Category: Janis Patterson

Experience vs Research

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by Janis Patterson

I’ll admit it – I’m a travel junkie. So is The Husband. We love to fill our bags, I grab my travel computer (an aged MacBookAir) and then we head off. I’ve gotten several books from my various trips and many more ideas than I can ever use. (Plus, to be honest, a lot of fun and a few downright scary moments…) Being older, we’re trying to squeeze in as much travel as we can afford before it becomes physically unfeasible. Travel is one of the greatest gifts life can offer. It is not a guaranteed gateway to a career.


I really did think everyone sort of thought the same way, but not long ago someone whom up until then I had thought intelligent gave me a rather unpleasant shock. Now you know because I have written again and again I believe there are ideas everywhere – you can get more workable ideas in a couple of days than a dozen writers could work up in a dozen lifetimes. I still believe that, which is why I was absolutely gobsmacked when this person said they really planned on becoming a novelist but they couldn’t start until they had more money to travel with.


This happened at a speaking venue where – among other things – I talked about the research value of travel. After my presentation was over there was a reception, and this person came to talk to me and dropped his bomb about not being able to write until he could afford to travel. Of course I questioned the idea that one had to travel to write novels. He became very defensive and said he didn’t want to be limited to writing only about what he knew, because all he knew was domestic and boring and in his opinion not worthy of his time, talent or effort. He didn’t think it was fair that established writers should have such a prejudicial leg up.


Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but I am not always sweet and well-mannered, especially when I am irritated and this person’s somewhat belligerently skewed vision definitely irritated me.


So, I asked, if you haven’t been to a place you can’t write about it? (Now I am not stupid; there are innumerable advantages to actually having been to a place – I just don’t believe it is an absolute requirement.)


He said yes.


I then asked how he thought people wrote historical novels, as time travel machines are pretty rare on the ground. Or sci-fi. Or high fantasy, since I hadn’t seen any dragons zipping around lately either.


Now he was getting angry, saying I was just clouding the issue and trying to discourage him and, he accused, like other multi-published professional writers keep the market for myself. He was an adventure writer, he declared, one who wrote about exotic places and cultures – not a ‘kitchen sink’ drone. He was special and he’d prove it once he could get started.


The rest of the conversation, I am somewhat sad to say, was too intense and impolite for recording here. However, it did make me think… and grieve for those who agree with him. I have always and will always say that research is essential; you have to write about what you know, and if you don’t know about it when you start you should know a great deal about it before you finish – whatever ‘it’ is. However, that does not mean you have to personally experience it! Sometimes that is indeed preferable, sometimes it is just pleasurable, sometimes it is impossible. (At least until they start tourist runs to 1860 or Alpha Centauri.)


If personal, on-the-spot research is impossible and there are no research facts are available, what’s a writer to do? My answer is logical extrapolation. If you’re writing about a space colony with a mixed alien population, you should think about physical makeup, reactions to varying gravitational pulls, breathing (oxygen or methane, for example), eating (fat/carbohydrate vs silicon/mineral sustenance) and the like. Now I know this is far from the world of terrestrial, ‘normal’ mysteries, about which there is thankfully an abundance of research available, but the principle is the same.


You have to know what you’re writing about whether you already know it, research it, create it, experience it or learn it. You are creating a world and in some worlds what you say goes – but once you have said it, it must stay the same for the length of time you are in that world. Even ‘playing God’ as writers do albeit on a limited basis, there are still rules.
In a nutshell, research is necessary; personal experience is not.


I don’t know what happened to that deluded young would-be writer; I do hope he absorbed and accepted what I told him – though I fear not, at least not now. Perhaps the writing-fairy lightning will strike him and he will have his beliefs validated – doubtful, but it does happen very very very rarely.


All I know is that we made a deposit on a great trip the other day and I’m already thinking about what to take and make sure my traveling computer is up to date and ready to go. Even though it’s early, I’ll start as soon as I finish the current project, which is set in ‘today’ and just down the street. No travel needed.

And… just in case you’re interested, all four volumes of my newest release – 50 BLOGS ON WRITING AND THE WRITING LIFE – are available at Amazon for just $.99 each!

Spring Has Sprung

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by Janis Patterson


I have never had any trouble being lazy, which is a difficult thing for a writer to overcome. Our careers – to say nothing of our incomes! – depend on us being self starters who have to be responsible for getting everything done when it is due.


And that’s hard to do at any time, let alone when warm weather has finally returned, and the song of the hot tub, or the pool, or the garden is heard in the land. Frankly, I much prefer being on the porch, a glass of iced tea beside me, watching the antics of doves, blue jays, cardinals and lots of little brown birds jockeying for supremacy at the bird feeder, and the squirrels hanging around at the bottom of the pole, hoping for some spillage. Sometimes a hawk will fly overhead and suddenly everyone disappears, either under the deck or into the leafy trees. Then, once the dark shadow is past, they’re back chowing down. There must be some sort of wildlife telegraph about sucker humans who put out free food, because every day there are more. I fully expect the next time I oversleep there will be a delegation knocking peremptorily at the patio door.


See? See how easy it is to wander off into current pleasure – especially when ‘current’ is so beautiful and enticing – when you should be concentrating on immediate deadlines. I have to finish one book, am halfway done on another, really need to do some research on a long-neglected non-fic history, format a special edition paperback for the goody bags at our SCV reunion in July and… I’m sure there are several other somethings, but can’t remember them at the moment. You see, the blue jays and the doves are having a ‘discussion’ about who is next at the feeder.


At least last week I presented my seminar on ‘The Secrets of Republishing Your Backlist’; it was tiring, but received quite well. I am still working on ‘Your Story – How to Write A Memoir’ that I’m giving at the end of the month in Arkansas. I think that’s all of them…


It’s so much more pleasant to sit and watch the Bird Wars, but that does not make a career. I really do have to be more disciplined. When I worked in a 9-5 job I would have fired an employee as easily distracted as I. Successful work depends on projects finished. Well, I do get my projects finished, but not in as timely a fashion as I might wish.
How do you get things done? Do you adhere to a strict by-the-hour schedule, or simply pants it, getting things done even if it means staying up all night, or something else? Let’s face it – no matter what system/systems we use, every once in a while an unkind Fate will dictate that for one reason or another we have to pull an all-nighter. Or two.


But we get it done. We’re writers, and we know what we have to do. Even when there are Bird Wars at the feeder, the temperature is perfect and the hot tub is calling seductively. We are writers.

Musing on the Moon and a Miracle

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by Janis Patterson

Today is Thursday. On Monday I experienced a miracle. A true miracle. I am fortunate enough to live in the path of totality of the Solar Eclipse. For several days thick clouds had been forecast (putting my husband into a fearsome temper – he had actually bought a special solar telescope for the event) and on Monday morning the sky was indeed thickly clouded. We had been invited to some friends’ house with an upper deck perfect for viewing; The Husband didn’t even want to go, saying it was a lost cause, but I insisted, so we did.


The whole group – about 10 people – was worried about the eclipse being invisible, but we went on and took our lunch up to the deck and had a lovely meal and good companionship and – Mirabile Dictu! – just about the time the event was supposed to start holes began to appear in the clouds. To make a long story short, we saw most of the eclipse. We did lose a little of the first part of it, but by about one-quarter of the first half there were only a few thin rags of clouds that really didn’t obscure the view. Seeing the dark circle that was the moon inexorably sliding across the face of the sun, nibbling away at the light, was incredible. Sometimes being seen through the thin scraps of cloud it was even more impressive.


The totality was perfectly visible – and perfectly magnificent. While it is both dangerous and extremely stupid to look at an eclipse without proper protective lenses (you can damage or lose your sight permanently), during the totality you can take a short – SHORT, like a couple of seconds – look because the visible corona is the gas, not the sun itself. Seeing that great dark circle, like a hole in the sky, surrounded by a sparkling halo of white is a sight like none other.
During the totality it is pure magic. The world darkens to a late evening hue, but it is not the same – there is a different quality to the light, an almost aqueous thickening unlike any moment in a regular day. One instantly thinks of fairyland or hidden realms – at least I did. The temperature drops perceptibly and there is a silence almost as if time itself has been suspended.


During the 2017 eclipse in Missouri we were set up in the parking lot of our hotel and there was a dog park for the guests. There were about a dozen dogs in residence and during the totality they went mad, barking and jumping and howling and almost knocking over the fence. I had always thought such a reaction was an old wives’ tale, but no – it happened. Perhaps the ‘old wives’ know a lot more than we give them credit for. There were no dogs where we were on Monday, so no chance of hearing any barking, but I did notice that there were no birds flying during the totality. Neither was there any wind, at least where we were, as if the entire world were caught in a gelatinous stasis.
The totality did not last long and the moon began a stately progression away from the face of the sun, inch by inch retreating and bringing back the light. Eclipse glasses went back on, movement resumed and the light became normal again.


I can see why primitive peoples went in such terror of eclipses. Even in our scientific era, when we know exactly why and how they happen and can predict its happening almost to the exact minute it is a wondrous and somewhat unnerving experience.


So what does all this have to do with writing? To be honest, not much. Oh, we can draw neat little moral aphorisms such as ‘expect a miracle’ or ‘never give up’ and they would be true, but really I just wanted to share the magic I felt. We can always use a little bit of magic, can’t we?

A New Year, A New Me?

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by Janis Patterson

Don’t worry – this isn’t going to be an evangelistic paean about how I’ve totally remade myself to claim a glorious and bounteous New Year and the rest of my life. That would be nice, though, but I’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work. For long, at least. I think my record is about two weeks.


No, I’m the same old curmudgeonly, opinionated, workaholic biddy I’ve always been. The only changes are that I am a year older and – for a blessed change – rested. From writing stuff, at least. I finished my 22 novel republishing blitz on 25 October. I was so tired (and cranky, I will admit) that The Husband insisted I take November and December off.
And that proved to be a good thing. I am indeed rested and the creative mind is starting to percolate again. I would like to say that my house is cleaner, but I don’t tell lies. Sadly, it probably never will be, as I totally lack the housekeeping gene… and I thought I’d never marry anyone who was as bad a housekeeper as I, but… A sterling man in every other way, but…


We spent the early part of December in Germany, redoing our favorite Christmas market tour, enjoying good German food and beer and a refreshingly enthusiastic attitude toward Christmas everywhere from the markets to the stores to the street decorations. And the people. Love the people.


It’s a good thing I had no other commitments, as since the third week of December I have been at war with Lufthansa airlines about their last-minute cancellation of the final leg of our inbound flight and the subsequent disappearance of our luggage. My bag was found – in the hands of a thief, no less – but The Husband’s is still among the missing. Not to go into details, Lufthansa has handled the thing very badly and withheld information we need if we are to go forward, information that none of the dozen or so of Lufthansa employees we talked to said we needed. Needless to say, it is going to get very ugly.


Back to writing. Aside from the Lufthansa unpleasantness it has been a lovely two months. Germany was – as always – beautiful and fun. My writing mind is unfolding and starting to bloom. I’ve contracted for two novellas – one a Regency romance for a ‘summer weddings’ anthology, the other a WWI mystery for an anthology centered on July 4th. The other novellas include the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWII and Viet Nam.


And that doesn’t address the two nearly-finished books of my own done for my own publishing company and a major new release that has to be stage-managed. I’m even considering releasing a compilation of my blog posts from years past. Plus, we’re off to Egypt again in a short time. This will be my 8th trip and this time I get to see Abu Simbel for the very first time! I’m so excited!


Sounds like I won’t be rested for very long.


A writer’s work is never done. But – it is a lot easier when you are rested both mentally and physically, even if that desirable state only lasts a short time. You have to let the well refill. A happy new year to all of you –

The Problems of Being Dumfungled

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by Janis Patterson

Dumfungled is a Scots word that means to be physically and mentally worn out, which is as good a definition of burn out as I’ve ever heard.


Burn out. It’s an ugly word, and an uglier truth, and right now I’m feeling like a charred match.


It’s been a tough year. On the personal front, I lost three long-time friends to Death, two of whom were younger than I. Now that The Husband is retired we have been traveling more, including a recent expedition to dig for diamonds in Arkansas. Yes, Arkansas. It seems that at a rough estimate 25% of the world’s surface diamonds are in the 40 +/- acres of the Crater of Diamonds State Park. Not that we found any – the only things I found were a couple of muscles I didn’t know I had. Ouch!


On a professional front, in case you’ve been living under a rock this year and missed my continual updates, I republished 22 reverted books – each freshly edited, freshly formatted and most with new covers – one every other Wednesday beginning on 15 January and the last one released 25 October.


That’s a lot of work, and a lot harder than you’d think, and because of it I only wrote two new books this year instead of my normal four or five. Oh, and just in case I get bored four dear friends and I are putting out our own anthology in the spring. (Follow this blog for more information…)


I’m tired.


I have a book that I would like to finish, a book I really like, but when I sit down to write it always seems that suddenly there is something else that absolutely demands to be done at that exact moment, like cleaning the dishwasher’s gasket or paste waxing the top of the dining table. I know, I know… escapism.


However, I’m proud of what I have accomplished. Those books are out there, and they will be there for as long as I want them to be.


And to reward myself, I am taking the rest of the year off. My kitchen and office both need excavating, my wardrobe desperately needs some attention and as I sorely need a distraction The Husband is taking us to Germany in December to see the Christmas Markets. He says I need to see something outside the parameters of my computer screen. I didn’t argue!


So this is my last blog for 2023. I’ll be back in January, probably with lots of tales about Germany, and hopefully with a couple of ideas for new books… and the enthusiasm to actually write them!
Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2024!