Colon Count

Of all the things to worry about, I recently spent a fair amount of time on a Sunday afternoon worrying about how many colons I had in my manuscript. I was nudged into this situation by an editor who acknowledged a personal dislike for that particular punctuation mark. I was told it interrupted the flow of the narrative. Something that is important to consider. So, I did. I considered it. I went through everything hunting out these nefarious blemishes.

                                                                           

The hunt didn’t take too much time thanks to the “Find…” feature under the Edit menu in Microsoft Word. (Yes, it recognized the one tiny punctuation mark of a colon.) The hard part was deciding which ones to keep and which ones really could be let go, replaced by an em dash, another selection of words, or whatnot.

I had decided before hand I was not about to banish them all. They are quite essential for making lists. Lists are useful as a concise means of describing things. Would William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style, approve? I’d say yes. I believe his philosophy tended towards the concise and brief. No padding allowed. That was also the philosophy of my high school English teacher.

So, a couple of fruitful hours after I started, I had my mission accomplished.

In the future, I will take heed of what my editors suggest, but in the end I will make my own decisions. I will have to take the risk and responsibility for my actions. As I was reminded—make a decision and then be consistent.

This is from a recent Washington Post article by Ron Charles on Harper Lee.

“Great writers of the world: When you hear a Fly buzz and the Stillness in the Room is like the Stillness in the Air Between the Heaves of Storm, please contact a librarian immediately.

We’ll thank you forever.”

I see it as proof: Don’t be afraid of a few colons.

Symbols

I came face-to-face with a powerful symbol on Dec. 23, 2010. This would have been shortly after my first experience with NaNoWriMo, where I had written 50,000 words—but had no novel.

I was up before 7 am and standing by my kitchen sink. In our Bishop Hill house this window faced south, so the sun was rising to my left and was partly blocked by the garage. It took a good bit of time for me to notice the brightly glowing clouds floating my way. It took a little more time to realize what I was seeing was definitely a cross made out of contrails. More time to think of how unusual it was to see only sections of contrails in this configuration. Still more time before the internal voice yelled, “Idiot—Take a photo! This is big.”

I got a series of photos before the cross drifted off towards Galva. (See Toward/Towards an Ending, April 24, 2015.)

Later on, I began to contemplate the meaning of this symbol. I was facing a new year filled with big changes for me: downsizing 24 years of my life, selling a home, leaving a very small community for a large city, and trying to move an elderly mother closer. All the kinds of things that raise one’s blood pressure and anxiety level.

I needed a positive symbol and latched onto this one. “Everything will work out and be FINE,” I told myself. “The cross shows me this.”

Some things worked out better than others during the next year. We got moved. We sold the house. The downsizing went well, but is still a bit of an ongoing process for me. I gradually got used to the big city. The hitch was my mom. She wasn’t about to move—and didn’t.

The point I want to make … don’t place too much faith in your interpretation of symbols. You may want them to mean one thing so much that you jump to conclusions. Life will continue in its own direction, at its own pace. We try our best to keep up.

How does this relate to my novel?

I’m using those cross photos in the book cover design and the headers for my author pages. Who knows, perhaps even a T-shirt. That will be their proper place.

Rules

I’ve been classifying my novel as a cozy mystery for a while now. (See Cozy is the Word, July 25, 2014.) But sometimes I wonder just what it is I’ve got going on here.

Part of the story has a coming-of-age angle for the protagonist.

She’s only twenty-two and not a fully-formed grown-up, so that makes it a New Adult novel.

Setting the scenes in Bishop Hill creates a small town atmosphere and a reflection on some of the changes they face.

Historical? Sort of … through flash backs to 1915. But they only show up for a few key moments.

Romance? Again—kinda, sorta. I like a certain level of flirty give-and-take between couples or, rather, potential couples, but not much more than that.

Do I have one direction—the kind of direction for a strong cozy mystery genre piece?

I’m not sure … but I’m worrying that it’s maybe not.

I want all those things in my novel—to make it complex and interesting. Does that mean it’s more a work of general fiction with dashes of all those other things? Don’t know yet. It might be something that comes out in the reviews.

So, for now, the trick is making it all those bits and pieces come together as an interesting whole, to create the thing I’ve wanted most from the beginning: a good read.

Steal Like an Artist

I have to admit that I had a hard time getting into reading The Round House by Louise Erdrich. It’s not Tony Hillerman’s world of the southwestern reservations. North Dakota isn’t all that far from Iowa so the descriptions of the landscape didn’t feel foreign, yet they didn’t feel really familiar either. The POV is from a 13-year-old-boy and his take on the tragedy that befalls his mother, his father, and the friends and family who gather around him for support. After reading a few chapters I just hadn’t begun to connect, to care too much.

It took awhile for me to realize the key to the style of writing—first person, past tense, but without quotation marks for dialog. This is the way of a journalist reporting on a story, someone standing back in time and space, and perhaps trying to maintain a neutral opinion. I got that, but still I wasn’t too engaged as a reader. I just had to get through it before my February book club meeting.

For me, the hook came in chapter 5. The nicely detailed description of the priest: …blah, blah, blah … fox-red hair. That was electric. I never would’ve thought of that phrase. There it was—perfect in every sense. For me anyway. For right now.

I so want to use that. Fit it into one of my stories.

Would that be right? Would it be fair?

Yes, if done correctly.

I read a small book that explained how to Steal Like an Artist (a real book by Austin Kleon). You take a bit here and a little something there, some more stuff from other places—lots of other places—mix them all together to get something that you can call your own. That’s OK. That’s not out-and-out plagiarism. That’s using your education.

So, yeah, I’m so going to use fox-red somewhere, somehow. And now you’ll know where that little bit came from.

Oh, I forgot to mention the lip pointing—what a cool visual.

And … who knows what else.

Louise Erdrich deserves her awards for this one.

January in Bishop Hill

On a day that promised NO SNOW, I left for a quick drive to Bishop Hill and Galva. I was on a mission. I needed to touch base with the manager of the Colony Store, Glenda Wallace, and the editor of the Galva News, Doug Boock.

Doug Boock helped me get started writing. He offered encouragement, an outlet, an editor’s perspective on how to write—better—and I got to see my name in print. Bonus, I had the opportunity to make a new start—reinvent myself. The response to my writing went from, “Who does she think she is?” to “I’ve got a story for you.” A pretty good deal at the time.

On my current trip back I was interested in getting names of potential book reviewers. He was very helpful and gave me a nice list of possibles to get started.

From Glenda Wallace I got information on how to get books, my books, into the Colony Store and how the pricing would work. She was friendly, helpful, and also encouraging.

All that made for a successful trip. Everything else fell apart.

After living in Bishop Hill for twenty-four years you’d think I’d have remembered how hard it would be to catch anyone at home or with their shops open in January. The pickings were pretty slim. All my friends were unavailable and I wasn’t in the mood to buy anything more than a bag of Swedish Löfbergs coffee.

Before leaving the village, I stopped for a nice lunch at The Filling Station. I was lucky enough to share a table with a former neighbor, Crystal. We got to catch up a bit. Fortunately, I remembered to show her how I came up with the name of one of my characters, Talli Walters. Talli came from a mash up of two names: crystallinda. Walters came from Walter, the namesake of the Wally burger, a delicious hamburger smothered with grilled onions. Add some cheese and it’s pretty close to prairie heaven.

I was well stuffed by the time I headed back to the Quad Cities. A shorter day than I’d expected, but still worth the price of admission.

Life Imitates Art?

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”     
Oscar Wilde

Real news stories:

1.    Someone found a previously unknown Olof Krans painting. It made the Galva News just in time for Krans’ birthday party. (The painting is now on display in the Bishop Hill Museum.)

2.    A 75-year-old Texas grandma swerved her car to avoid hitting an animal and went off into a ravine. She went undiscovered for 48 hours.

I think I have to disagree with Wilde’s quote, because I dreamed these ideas up for my novel—before reading about them in the newspaper. I’d like to think I was just ahead of the curve for a change.

I had a calculus professor lecture on the frequency of odd coincidences happening. The infinitesimal and improbable happens all the time if you look at it the right way. (The right way is working backwards. It’s highly unlikely to predict the rare occurrence, but you can appreciate it after it happens and then work out the equation.)  

I believe my work comes down to art imitating life. I like to use elements of the real world to shape and fill out such things as: characters, places, and situations in my fiction. I feel I’ve created something wholly new out of these bits and pieces.

Perhaps a better example would be a PBS episode of Father Brown. The Wilde quote was used with the emphasis placed on the later part—art imitating life. In that mystery, scratches and soot on the floor where used as fictional devices in a fantasy novel, but when Father Brown noticed the real scratches and soot that inspired the fantasy story—he used them to discover a secret room. Art led to solving the mystery.

Maybe it is all a matter of perspective, but I hope my art will lead to bigger things and larger themes.

Charlotte Murray Russell and Jane Amanda Edwards

Years ago, when my “novel” was just a young thing, I went through a reading phase where I searched out authors’ first books. I wanted to get a feel for their starting points. I wanted a measuring post for where I needed to be for my first efforts as an author.

I kept at the task up until the time I joined two book clubs offered by the Davenport Public Library and had to work on their reading lists. Both approaches have their place and I’m glad I started where I did.

I mention it now because I did not start with Charlotte Murray Russell’s first book. Murder at the Old Stone House was published in 1935 as part of Doubleday’s Crime Club series. It’s difficult to get. The Rock Island Public Library has a copy in protective custody.

I had to settle for Cook Up a Crime. It was originally published in 1951 and a newer version was reprinted in 1979 by permission of her daughter, Marianne Nelson.

In 1953, Russell went to work for the Rock Island Public Library as a cataloguer and was never published again. So, I read her last book. I have to say I struggled with a large cast of characters, some of whom I guessed would be quite familiar to readers of the eleven other books that featured spinster sleuth Jane Amanda Edwards.

Jane Amanda Edwards was not a petite, polite Miss Marple by any means. I’ve read that the busybody Jane was a role model for other meddlesome amateur detectives.

Russell recast her home town of Rock Island as Rockport and navigated its streets with serious determination. I was tempted to look up some of the intersections to see how real they were, but I haven’t yet. I will stay with the small town everything-is-close-together tone she set a little longer.

Now, the ending…

The ending felt rushed. In the last four pages she designed her trap, recruited her ally, sprung the trap, caught the killer, and still had two pages left for explanations and wrapping up loose ends. If that isn’t rushed, I don’t know what is.

But then, maybe I don’t. Russell’s mysteries kept her family afloat during the Depression. An impressive feat for a writer who contributed a great deal to the cozy mystery genre and probably should be better known to today’s readers.