Every writer learns early or late that readers have views. We’re used to the views of paid or unpaid reviewers, and learn a way to respond to them—ignore the reviews, take them personally, or some response between the two. The views of ordinary readers, those not expecting to see their opinions in print, have come to be more important to me.

One of the first reader responses came in the form of a postcard. A reader in the 1990s in the Pacific Northwest wrote to tell me, in terse language, that she’d just finished reading Double Take and she wouldn’t kill for the motive I ascribed to the killer. My first reaction was something sarcastic, but then I thought she was telling me something—this reader wanted a motive she could relate to, which in turn meant she wanted a killer more complicated, as well as more relatable. This is fair, and a pretty good lesson for any writer, so I’ve kept it in mind.

I found an unusual report on OSHA about a home-heating device that filled a home with a kind of exhaust, depriving it of oxygen. A woman arrived at the summer cottage as expected and after a while felt ill. She tried to light a match to start a fire, but the match wouldn’t light; she gave up, and went out onto the porch, where the reception was better, to call her husband on her cell. An editor found the situation unbelievable, but I cited the OSHA report. That wasn’t enough, she said, because the reader wouldn’t be likely to know this technical point, so the story didn’t work overall. The lesson there is to fit the technical information into the story before it’s necessary, or at the point where it can counter the reader’s skepticism. I followed that lesson in another story that depended on the victim having technical knowledge not available to the villain to enable her to survive.

Conferences are a great opportunity to hear from readers, as we all know, and in my experience they tell me exactly what I’m overlooking. I treated Chief Joe Silva in the Mellingham series as an iconic figure—he literally appeared in the town square in an early chapter, and I liked his independence and unattached presence. Not only did he not have a lady friend, a partner, even an occasional visitor, he never mentioned his family. And my readers felt the absence. They wanted to know about Joe’s family. While I was populating the small town of Mellingham with all the quirky souls I loved, my fans were reading between the lines in search of hints about Joe’s parents and siblings, perhaps an ex-wife or two hiding somewhere. It took me a while, but in the end Joe’s family got two books, one for his birth family and one for his own, constructed family.

I’m not always sure what the best response is to some reactions. In Below the Tree Line, the first in a series about farmer Felicity O’Brien, the action revolves in part around timbering. As a former farm owner working with state and private foresters, I knew something about managing a forest for income (it’s not lucrative). But what we call timberingin New England is called logging in the West, and this difference surprised the reviewer. I read the reviewer’s own mystery, also about a woman who owned a farm, and even allowing for the license allowed a writer of a mystery novel, I was appalled at some of her behavior. I couldn’t see it happening in New England, at least not without consequences. Certain aspects of life are more geographically defined than I realized—and this goes well beyond local accents.

In the Felicity O’Brien series I was prepared for the concern some readers expressed about cats in mysteries, and made a point of feeding my cat, Miss Anthropy, on time and giving her attention, even though she was not one for cuddling. The rescue dog, however, brought out a lot of unexpected advice, most of it unnecessary but interesting. It was a reminder of the boundaries of our chosen genre, and the core decency of our readers. Violate the standards at your peril.

The last lesson comes more from watching readers react to changes in other series, reactions I’ve heeded as warnings. In the Mellingham series, Joe Silva can grow and change in relation to the world around him. Because he is who he is, a middle-aged police chief in his prime, without the handicap of a dark past, he’s expected to grow into relationships like any other normal person. And he does. In the Anita Ray series, Anita’s environment is the hotel with her beloved Auntie Meena, the desk clerk Ravi, and other staff members from the surrounding village. This is a light-hearted, static world, and somewhere along the line I understood she could not change without disrupting that world. New hotels might go up, tourists from newly independent countries might arrive, war might break out, but Anita and her compatriots would remain the same. Joe’s world is dynamic, as is Felicity’s, but Anita’s is not. 

The interaction between reader and writer in crime fiction is one of the best features of this genre—the community is so fully engaged that we as writers can only benefit. It may not always feel that way (So, exactly why did Felicity do that?), but in the end the readers are usually on to something, and I’m ready to listen.

A Pause

This Saturday straddles the holidays Christmas and New Year’s, a time washed with good will and optimism. Each holiday alone offers a topic relevant and pertinent in today’s world. I could talk about my gratitude for having close friends, or I could focus on the excitement of going into the year ahead. But I have nothing new to say about either one. Instead a friend and I talked this week about the word pause, and that’s the subject that feels most appropriate for me at this time.

We rush headlong from one activity to the next, some of us weary and some of us energized by how much we can get accomplish and what the season holds. I could do that but instead I want to take this time of being neither here nor there to step back and pause, to take a break thoughtfully, not because I feel I need it or want it. I’m taking a break, pausing, because this is something to treasure—a moment when I don’t have to move forward or back, rush ahead or finish up something left behind me, to clear my desk before covering it with the next task.

This isn’t as far removed from a writing life as one might think. Whenever I finish a story or novel I set it aside and stop thinking about it. This gives us as writers distance on our work, so we can come to it with a fresh pair of eyes after three or four weeks (or even a year). But it can do more than that. 

A pause in the work of creating something, a season, or any time of year, gives me an opportunity to come back to myself, to step away from the person whom I created in order to write the story, call her the narrator or protagonist or something else. Or in my day to day life, the person who gets things done, checking each item off on a real or imagined to-do list. 

A pause allows, even encourages me to step into another space, one that is walled off from the world in motion and complete in itself. This is not a moment of purpose, to wind down, lower my blood pressure or find the time to assess my upcoming tasks. The pause is its own purpose, to listen to random thought, to discover once again what it is to just be, to exist, to watch the world go by, to slow down enough to notice the world is going by, ever moving around us.

Perhaps this pause is a meditation without the Buddhist directive to “empty the mind,” ignore thoughts or feelings and keep the mind blank. My pause is a long moment to heighten the awareness that I exist. I am here in this place, touching the fabric of the seat of my desk chair, studying the color of the dyed leather desk top, hearing the occasional car pass my window.

When my mind tells me this moment has passed I know the lights will be brighter, the music will be sweeter, and I will enjoy them all more deeply. But I will also linger in the moment more often, knowing that life is truer when savored than gulped greedily. This weekend I straddle the holidays that define our year, and find a moment that is more, that is all of life held lightly in the palm, awakening me to all that is beyond accomplishment, goals, appearances, rushing thoughts. My moment as me entirely with the Universe sitting within my half-curled fingers.

I write like I pack—I take whatever I need and stuff it into story or suitcase. This is good for writing, but not for packing—or the trip I’m going on. I recently attended Crime Bake, our annual systery writers conference in New England, and I arrived with the same suitcase I used for a recent three-week vacation overseas.

The conference runs two full days, which is really one full day and two half days, the latter being Friday afternoon and evening and Sunday morning. Saturday is a full day, and runs well into the evening. Do I really need a full suitcase for this? 

My wardrobe for Friday night is settled because I drive down with a friend, and I’m fully prepared. It’s like the opening scene in a short story—I include all those details that tell the reader exactly where she is. No wondering if this story is set in India or along the Eastern seaboard or on a farm. No wondering if the year is now or the 1950s. No wondering if that thing I refer to is sci-fi madness or just a bizarre way of describing the most ordinary things. I know what I’m wearing to the conference on my first appearance and plan to stay that way throughout the day because the arrival is well choreographed. But the rest of the time (and the story) . . . is a problem.

I want the reader to slide into the story and immediately be engaged in the surprises and developments. This is no time to get lazy. Or sloppy. With my wardrobe, I want to be comfortable and informal, so that means regular clothes, but my regular clothes are boring. There they sit in my suitcase, so I toss in a brighter sweater and nicer black pants (you can never have enough pairs of black pants). I can’t wear the same kind of outfit I wore on Friday for the same reason the story after the opening has to be more, something more than the opening, something surprising, different. I really have to “up my game,” or more simply, “something has to happen.” My main character is a middle-aged woman faced with upheaval in her life, lots of change—not very original. The ordinary needs work, so I introduce a compelling secondary character who tosses in a complication, a character who cheated on all his university exams and is now applying for a job in the CIA. Riveting? Hardly. But who knows about this? My main character remembers the guy from school. So the complication is good for my story, but my suitcase is filling up with more attractive options for Saturday (because, just like the story, I don’t know where I’m going during the day while I pack). And I haven’t yet gotten to Saturday night.

In preparation for my recent three-week trip overseas, the organizers made a point of telling the attendees that this was mostly walking in neighborhoods, woods, rural areas, etc. There was nothing fancy about this trip—very casual outdoor clothes were all that was needed. Great, I thought. Except, of course, someone added in small type, you might want to dress up a bit for a night out for dinner. I looked at the schedule, and there were several nights out for dinner. I loaded up my suitcase with several more pairs of black pants.

By now in my story I’ve come to the middle, which often sags. I don’t like sagging in fiction or in clothing. So worried that I’ll look dull Saturday night I rummaged through my closet for something dressier than a plain turtleneck sweater. But my brain was stuck on the sagging in my main character’s ability to tackle the threats and problems facing her. She has to do something to show she deserves to be the main character—break out of her dull pattern of living safely. Since she often works with hunters—issuing licenses, reporting on weather in the area, and the like—in her quiet Town Hall job, I make her familiar enough with weaponry to know which is the business end of a gun or rifle—just enough information to make her dangerous. And she responds by shooting one of the applicants for a hunting license (this is the CIA hopeful). She’s about to get away with it all—until it turns out she knew the man from college, and he “done her wrong.” So, is she guilty—the once demure lady now in a flamboyant see-through blouse—or the steady dull neighbor in the beige turtleneck? My suitcase is filling up and now I have to press down to make sure I can close it and I’m not done yet. I have to get through Sunday. My story isn’t doing any better. I’ve tossed in so many possibilities that I’ve probably overdone it.

My main character has to prove herself. She’s either guilty of murder or she isn’t. Which is it? Or is it something else? She makes bail—after all, she’s a known quantity, a longtime resident of the town, steady employee, spotless record (very plain wardrobe)—and sets about proving her innocence or at least figuring out a way to get off, one or the other. That means she’s no longer exactly the same person she was at the outset. It’s like Sunday at the conference—we have to be different from the first day; I can’t wear the same thing as Friday. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know, but I have an idea.

Sunday is a step up from Friday, something to show I’m more accomplished than I was at the beginning, that I’ve learned something over the last day and a half, that I’m a better writer, my money well spent. Just like my main character, I have to demonstrate I now have the needed abilities and good sense that I’ve been hiding. I’m different—black pants, yes, but a brightly colored blouse with a spiffy vest.

My main character is different too and has to demonstrate this in her explanation of what happened. And lordy knows I can do this because I’ve gone back and planted clues, changed clues, added a character or an incident—I’ve restructured the story to end up wherever I want. This means a lot more words and a lot of rewriting and adding and rearranging. It’s the same for my conference wardrobe. I now have the extras to pack in—underwear, jewelry, scarves, toiletries, all those things that are almost more important than a pair of black pants. 

My suitcase is close to too packed to close, but close it I must. I have so much folded into it by the time I’m ready to zip it shut that I can make anything work, any outfit, for any event, any contingency. This is the skill of the writer—I can pack whatever I need into my story, move it around, match it up with anything anywhere, a small detail about a character’s hearing or missing an appointment, and I have a plot (like an outfit) that works. My story ends up a marvel of subtle misdirection and character revelation, a neat perfection with an unimaginable twist and not a single unnecessary word. This is where my suitcase and story diverge, and I’m glad to leave both as they are. Time to move on.

I’m having an unusually quiet (writing) week, listening to the noise of a hammer and a radio playing on the lawn as workers repair my porch. I could write during the racket, interspersed with the sounds of traffic and occasional voices passing on the sidewalk. But instead I’m marveling at how clear my to-do list is. This summer, instead of planning to get the Crime Spell Books anthology out the door to KDP in September, it’s almost ready to go—in August. I have time to work on a short story and the sixth Anita Ray mystery. How did this happen, I ask?

Over the last several years, I’ve trimmed my volunteer activities, cutting back on responding to last-minute requests for help, or invitations to join another committee. But as I see blocks of time open up and think of things I’ve put off and can now get to, I’m reminded of something else. I didn’t get here on my own. I had help. 

The one key reason I continue to volunteer for various groups devoted to writers and writing, artists and their mediums, is I believe in the importance of sharing what I know with others. When I started out writing, back in the 1980s and even earlier, in college, friends read my work and offered suggestions. That meant they took time for me. I joined a writer’s group, the first of several, and listened carefully to how they commented on each other’s work in a way that was clear and respectful, and vowed to always do the same. I went to classes, asked questions, offered to help organize workshops, and read other writers’ work. As my skills improved, and I began to publish short fiction and then novels, I was invited to participate on conference panels. I read and commented on work by writers I didn’t know, wrote reviews, composed blurbs. I enjoyed it all.

The kind of volunteer work I do with and for other writers has changed over the years. My initial modest reader responses to someone’s new story has now been replaced with a critique of how a panel will work with these writers or those, who brings what to the table and how will the writers complement each other. I refer new writers to agents I think will like their work, I advise writers interested in self-publishing what that will mean (or not mean).

I think it matters that writers share what they have learned on their own or from others, participate in the larger community, and help bring along new writers. We benefit from working with each other. Even during my college years, when I worked on the student humor magazine, I understood that to succeed, we had to work with each other. That has never not been true in all the years since. I’ve enjoyed watching new writers find their voice, an agent, a publisher; established writers try something new; others take a risk and stretch themselves. That “top of the heap” some strive for is not a peak; it’s a mesa. There’s a lot of room at the top, or whatever we call it. Sharing it with others is more fun than standing there alone.

Several of my stories and mystery novels were worked out on paper before I began writing. I had blocks of story parts, notes on a particular character, and no sense of how the whole thing went together. As a pantser, I was willing to wait and then let it all come together when I started writing. This is an act of faith, and for some definitely reckless. But for me it feels like pulling a multicolored shawl around my shoulders, sinking into the warmth and richness of it, and letting the idea germinate. But these days the thinking part is taking longer and longer.

Some of my more recent stories are based on ideas or scenes that came to me years and years ago. Most often if an idea doesn’t take form within a month or so, I abandon it, or just as likely it abandons me. But some of these old snatches of a story I overheard, a piece of a scene that still flickers in my imagination, linger and don’t seem to change. When this happens I know there’s a story there, but I don’t seem to know how to get to it. 

This is where I can hear some of my fellow writers telling me to just sit down and write it out. There’s no mystery to it, as you know, Susan. It’s just a matter of doing the work. Most of the time I would agree. But there are some ideas that need more than an artificial structure composed for working them out on paper to be realized. These are the ones that hover in the back of my mind, like a dream that might be bad, might be good, but won’t fade. 

I’m not the only one who feels this way. A few years ago I was at a book event with other writers and found myself chatting with a writer I had met a number of times but didn’t really know. We talked about our work, what we were reading, and the days ahead. And then she said something that I recognized instantly.

“I think I’m ready for the next story. I can feel it growing. I’m ready to start writing.”

I knew exactly what she meant and how she felt. The story idea is there, gestating, growing, pushing through the reticence, the hesitation, the doubt, ready to emerge from the nib of my pen or the keys on the computer keyboard. At that moment I know I need one last step. Who is going to tell the story—that, for me, is the key to unlocking the whole thing. And once I know who the narrator is, the story unfolds before me, and it’s just a matter of me keeping up with the flow. The preparation time, if I can call it that, takes years. The writing takes a couple of days or fewer for a short story, a couple of months, writing full time, for a novel. The closer the story is to real life, a real event, the less rewriting, or fixing, is required. The characters act out according to their natures, their proclivities already established by where I found them in the basic idea. 

The hardest lesson in working on a story that arrives in this manner is to not tamper with it, to trust my own unconscious to deliver the narrative I can feel inside me. Sometimes I don’t know what the ending will be, but when I sense it coming, and understand what it probably has to be, I have to trust where I am and where I’m going and not tamper with it.

Not every story arrives in this way. I’ve constructed plenty from a simple What If beginning. But those that haunt my memory are different, and require a different writer response from me. From the few of these I’ve composed and published, I’ve learned discipline, trust that my writing brain knows what it’s doing, and faith that whatever is happening is something worthwhile. These stories tend not to have a happy ending, but they are realistic and honest. And for me that’s enough.