Thoughts on a Writing Career

Chris Redding, who writes the Nerds Saving the World series, asked me a series of thoughtful questions. With some variation, I thought I’d share the answers on my own blog.

How long have you been writing?
I wrote simply for pleasure for years, and in the mid-1980s I started taking classes, initially in play and screen writing. I wrote with the intention of selling at some point, but didn't have a timeframe. I wish I had set one earlier.

What was the best writing advice someone gave you? 
The late Davey Marlin Jones was a stage director and movie critic for decades. I took some classes from him at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD.

 It's pretty basic, but one evening when we were peppering him with questions he just looked around the room and said, "You know they call them shows, not tells." Anytime I get too wordy I think about that.

What was the worst? Did you know it at the time?

The 'write what you know' business. What I know is boring. Half the fun of writing is picking a setting or subject that you can learn something about as you write, or prepare to write.

How did you pick the genre you write in?

I think cozy mysteries picked me - though that's not all I do. My mother read all the women mystery writers of her day -- Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, some Agatha Christie. Then she'd talk about them, or mention her own ideas for how to fool mystery readers.  So I guess I was introduced to the genre early.

How many rejections have you received?

I could paper a bedroom, or a New York efficiency with the ones from the late 1980s to mid-1990s. A few with the first book of the Jolie Gentil series (a book that is probably 50% different than the way Appraisal for Murder turned out by the time  I revised a few times).

For a long time I kept the rejections, especially any that offered encouragement. At some point I decided that there was something to learn from the process, but it dealt more with publishing than writing. About six years ago I stopped sending anything out, and just wrote what I wanted.

I think my writing got better when I stopped reading publisher guidelines and trying to write to them

Why did you decide to self-publish some of your fiction?

I've published nonfiction with a traditional publisher, and it's neat to work with industry professionals and have someone besides me market my book. Initially,  I picked a setting (New Jersey beaches) and developed characters I wanted to work with over time, and I let some of my characters have a sense of humor similar to mine.

This is style I'm going to write for now, and I knew the Jolie Gentil series probably would not sell millions of copies, so why might a publisher buy it? If I had been 30 I might have been willing to shop it around for a good while, but I was 60, and I didn't feel like waiting.

I realize that sounds a bit arrogant, as if I assumed a publisher would want the books if I just pushed hard enough. I enjoy what I write, and people do buy the books.

Of course, all of this is possible because of e-books and print on demand. I would never have considered loading up my garage with 50 boxes of books and driving across country to sell them.

I’ve added the River’s Edge series, set in rural Southeast Iowa. These are still cozy mysteries in the sense that murders occur off screen, so to speak. However, the books are a bit more like traditional mysteries.  

The protagonist, Melanie Perkins, gets into autopsy reports and is less inclined to hang out with friends. Humor is still a component. I have a hard time writing mysteries without it. This series is with Annie Acorn Publishing, and I’ve just finished the draft of the second book.

Do you inject any real-world events in your books?

Interesting question, especially now. I had a low-grade hurricane in Any Port in a Storm, and I used the aftermath of Sandy in Trouble on the Doorstep. It was a life (and shoreline) changing event for the Jersey shore, and I thought that I would trivialize it by ignoring it.

For the River’s Edge series, I draw on what I learned living in Southeast Iowa, especially as it pertains to life along the Des Moines River. I don’t know any murdered newspaper publishers, as was featured in Newsprint to Footprints. However, I learned a lot about small-town papers from Van Buren County news editors.

An earlier version of this appeared on Chris Redding’s blog, and can be seen at http://chrisredddingauthor.blogspot.com/2012/11/authorsday-elaine-orr.html
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My Mother's Lessons in Political Civility

The first thing I remember about the Kennedy-Nixon election is my parents sitting my oldest brother and me (ages 8 and 10) in front of the television for the presidential debate. She said, "You don't have to listen much, but you have to see this. It may never happen again."

I remember nothing else about the campaign (conducted before twenty-four hour news and raucous campaigning) except that Kennedy was Catholic (as we were) and a kid in the neighborhood thought he would do what the Pope said.

Rita and Miles in 1960.

The most striking memory is from the morning after the election, when Mom said, "Don't brag about Mr. Kennedy if you go to the Crocket's. They wanted Mr. Nixon and they will be sad." Sad, she said sad, so it must have really mattered to our next-door neighbors.

She was teaching respect for people with different views, something she did in thousands of ways on every topic (political or not) that came up. The big exception was in 1968 when George Wallace ran on his segregation platform. Wallace was "one-hundred percent wrong."

She did remark, several times, that he changed his thinking by his later term as Alabama governor. "Always be willing to change your mind." She didn't say that as often, since she usually examined all options before she spoke hers.

Both my parents voted for the person not the party, though they were pronounced Democrats. Mother pointed out that Maryland's Senator Charles Mathias and Congressman Gilbert Gude were "very good Republicans," for whom she voted.

I believe Rita Rooney Orr made her most prophetic comment in the early 1970s. We were watching Walter Cronkite talk about the Watergate hearings and she said, "All over the country right now children are hearing their parents scream obscenities about the president of the United States. America will never be the same."

She wasn't talking as much about Nixon as disrespect for the office of president. She was right, and perhaps even more so about disrespect for presidential candidates.

If she were alive and Donald Trump were nearby, she'd give him one of her very rare spankings -- probably without the warning that always accompanied them. My single one was for convincing a younger brother to ride down the steps in a cardboard box. She always said a spanking hurt the parent more than the child, but she would likely not have been pained by the one for Mr. Trump.

In fairness, Trump's lack of civility is not unique. It is, however, far more damaging to the nation than a collective disdain for Watergate. It encourages a level of "us versus them" thinking that I don't believe has ever been seen in our nation.

Such thinking can only grow.

There may one day be two respected men or women running for the office who vow to conduct a campaign based on issues without any childish rhetoric. I long for an election like that, but my fear is that it will take a national tragedy to bring it. Not necessarily a political tragedy, maybe an earthquake that kills tens of thousands and destroys much of a region. We'll have to work together to absorb the violent shaking of lives and the economy. A 9.0 disaster in some form.

I wish my mother's civility on all families. I also wish she had been wrong about the rarity of presidential campaign debates.
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