see—to borrow a phrase from Reed Farrel Coleman—the ‘man behind the curtain.’ I can almost predict plot twists and turns of the screw, down to the page number. Each book has its own rhythm and structure, and Walter was writing jazz.         

And he reinvented the PI. Not only was his Easy Rawlins black in racist post-war America, but he was also westward bound as a cowboy, on his way to Los Angeles, deep into Marlowe territory.

I’d come to respect Walter for another reason. I would meet him again, this time as a writer myself. At a recent New England Crimebake, he was a Guest of Honor and talked about writing and his own journey. Walter is a modern incarnation of Cassandra from Greek mythology. He can’t help but speak the truth. He spoke candidly about the publishing industry, issues around visibility for authors of color, but he emphasized that the industry has always been about money and, perversely, fiscally conservative. On the matter of visibility, he would co-found Crime Writers of Color with Kellye Garrett and Gigi Pandian. When he wrote the stories he wanted out in the world, publishers declined because all they wanted was another Easy Rawlins. Easy was easy money.

I admire Walter’s hustle to get his work into the hands of readers. At Crimebake, he described how he’d walked out of one publisher’s office, crossed the street into another editor’s office, sly about promising another Easy if they’d take what he was offering. It was slick and gutsy but spoke volumes about Walter’s integrity. Where most authors coulda woulda shoulda flipped the switch to the printing press and written the wall of Easy Rawlins mysteries for financial security, he’d chosen to write something else altogether.

Respect.

The Power of Storytellers

Q: Have you met your literary hero/Author at a conference, or at an event? What was that experience like, or have you maintained your Author crush from afar? 

 

It's my pleasure to introduce my guest blogger today, debut crime fiction author DM Rowell. Donna,  like her protagonist, Mud, comes from a long line of Kiowa storytellers. After a thirty-two-year career spinning stories for Silicon Valley start-ups and corporations, with a few escapes creating award-winning independent documentaries, Rowell started a new chapter, writing mysteries that also share information about her Plains Indian tribe, the Kiowas. She enjoys life in California with her partner of thirty-eight years, their son, and a feral gray cat. 

NEVER NAME THE DEAD is published this week.

-from D. M. Rowell, Koyh Mi O Boy Dah

 

I’m going to take liberty with the question and stretch it to include oral literary heroes. My tribe the Kiowa, like most Plains Indian tribes relied on oral traditions, with storytelling being a prized art form. Kiowa legends and historical stories have been passed from one generation to the next, like an oral memory chain. Grandparents were responsible for sharing traditions with grandchildren ensuring the customs and history of our tribe continued generation after generation. 

My earliest memories are of my grandfather, his sisters and his brother sharing Kiowa stories and songs. Grandpa, the late C. E. Rowell excelled at bringing stories to life. He was an artist, master storyteller, and a man of distinction within the Kiowa tribe; a Tribal Elder recognized as the Tribe Historian and Reader of the Dohason and Onko pictoglyph calendars called Sai-Guat, or Winter Marks. The calendars documented Kiowa history from 1830 to 1892 on hides using colorful pictoglyphs of significant events.

As a child in the early 1900s, Grandpa was very close to the then Tribe Historian and last Calendar Maker, Onco. Grandpa’s face would light up when he told me that his uncle Onco gave him his first bow and arrow, and a passion for Kiowa history. Onco taught him the events recorded on the Dohason and Onco calendars, but it was Grandpa that turned the historical chronicles into riveting stories that captured my heart and imagination.

At home, Grandpa’s walls were lined with his flat-style scenes of Kiowa history. He and I would sit surrounded by his paintings with one of the Calendars rolled out in front of us. Grandpa would point to a pictoglyph, nod toward a painting and take me into our past. Grandpa’s stories illustrated with his simple, yet powerful art brought the people, time and events vividly to life in my mind’s eye. 

No storyteller has immersed me so completely into a story as Grandpa did. He inspired me to continue our traditions, to become a storyteller. 

The March of Progress!

In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher pecked out mysteries on an old Royal typewriter in 1984 and ended up tapping them out on her laptop by 1996. What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career?

by Abir

 

Right, here’s the problem.

 

I came to writing late. I wasn’t even writing a decade ago, I was too busy being an accountant. That means that I missed the era of typewriters and carbon paper and photocopiers and correction fluid that my fellow bloggers were forced to contend with. Also, I’m only twenty-nine years old (yes I am) so basically anything before the advent of Taylor Swift is strange, antiquated and exotic to me.

 

So how do I answer this question when basically everything I use is everything I have ever used? I suppose I’ll have to do what I normally do and just make stuff up.

 

Let’s get started then.

 

1.     The invention of the quill pen. – When I first started writing, we basically had to score our words into stone tablets like the Romans or the Sumerians. It was a horrible business. You made one mistake and your whole tablet was ruined and it was off down the quarry with you for some more stationery. (Little known fact – that’s where the word ‘stationery’ comes from. If you tried lugging more than three tablets home from the quarry, you inevitably found yourself unable to move). 

 

But then, joy of joys, god, or maybe mother nature, invented the birds, and since then, man has been fascinated by the creatures, working out just how they fly and what is the best way to eat them. A by-product of the latter was a surfeit of feathers. Indeed, there are stories recorded in the holy texts of many religions of the world drowning under a tsunami of surplus feathers (the word ‘drown’ is simply a corruption of the old English word ‘down’ meaning feathers). Eventually some bright spark suggested using the feathers for bedding and other practical purposes, one of which was writing, and so the quill pen was invented. The first quills were dipped in blood or mud or sometimes tar but in the following millennium, mankind successfully tamed and domesticated the squid and since then, ink has been the writing substance of choice.

2.     Paper – The problem with papyrus is that it’s extremely hard to find outside of Egypt and big metropolitan museums, so if you were a writer living in a non-urban, non-Egyptian milieu, then you were basically buggered. So it was a big relief when someone cut a tree into very thin slices (originally in a misguided attempt at cuisine) and then proceeded to invent paper. Not everyone has quite got the hang of paper, though. Whilst most of the world quite sensibly cuts its paper into ‘normal’ sizes: A1, A2, A4 etc, ‘Americans’ and their colder cousins in Canada, insist on using paper cut in ridiculous dimensions called ‘US letter’ and other abominations. As ever, the rest of the world humours them, just like we do with their insistence on calling American football (which is basically rugby for wimps) ‘football’ and their insistence that a national baseball competition be referred to as the ‘World’ series, but I digress.

3.     The Printing Press – This was invented by a man called Steve Gutenberg and basically paved the way for genocide in the name of religion. However, discounting the millions of subsequent deaths, the invention has proved hugely beneficial to the library industry (or Big Library as it is called in corporate circles).

4.     The Typewriter – I remember getting my first typewriter like it was yesterday. In fact it was January 2020, when my wife bought me it as a birthday present thinking that I, as a pretend writer, should own one. The fact that it only feels like yesterday illustrates just how important an invention it was.

This, kids, is a typewriter

5.     The Word Processor – this device was a waste of time. It was basically a computer that you couldn’t play games on, and in that sense, typifies much of the nonsense that went on in the eighties.

6.     Word Perfect – The first proper writing software probably. It’s the first one I can remember anyway. Problem was, it wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t matter. Bill Gates was about to destroy them with a product simply titled ‘Word’.

7.     The Internet – Brilliant for researching everything from serial killers to explosives, at least until the FBI break down your door. Before the advent of the internet, the only ways to make the serial killers in your novels authentic was to spend time with one (generally a short-lived escapade) or, like Agatha Christie, become one yourself.

8.     The Cloud – Now this one really is a game changer. Before the cloud, you had to back up your work onto floppy disks or hard drives, a process that could often take up to thirty seconds and so was completely unsuitable for writers with their err busy schedules. As a result, many tears were shed and teeth gnashed and much sackcloth and ashes were worn when writers lost their work because they forgot to back up, or because their computers fell into the sea or were confiscated by the FBI because you used it to look up the Anarchist’s Cookbook. Well not no more! Now, even if you go to prison, you can rest easy on your concrete cot knowing that your manuscript is safe somewhere in the cloud, even though you, as a brown man googling explosives, are likely heading for a long, extra-judicial stretch at some CIA black-site.

 

Have a great weekend, and happy writing.

 

Abir

The Sharpest Tools from James W. Ziskin

In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher pecked out mysteries on an old Royal typewriter in 1984 and ended up tapping them out on her laptop by 1996. What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career?

Without a doubt, the first major change was the advent of personal computers. I seriously doubt I ever could have become a writer without them. I make too many edits and am a lousy typist. Without a computer, I’d never have finished a book-length manuscript. 

Like my Criminal Minds colleagues, I worked on manual typewriters in the olden days. That’s when I learned to type, albeit with only three or four of my ten fingers. It was slow going, though, and hard to correct mistakes. Then I got an “electronic” typewriter that bridged—somewhat—the chasm between analog and digital writing. I think it was a Brother machine, and it was billed as electronic, not electric. There was a built-in correction tape and the thing whirred as it typed, lagging behind my keystrokes. Still, it was an improvement. 

But it was in 1984 that I bought my first computer, a Kaypro II, running on the CP/M operating system—not even DOS. The Kaypro was a huge blue-and-gray aluminum box with two floppy disk ports and no hard drive. It was considered portable because they’d slapped a handle on it. But it weighed twenty-nine pounds. TWENTY-NINE POUNDS. Today I write on an iPad, which weighs one pound. ONE POUND.

Over the years, I’ve bought many desktop computers, then laptops, before finally landing with the iPad. It’s truly portable and I can write anywhere at any time. I love working on it. We all recognize the benefits of spellcheck and grammar checks and word processing apps/programs. Then there’s the Internet, dictionaries, and all manner of sites for our research. You can find just about anything quickly thanks to these advancements.

So, if I were to rank the technologies that have had the greatest impact on my writing, the list would be:

1. Personal computer/iPad

2. Spellcheck/word processing

3. Internet

And…. 4. Read Aloud

The Read Aloud feature in Word has revolutionized the way I work. Other text-to-speech apps undoubtedly provide similar benefits, but I’ve been using Word. I’ve written about it before in this space. It’s the greatest tool for revision since the spellcheck. It finds the smallest errors that my eyes have missed. It beats reading your own manuscript out loud because it never anticipates or tries to predict what comes next, as humans do. While reading, we often insert words, mentally, that aren’t actually there because, from experience, we expect them to be present. But Read Aloud isn’t so clever. It won’t insert anything that isn’t there. And it notices everything. Never skips a word. It merely reads what’s on the page just as you’ve written it.

You can access the Read Aloud feature from the REVIEW menu in Word.

As mentioned above, I’ve caught missing words, repeated words, incorrect grammar, and even missing question marks. I’ve also discovered plot holes and logic problems this way, possibly because all my attention is on the words, not the effort of reading. Reviewing my work in Read Aloud is quick and efficient. It doesn’t tire me out or make my voice hoarse. It allows me to concentrate on the words and the flow of my writing, and I believe my manuscripts are now in better shape than ever before.

But the way, I used Read Aloud to edit this post. I must have made thirty changes as a result.

Take my advice and try it. I bet you’ll love the results.

Analog man in a digital world

In Murder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher pecked out mysteries on an old Royal typewriter in 1984 and ended up tapping them out on her laptop by 1996. What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career?

by Dietrich

Covid shut down many live events for a couple of years, so it’s a good thing online avenues for promotion were available: Zoom, YouTube, SoundCloud, author’s websites, social media, email services, and so on. Technology that wasn’t around not so long ago.

On-demand printing, along with formats like eBooks and audiobooks have also created new opportunities for both traditionally publishers authors, as well as those who want to skip with tradition and self-publish their own books.

Technology allows readers to easily check online for a favorite author’s latest, comments and reviews, and to look up an event where they’ll be appearing.

And there’s plenty more coming: touch boards, interactive app books, and applications like Booke which will let readers ask their iPad or smartphone questions about a print book that they’re engaged with. Nimble by Google is an interactive touch-screen table for readers, schools, and libraries. A print book is placed on the table, and the user can read while looking up fact and photos, translating text, and so on. Kind of the best of both worlds.  

Technology is also changing the way authors and fact-checkers do their research. Does anybody remember micro-fiche, going to the research section of the library, or how about that an entire bookshelf of Brittanica encyclopedias that adorned a couple of shelves in the living room, right next to the RCA with the rabbit ears on top? 

I used to love typing short stories on my clanking, boat-anchor, vintage Underwood, circa 1920s. As cumbersome as it was, it was a treat to clank away on the keys and to hear the gratifying ding of the carriage return. I also had a Selectric, state of the art at the time. While I don’t miss those correcting ribbons and Wite-Out, there was something cool about typing stories on those vintage machine. Okay, they didn’t play music and didn’t have Wi-fi, Bluetooth, or Siri, but let’s not forget greats like Hemingway, Orson Welles and scores of others cranked out some pretty impressive stuff on such old-school machines.

Call me old school, but there are times when I still like to get out a notebook or pad or paper and write in longhand. I’ll scratch out a chapter or two, often when I’m traveling, then I’ll type it into the computer when I get home. There really is something about the organic process that feels right.

No matter how I write those early drafts, the final one ends up on my Mac. Let’s face it, it’s lightning fast, quiet, and makes putting a novel together so much easier. I can research anything with a couple of keystrokes, and it connects me with social media, plays music, and sends emails in seconds. I smile imagining a publisher’s reaction upon receiving several hundred pages written in longhand, or copies of a manuscript typed on some old-school typewriter.

What Have We Here?

 

Terry here, with our week's discussion: What changes in technology had the greatest impact on you in your writing career? 

 Ah, nostalgia! Papyrus. The quill pen. The ink pen. The ball point pen. The manual typewriter. The electric typewriter. The self-correcting electric typewriter. The IBM “ball” electric typewriter. The computer! 

 So yeah, things actually have gotten better. I used to type books, college papers (mine own, and others to make money) on a manual typewriter. And was delighted not to have to write them by hand. Even though if you made a mistake, correcting with white-out took almost as much time as it would to retype the whole damn page. Don't know what white-out is? You're better off. 

  A digression: My mother was an accomplished typist. During World War II when my father was overseas, she worked in a bomb factory in MacGregor, Texas, typing documents regarding the bombs. And there’s the thing: the typists who did this could not make an error, because they couldn’t do any corrections, for obvious reason having to do with spies (you thought that was a myth? Nope). If they made a mistake, they had to start over. 

  Back to regular programming. When I started sending out manuscripts I was thrilled to have an electric typewriter to work on. Those of us of a certain age remember having to send out big, fat manuscripts that took lots of postage—and double postage if you wanted the rejected manuscript returned. I eventually learned that when a rejected manuscript came back, I really couldn’t send it out again because it had been wrinkled and smudged, etc., so there was no need for return postage. 

 And then, somewhere along the line, TA DA! Computer! The internet. And we began to send out manuscripts without ever having to use a piece of paper. It’s heavenly. But the question wasn’t, what technology has made things easier—it’s what has made the greatest impact on my writing career? The computer is obviously number one. There are those who would argue that by making typing a manuscript easy, it is spawned sloppy writing. I’ll leave that to someone else to argue. I’m just grateful for the tech. 

 But there is a close second. I’m not even sure it’s a technological innovation so much as an add-on to the computer revolution: Email. I think of the countless hours I used to spend talking on the phone or meeting people in person to talk about writing—asking questions, getting tips, finding out the latest publishing news. Email freed up an enormous amount of time. I never really liked talking on the phone, and was often reluctant to use the phone even to get information I needed. Email changed that. To say I was an early adopter is an understatement. I may have the first person to use it! 

I can write to anyone to get information and people actually write back! Googling things is the best way to get general information, but to actually get human interaction and have discussions, it’s email. I still have friends for whom email seems to be their last resort. They hardly seem to be able to send and receive. I can’t help wondering why it’s so different for different people. Luddite comes to mind. Not that I am a techno-whiz. But I do use technology to my advantage. For example, I send out a newsletter every now and then—by email. 

 I get fan mail—email fan mail. I complain to the New York Times—by email. This morning I emailed my agent to figure out a time and place for us to meet when I’m in town next week. Instead of having to call and say, “How you doing? What’s up? Shall we talk about….blah blah blah, it was “When and where?” 

 And then, of course, there’s the iphone. But that will have to wait for another time. It’s too big!