The Cornered Poet

On occasion, two of my favorite PBS shows--The News Hour and Moyers & Company--will interview a poet. I love that someone in the media gives poetic art a spotlight now and then. Poetry gets a bum rap in our society. People who appreciate it are often considered elitists. Like opera and symphonic music, it's not associated with the masses. Yet a mere century or two ago, it wouldn't be uncommon to receive a letter with a couplet or more penned just for you. Show of hands: when was the last time you received a poem in an email?

Thinking about this today, it occurs to me that poetry started becoming unpopular about the time that TV took over our lives. Is there a connection?

Yes. Poets should never, EVER be allowed to read their own works aloud on TV. Or anyone else's poems, for that matter. For Pete's sake, PBS, if you want to show America how nifty poetry can be, hire an actor to read those lines, will you?

90% of the poets I've heard all read in the same horrible, pseudo-dramatic monotone voice, stressing each word equally, pausing where it makes no sense. And they all read from a page or book, no matter how short the poem, so rarely do their faces show delight or sadness or joy or any other emotion.

Most writers of prose are no better at reading aloud, yet authors are often asked to read from their works. I, for one, know my lack of acting skill is going to cost me book sales, so if I must, I only read a few paragraphs. Even if I get through it without stuttering, I end up sounding self-conscious or self-important, all the while completely conscious of every restless movement and cough from the audience.

Once on a panel of authors, where we were supposed to read excerpts, I suggested we read each other's. Much easier to do justice to a friend's work. But I was voted down. Two authors read whole chapters. The audience yawned and looked at their watches. Hardly any books were sold that night.

So please, don't judge a book or poem by the author's reading of it. Instead of asking the writer to read, ask what was so intriguing and exciting about the subject or theme or plot or idea that made the author need to write it. Then go read it yourself.

I'll end with a bit of poesy, part of a parody of Shakespeare's Sonnet #80, to all my favorite authors. If you read it aloud, skip the bad Lawrence Olivier impersonation and just have fun.

O, how I curse when I sit down to write,

Knowing a better talent doth use your name,
And when I read your stuff late in the night,
I wake up tongue-tied, typing words so lame...
Your least e-mail is poetry afloat,

Whilst I behind a wordless screen doth hide,
And being stuck, I snarf choc'late and quote
Him of Puck's jest and Hamlet's homicide...

Peace,
Elena

Caroline Todd On Short Story Ideas

My guest today is Caroline Todd, half of the formidable bestselling writing team called Charles Todd, authors of both the Inspector Rutledge and Bess Crawford mystery series, set during and after World War I. Their Rutledge novel A LONELY DEATH was an instant bestseller. Bess Crawford's A BITTER TRUTH made its debut last summer.

 

Caroline and I have worked together on many DEATH KNELL short story anthologies. As our Sisters in Crime chapter hatches plans for a fifth DEATH KNELL, I asked Caroline to share her expertise in the short story realm for our Sisters. I pass along her wisdom here..

Short Story Ideas

by Caroline Todd

Everyone says that short stories are harder to write than a novel.  I can tell you from my own experience that it isn’t true.  The real difference is the plot.  Some plots are best in a novel, where there’s ample room for character development and red herrings and lots of action, etc.  If you’ve read Harry Potter, you can see why it took not one novel but several to follow Harry as he learned to be a wizard.  Other plots have no need for greater development.  They can be told in 1/10 the number of words.

Look at a sit com, for instance. There’s one story line and one set of characters. The problem, whatever it is—getting a date, preparing for the in laws to visit, looking for a job—can be dealt with in one half hour show.  LAW & ORDER  has more convoluted plots, more characters, and it needs an hour.  Have you ever wondered what would happen if you went off to work one morning, and  the small apartment building’s outer door is locked as usual, but there’s a body lying by the mailboxes?  Once your shock is over, and the police have gone, would you start to worry about the other residents—and whether one of them killed the man?  Would you look at them differently? And would you see suspicious behavior in several of them?  Maybe one of them had already seen the body, but for personal reasons didn’t want to get involved, and so he went back upstairs instead of calling the police.  Maybe the young woman in Number 6 who used to smuggle her boyfriend in so that the other people in the building wouldn’t know she was having an affair with a married man, had a falling out with him and stabbed him.  When you try to talk to the older woman in Number 5, she nearly bites your head off.  And then someone comes to your door that night and tries to get in. What do you do? 

Plots like this can start out in so many different ways.  First person, third person, it depends on what fits the story best.  And what kind of story is it—traditional, police procedural, suspense, horror?  For instance a horror story would have a dead former resident coming back to kill the present apartment owner.  Procedural would take it from the point of view of a new policeman on the block, not one of the apartment folks.  Traditional would let the woman who found the body solve the crime.  Suspense comes with the knock on the apartment door. What did you do last week?  Take your car into a garage for work? Go to the dry cleaners? Have dinner in a small new restaurant?  Walk along the Brandywine River?  Any one of those apparently harmless errands could lead to a tidy little murder. And not everyone will see them in the same light.  Another way to deal with a short story is to take one of your favorites and outline it.  Not to copy but to analyze.  To see how a published author took a single idea and turned it into a very interesting story. 

Writing is like knitting or running marathons or cooking an Italian dinner or anything else you love.  It takes a little work to do it well. And here you have a chance for your first publication!  Handed to you by your local chapter! Did you know that when the first Death Knell came out, most of the authors weren’t published?  Did you know that some of them went on to win awards and see their novels published? If you want to try to write, there’s no better place to start out than with your Sisters, who will help you, advise you, and never laugh at you, however rough your first attempt.  Nobody can ask for more than that.

Caroline Todd

How Dumb Do You Think I Am?

Last night a guy came to my door at supper time, just as it was getting dark. He said he was finishing up a job in my neighborhood and... That's where I rolled my eyes and shut the door. One of the oldest scams in the book is a guy saying he has materials left over from another job so he can give you a great deal if you want the same work done on your home. You pay him half up front and he never returns. Or he's just looking for a peek inside your house so he knows if it's worth coming back to break in.

If you insist on trying to scam or rob me, give me a good original plot line.

Our neighborhood's had a rash of these shady visitors lately. Hey, times are hard and a person has to make a buck. Why not turn to crime when people seem to be getting more gullible everyday?

I get email constantly from folks who write fiction just like me. They simply don't come out and admit it. Today a guy said he was writing from a bank in the United Kingdom, telling a long (and I mean LONG) involved tale about me being heir to 8,375,000 pounds. Yesterday, a nice terse note from a different sender said I'd inherited a mere 5 million pounds. That was the poor side of my family, no doubt.

Does anyone actually BELIEVE these emails and answer them?

Apparently lots of spam emails are believed, because friends of mine have forwarded me all kinds of Internet threats, "true stories" of "real people," and political "facts" meant to push all my emotional buttons. Most I've already seen and I can reply, saying "This isn't true" -- stopping myself short of saying, "You of all people ought to have seen through that." Even when I haven't seen the story before, usually one quick search on Snopes.com tells me I've once again been hit with, to put it politely, an urban legend.

One email last week even had a P.S. at the bottom saying the original sender had checked it out on Snopes and the story was absolutely true. I clicked on his Snopes link, which took me to the Snopes search summary page. The summary did indeed begin "...this is true." It was a quote from the email being send out as spam, nothing else. If you clicked on the summary, it took you to the real Snopes page, which told you the story was a mixture of true and false information. The main statements and conclusions were false.

On Facebook the other day, the page for my town's chamber of commerce posted a warning that cell phones number would be handed over to telemarketers within days. That false rumor's been going around the Internet since 2004, yet here it was, coming from a source most people would consider reliable.

Between that and all the political lies and distortions (from both parties) being flung around, not only on ads but on network news and even PBS, I've decided that truth is pretty much obsolete, if it was ever popular at all. So I think I'll start listing my novels as non-fiction. Like Dan Brown, I'll start each with the word FACT, then say something that isn't true. Yeah, that'll grab 'em.

I'm not making this up.
Elena

Mouse Turds on the Cheese

(and Other Disgusting Historical Details)

I'VE spent the last two weeks in the 17th century.

My Possessed Mysteries are half historical, with a different era in each novel. That means starting historical research from scratch with each new project. Until I understand the world in which my period characters lived, I can't begin writing.

Think of it this way, human beings make lists. When we wake in the morning, we have in our minds what has to be done that day. Fridge getting a bit barren? Grocery shopping. Last pair of clean undies? Laundry. Car has less than a quarter tank? Get gas. And maybe a hope for something enjoyable when work is done--a nice meal, a walk, a movie, a good book.

Before my historical narrators open their mouths to speak, I need to know what kind of lists they wake up with. I've realized that, until now, most of my main historic characters have lived in circumstances where they depend on others to provide for them or at least, tell them where they need to be each day. For instance, in BY BLOOD POSSESSED, my protagonist is in the Confederate Army. Being a pawn moved around a  battlefield, the character can't plan for food and clothing, and needs be alert and resourceful in supplementing the meager army supplies. Which leaves the mind more free time to plot revenge.

For the fifth book, though, I'm picturing a woman living on a farm along the Chesapeake around the year 1700. What she did and didn't accomplish each day might determine in part whether or not residents of the farm survived. Her head would be filled with chores that needed to be done: daily chores like mucking out animal pens and milking cows, weekly chores like making bread, and seasonal chores like sowing the garden. Sure, I've done living history and I plant my own garden each year, but there are so many details, like butter making, that are completely foreign to my experience. And frankly, I'm having trouble getting into the head of someone who has to be that organized simply to stay alive.

So this past week, besides reading up on recipes and clothes and diaries of the period, I watched a 12 part BBC series called Tales from the Green Valley. Five historians lived on a 17th century farm on the Welsh border for a year, running it as it would have been run in 1628. This was an excellent series, filling in many of the details necessary for writing historic fiction (some of them truly gross--for example, using fermented urine as a stain remover). I highly recommend this documentary to anyone who likes history.

I now have 30 pages of notes and more questions to look up, but a believable character is emerging at last, along with the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the period.

Peace,
Elena

Historical Eating

My Possessed mystery novels are half-historical, and feature a present-day heroine, Pat Montella, whose chief hobby is cooking. It stands to reason that Pat would eventually become fascinated with historical recipes, and that I'd have to delve more into that branch of research for each book.

In POISON TO PURGE MELANCHOLY, Pat learns what goes into elaborate 18th century dinner parties. You have to love an era that believed in two dessert courses. Research for this involved not only studying colonial cookbooks and experimenting with recipes, but eating out at Philadelphia's City Tavern and all of Historic Williamsburg's taverns. One must suffer for one's art.

But it's not all fancy viands. Pat's latest adventure, FEAR ITSELF, takes place partially in 1933. I had to research what immigrant Italian families on the poor side of town ate in the midst of the Great Depression. My parents were my main resources here.

My dad and his brothers' did odd jobs for the macaroni factory down the street and were paid in pasta and Parmesan. Not having meat, their mother varied her tomato sauce each night--sometimes adding onions or lentils or peas, or whatever beans were on sale that week. Once in a while his dad would bring home a chicken for Sunday dinner. One chicken to feed a family of 10.

My mom's family was smaller--only 5--but also poorer. My grandmother would scramble an egg or two in tomato sauce to make a sort of lumpy stew. (My mom used to make this for me for lunch sometimes. With decent sauce and grated cheese, it's actually a great warm meal on a winter's day.) If they could get bologna, my grandmother would fry it with egg to make it go farther. My grandpop eventually got a job at a bakery. I'm guessing he brought home bread, but my mom only recalled the warm donuts.

Just this month, I found a great blog on the subject of eating through history called Four Pounds Flour. Historic gastronomist Sarah Lohman covers topics from importing in the early 19th century to the roots of the Jello shot. Once in a while, she bravely engages in culinary living history, such as eating like a poor 1877 tenement dweller for a week, or her "Drink Like A Colonial American" day.  I highly recommend this blog, especially for all you historical fiction writers out there who spend tons of time researching wardrobe, vehicles, houses, etc., but take food for granted.

Besides, food research is fun.

I think I'll have go have eggs in tomato sauce for lunch. Find the recipe on Miss Maggie's Facebook page.

Mangia,
Elena

Musings Stirred Up By a January Wind

I'm sitting in an old farmhouse in rural New Jersey. When I left home last Tuesday, the streets of my town were lined with greenish-brown Christmas trees, put out for the trashman. Here, right across the road, are rows of live evergreens, part of a veritable Christmas tree ranch, its herd of spruces and pines grazing under the winter sun.

Back home, when I gaze from my window, I see a fairly constant parade of cars, pedestrians and neighbors' pets. Here, a vehicle passes by maybe five times a day. Otherwise, the only movement on the landscape is created by the January wind, swirling the big rhododendrons beside the house, quaking the shriveled, black leaves that cling to shrubs by a thread, making the tall brown grasses over in the tree pasture billow like the ocean.

Back home my nearest neighbors are on the other side of a cinder block firewall. Here, they're a quarter mile away.

Mulling over these comparisons recalls to mind two things. First, a conversation I had with the editor of Double Cross. She grew up in the city and her feeling was that a small town placed in the middle of the wilderness (which I used as a setting in the novel) automatically has sinister overtones because of its remoteness. I didn't agree.

The other memory is from last week's reading matter. I was researching old Celtic and newer Wiccan beliefs for my next Pat Montella book. Much of what I read stressed the view that humans are a part of nature and shouldn't try to master it or fight it. While reading these materials, I was reminded how much I used to love hiking and bird-watching and star-gazing and rock hunting, even simply sitting by a quiet stream listening to the water. I used to love nature and spent a little time each week enjoying it. I realized, except for working in my garden, I hadn't spent many hours outside in the last few years. So one of my New Year's resolutions is to change that and get back to nature. Which, at least, should help me write the novel.

Sitting here, I suppose I can understand why someone might think this house—a good distance from its neighbors and remote from the nearest town—might make a sinister location for a story. But I think man brings all things sinister with him. This place is lovely and peaceful, which seems to be good for my imagination.

In fact, I can almost picture tree cowboys riding in to roundup those evergreens next fall, to drive them northwest to Philly for the Yuletide season. That would be a sight to see.

Yep, I definitely need to get out more this year.

Peace,

(and thanks to Robin Hathaway for sharing her solitude)

Elena

Luck in the New Year

If you're eating a piece of toast and a dental crown pops out, it's a minor nuisance. You have to interrupt your week with a dental appointment. You brace yourself, in case the dentist tells you the crown has to be replaced, turning the incident into a major nuisance and unscheduled hit to your budget. Still, you take care of it and move on.

BUT, let that crown pop out on December 31 or on the following day or two, and the event morphs into an omen for the coming year. Me? I started the year with a crater where a molar should be. Bad karma seems inevitable, right?

I realized how pervasive this kind of superstition is when I heard friends and kin view the bad or good occurrences of the last few days in the same portentous light. My brother's oven blew a circuit New Year's Day (despite the fact that he was cooking good luck foods like pork and sauerkraut). Had it happened next week or 2 weeks ago, all he'd have is a broken appliance. Happening when it did, it could portend 52 weeks of, I don't know, undercooked food or something.

Traditional bad omens on New Year's Day include an east wind (which brings famine and calamities), carrying anything out of your house (I took brownies to a party, curse it), doing laundry (no problem there), and failing to make loud noises at midnight (to scare off evil spirits). The tradition of noise making for good luck has been around for thousands of years. In POISON TO PURGE MELANCHOLY, I showed the colonial American version, which was shooting off guns at dawn (also done on Christmas morning). My neighbors shoot off serious fireworks, ensuring we'll all start the year deaf, at least. I ring jingle bells, being more musical.

For good luck in 2012, you should have filled your larder and stuffed your wallet full of money (I wonder if it matters if it's someone else's money?). You should have paid all your debts before midnight December 31st, and seen the year in wearing a new garment. The first person you let into your house should have been tall, dark-haired and male (I wish).

You can read more good and bad New Year's omens at Snopes.com. If you know of any others, put them in the comments below.

Wishing you peace in the New Year,
Elena