My Worst Writing Fear: What if My Mystery Falls Flat? -- Guest Post by Marni Graff

My Worst Writing Fear:

What If My Mystery Falls Flat?

by

 Marni Graff

 

Writing fiction is the best possible job. I get to play the “What If?” game when wearing my writer’s hat. Writing mysteries, which is what my novels are, is a whole different kind of game.

I always start with the end: I know who will die and why, at least the first body, which is the catalyst if there end up being more than one as the book evolves. It’s the ‘why’ that fascinates me. I’m not writing about serial killers, sociopaths, or psychopaths, even though I read those all the time. I’m fascinated with what would make an average person feel it’s reasonable to cross that fine line to take another’s life and feel justified doing so.

But mysteries are at their very heart a puzzle. I want readers to take the journey with my sleuth and with the detective on the case, as each try to figure out who is behind the killing. In the English mystery series, that will be American writer Nora Tierney and Detective Inspector Declan Barnes. In my Manhattan mysteries, it’s nurse Trudy Genova and Detective Ned O’Malley. And my worst fear is that the reader will get there before any of my characters.

I want readers to feel they are solving the mystery along with Nora or Trudy, but not necessarily before they do. There’s an element of surprise that I hope is incorporated as the murderer is revealed near the climax of the book.

Juggling the investigations, with each woman coming at the murder from a different point of view from the procedural aspect of the male detective, means I have to offer each of them clues, red herrings, and suspects rather like Hansel and Gretel left their crumb trail. This is where it gets tough. I have to parse out information to both the detective and the amateur sleuth and the reader and hope to keep it all straight while advancing the story.

I also have to keep in mind that my trained detectives have procedures they must use and laws to be followed that affect the scope of the investigation. Yes, they’re the professionals, but they have also more limitations. My amateur sleuths don’t have these constraints and can often find information on their own by using their feminine wiles, being glib, and often plain out-and-out lying.

And all while this is unfolding I’m hoping the reader feels I’m playing fair with him or her. It’s a daunting task, and it’s a question I ask my beta readers: when did you figure out whodunit?

So far feedback from readers who enjoy the books has led me to feel I’ve been successful. I have had a few emails from people who told me they figured out the culprit early on--only to be found wrong at the book’s end.

If that’s the case, I’ve done my job!

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Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney Mysteries, set in England. The Blue Virgin introduces Nora, an American writer living in Oxford. The Green Remains and The Scarlet Wench trace Nora’s move to the Lake District where murder follows her.  In process is The Golden Hour, set in Bath, and premiering in Spring 2015 will be Graff’s new Manhattan series, Death Unscripted, featuring nurse Trudy Genova, a medical consultant for a New York movie studio. Graff is also co-author of Writing in a Changing World, a primer on writing groups and critique techniques. 

Graf also writes crime book reviews at www.auntiemwrites.com and is Managing Editor of Bridle Path Press. A member of Sisters in Crime, Graff runs the NC Writers Read program in Belhaven. All of Graff’s books can be bought at Amazon or at http://www.bridlepathpress.com and are available as eBooks.

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Book Blurb:

The Scarlett Wench

In the third award-winning Nora Tierney Mystery, the American writer awaits a traveling theatre troupe that will stage Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit at Ramsey Lodge, Nora’s Cumbrian home. Nora must juggle parenting her infant son with helping to run the lodge, while furthering her relationship with DI Declan Barnes, ostensibly there for a hiking trip. When a series of pranks and accidents escalate to murder, Nora realizes her child is in jeopardy and springs into action to help Declan unmask a killer. Written in English mystery style, complete with a Cast of Characters, all chapter epigrams are lines from the play; a copy of the book was requested for the archives of Coward’s estate.

 “The Scarlet Wench has all the ingredients of a good read: atmospheric setting, intriguing characters, complex plot and excellent writing.”

                 Rebecca Tope, UK author of The Cotwolds Series and The Lake District Series

M. K. Graff does it again with another compelling and intriguing Nora Tierney classic. As always, the characters are multifaceted, the plot twists are unpredictable and the backdrop of Ramsey Lodge at Bowness-on-Winderere will make you want to hop a plane for the UK locale. The Scarlet Wench is another winner!”

                 P. M. Terrell, author of Vicki’s Key, The Tempest Murders and River Passage

“A lively cast of characters, an intriguing mystery and a heroine you have to love … M. K. Graff does it again, with a new mystery you can’t put down!”

                                           Susan Sloate, author of Forward to Camelot and Stealing Fire

My Worst Writing Fear -- Lori Lucero

How I Cope with The Fear of  Revealing Myself in My Writing 

by

Lori Lucero

My greatest writing fear is confronting my own vulnerability. It’s scary to put yourself out there through your writing. So scary that if I contemplate it too much I want to curl up into a fetal position. If you’re doing it right, you’re putting your innermost self into your work, even if it’s under the guise of fiction. The inevitable rejection seems very personal. As it is, I have a hard time accepting criticism gracefully for things that matter far less to me than my writing. I worry that this fear of criticism/rejection will stop me from digging deep into my own emotions when I write. That I’ll only be able to skim the surface of my thoughts and feelings so that criticism and rejection will hurt less. 

My writing will suffer as a result.

I remember my first writing critique group meeting. It was a fairly large group of around ten people. I would describe the group as being supportive in general, but everyone was very honest. At that first meeting, I listened, wide-eyed, to people taking a sledgehammer to each other’s work. I knew it was all to help the others improve their writing, which I do think everyone was genuinely trying to do. 

Still, I felt emotionally scarred by proxy. I broke out into a cold sweat at the thought of sharing my work. The group leader suggested that for the first critique of my own writing, I should share something I wasn’t as emotionally attached to. However, I didn’t want to share my grocery list, my only option as far as emotional detachment, so I gave everyone a chapter of my novel to critique. And—I survived. The criticism didn’t kill me on the spot, or even make me burst into tears (a much more mundane and likely scenario). And I do think the feedback helped me improve my writing.

This leads me to how I attempt to work through this fear. To cope, sometimes you just have to plow through. You have to make yourself do scary things. 

Plowing through isn’t my only coping strategy, though. I have recently taken up meditation, which helps me cope with stress in general. 

My other coping mechanism is rather perverse. I go on Amazon and read one-star reviews of authors and books I love. I don’t normally engage in schadenfreude, and it isn’t that I enjoy seeing other people’s work getting torn down. So why do I do it? For reassurance, I guess. It helps me realize that no matter how awesome you are, someone, somewhere, will think you suck. Somehow, this twisted little task makes criticism in general seem less potent, like just background noise with which everyone has to cope.

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Parallel Lives Blurb

If Jen can't get back to her usual self, she'll have to do everything all over again. Jen is thirty-seven-year-old middle-school teacher in 2012. Overweight, underpaid, in debt, and with a bitter divorce pending, Jen wants to start over. 
Then Jen is hit by a car. When she awakens, it is still 2012, but she is a thirteen-year-old, with her same parents and siblings. Initially Jen resists accepting her new reality. However, faced with the threat of confinement to a mental health ward, she is forced to play along. 

Jen struggles to understand her situation. She jumps on every possible source of information, finally stumbling upon theoretical physics discussions regarding parallel universes. A quantum physics professor says he can send her "home", leaving her with a decision. Should she stay, relive adolescence, and possibly make better life choices? Or should she return to her flawed but familiar life?

Buy Link on Amazon


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Lori Lucero Author Bio:

Lori Lucero, a school psychologist, has been honing her writing craft for many years. She has a master’s degree in psychology as well as an Education Specialist degree (Ed.S.). She has published articles for various online venues and is a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers' Association. Her first book, Parallel Lives, a light science-fiction novel, is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, and Smashwords. Originally from Montana, she now lives in Auburn, WA, with her very spoiled cat.

Follow her on Twitter and Quora.

My Worst Writing Fear -- Nathaniel Sewell

Hi ... Welcome to my first guest blogger Nathaniel Sewell, the author of Fishing for Light, a satire. My initial topic is "My Worst Writing Fear -- with blogger's name", but this is not just a gripe session. There has to be a suggested solution to the agony. I'm now scheduling Thursdays for fiction writers. Send for Guidelines. Email is on the sidebar.

My Worst Writing Fear -- Nathaniel Sewell

As a storyteller, I don’t worry about making grammatical errors because I know, as sure as the Earth will continue to orbit the Sun, it will happen. And I know I’ll make every effort with the help from editors, who are much smarter than ‘I’, to weed out those nasty incantations that cause me to hide in naked literary shame. 

I don’t worry about the length of a novel because the story should naturally unfold at its own pace. Or that I break some sacrosanct rule that the high priest of writing has cast down to us, we the tiny brained mortal who has the audacity to think they can create a meaningful story. And I don’t worry about writing an ugly scene showing how human beings can disgustingly treat their fellow man and then justify their actions using religion or political expediency. 

I don’t worry about creating a stereotypical character that might swerve into being a cliché. And I don’t worry about writing a sex scene between a hot babe and a hairy, height-challenged dude while being filmed by three fat little pigs smoking cigars. However, what I write has to have a point and is not written to just shock the reader’s senses, because I respect the reader. 

But as you can tell, I really don’t much care what anybody else thinks, or says, or opines about my writing. I think to really write, to really devote your life to creating meaningful, art, as an artist you should be fearless. If writing is to evolve, the writer has to take risks. BUT, save for that one person, there is one person that I DO worry about, and I fear what that person thinks about from behind their eyeballs - the reader. I respect and fear only the reader because they have taken time from their life to read what I have created.

My worst, worst writing fear is that the reader will stop, reading. If my number one goal is to keep the reader reading, then I know all my effort should focus on writing that is well crafted, entertains, and informs. It is an odd tight rope that we have to navigate. If the story is almost pornographic that would seem to cater to our base impulses, but then again, some guy named, Vladimir Nabokov wrote - Lolita. Or another guy wrote using the ‘N-word’, that guy was named, Mark Twain. I think we all know there are numerous other examples of writers sharing an entertaining story that pushes our collective readerships – buttons. Right? Otherwise governments and school boards would have nothing left to do.

So my worst fear is that I stop the reader from reading something true, authentic and unfiltered. That I did not share with them my inner most thoughts, and take them on a short journey into a world they might not understand. Or a world that they secretly might want to investigate, but they just need to have the available literary transport to take them there. So, in the end, what I fear the most is a ‘shrug’ from the reader. If that happens, I know I have failed.

 Blub: Fishing for Light

Ms Prosperina is a genetic monster trying to take over the world by spiking the coffee at her Starry Eyed Coffee Hut chain … and she’ll stop at nothing.

It’s up to her unwitting creator, the geneticist Professor Quan, to stop her. In an attempt to correct his mistake, Professor Quan creates a network of people with the power of true love genetically coded within them.

Everything hangs in the balance when Eddie, altered at birth by Quan’s genetic mutation powder, fails to follow his pre-ordained destiny. The trauma of his father’s death has caused him to stray from Quan’s master plan.

Will Quan succeed in helping Eddie regain the light behind his eyes and will they succeed in foiling Ms Prosperina’s evil plans?

Giveaway