Rest in Peace, P.D. James

It's interesting to observe how the death of someone you've never met can profoundly affect your emotions.

When I learned about the death of P.D. James, I felt a little bit of my own breath slip out into the ether. No, I never met James, but her work as a mystery writer steered me to read a genre I had yet to start. While titles featuring her most notable investigator, the poetry-writing Adam Dalgliesh all eventually found a home on my bookshelves, it was Cordelia Gray who caught my eye one day at the Flamingo branch of the Clark County Library. My arms were burdened down with science fiction when I spotted An Unsuitable Job for a Woman on the table where I'd unloaded my week's finds.

"Cool title," I said to myself, thinking about the unsuitable job I had to report to on a daily basis. Without even looking at the cover blurbs, I plopped the book on my pile, completing my two-week reading list to a total of seven books.

I decided to read the James book first and within a few chapters, I was caught, mesmerized by the character development, the meticulous plotting, the subtle but necessary backstory and the vivid descriptions of a country I'd never visited.

Off to the library the next day, I returned all the science fiction and picked up four more James titles, took them home and devoured them.

What really caught my attention in these books was the way James wove little incidences into the fabric of her plot. Nothing happened without reason. There were no coincidences. There were no minor characters showing up and going away, never to be heard from again. Her style was tight; her sentence structure impecable, her major characters human, slightly flawed, dedicated.

While I'm sure I don't measure up to James' expertise, I realize how much her process seeped into my own writing. My own former detective, Andrew Atkins, doesn't believe in coincidences, he takes the lint and string and torn pieces of fabric of life and tries to weave it back into whole cloth. He doesn't write poetry but he does have a deep appreciation for music, particularly classical and opera. Like Adam Dagliesh, Atkins knows the cloth will never be as it was before the crime, and while it won't be perfect, like life, it will go on to be useful again.

Since that first P.D. James novel, I've read all her books, watched all the movies on PBS, and waited for the next release. Of course, unless she hid some unpolished or finished manuscripts in some drawer in her writing room, there will be no more.

P.D. James died on  27 November 2014 at the age of 94. As I stated in the beginning, I never met her but I am ever so grateful for having met her work.


*** Read theTerry Gross PBS Interview with P.D. James online.

A character, a plot, a story – where do they come from?

Driving today. Stopped at traffic signal. Black vehicle eased up behind me then slid to the left and drew alongside.

This car wasn’t spiffed up and pimped out to look like hot wheels from the hood. It was stripped bare of all identification. No model, no make, no dealer identification. Even the hubcaps had been bared of a manufacturer’s imprint.

“Now there’s a creative fellow,” I said to myself. I was assuming the driver was male because this was definitely a masculine vehicle.

And that’s how an entire conversation began in my head … one that is now the outline for a novel.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, the entire story evolved.

It’s a cliché, I know, but the owner of this car certainly was thinking outside the box when he customized his vehicle. And that’s how characters, plots, and stories begin for me. It’s not likely I’ll ever see this car again on the streets of Las Vegas but I’ll be seeing it quite a bit in my head as I put the words in print.

I’m no longer surprised by the fact that any everyday occurrence can turn into a piece of fiction.

A new use for an old word

Sunday evening, after dinner with friends, I learned a new word. Actually, I knew the definition before I knew the word it to which it belonged. We were discussing how people in groups interact with each other and I wondered how we might interact with a person in our own group who recently had fallen into our disfavor. One of my friends suggested that our next get-together, I should use the sociogram to see how the evening plays out.

(By the way, I’m not the only entity that didn’t recognize the word sociogram. Microsoft Word noted it as a mistake but couldn’t find an alternate suggestion.)

I thought this might be an interesting experiment.

Take all the characters in your manuscript. Without regard to seating arrangements and without your own preference, put them at a table. Then see who focuses on whom, who speaks to whom and who seems to float alone without interaction.

I think this might point to some better plotting and character development and might point out some flaws in your writing.

Then I thought of taking the experiment to the next step – rearranging the seating according to how the characters actually interact in the manuscript. Who would choose to sit with whom (and why)? Who would avoid whom (and why)? Who might eventually stand up and exchange his or her seat (and why)? And who might not even belong at the dinner (and why)?

(It's rather pricey, but here's a book that goes into great detail about the

sociogram. It might be useful to writers.)

I have a feeling these two experiments will prove useful. Any thoughts?

Character building, sort of …

In another life, I worked a service job, the graveyard shift, a gig that left me with plenty of down time. One day the swing shift worker left behind a romance novel, a short thing, maybe 180 pages, by a major romance publisher.

Having studied literature in my post-graduate days, I’d never read this genre before so I picked it up and started reading, finishing it before the day shift arrived. Didn’t like it. Didn’t think it was trash. Thought it was simple-minded. Was intrigued. How, I wondered, did someone write something so ordinary and get it published.

I left a note for the book’s owner to tell her I’d appreciate it if she would leave the book for one more night. It was sitting on the desk when I returned to work. I’d already decided I could write a better book; all I needed was to look at the formula.

I tore that book apart. I counted the words in each chapter then broke each chapter down. It didn’t take long. All I had to do was read the first paragraph and the last paragraph of each chapter.

I thought about this for the weekend.

Understand, I wasn’t trying to diminish the craft of romance writing. I was thinking the world deserved a better romance book.

So, on Monday night, armed with a pen and two legal yellow pads, I started my novel. It was a slow week at the desk. I wrote the last sentence on Friday morning just before checking out to go home.  Over the weekend, I took my trusty old manual typewriter and committed the words to bond paper, not changing a single word.  (Actually, it took two weekends to finish.) Then I looked up the publisher’s address, bundled the manuscript in a large manila envelope, tucked in a self-addressed envelope and stuck it in the mail.




Now for the surprise. Three weeks later I received a response, a personalized letter of rejection from the publisher (I still have that letter somewhere in my cluttered home office.)
How  she liked my work but that it needed spiffing up (my words, not hers). The major criticism was about one character she thought was too stereotypical and that one of the acts committed by my heroine didn’t fit the model. She explained both points in detail and suggested I do some rewrite and then resubmit.

I didn’t. I wasn’t really interested in being a romance writer but even weirder, I might have accepted the challenge but I just didn’t relish having to retype the whole manuscript. Also, I was young, had dreams of writing the Great American Novel (don’t we all?) and didn’t know any better. (If I got that kind of rejection today, I’d glue myself down in front of my laptop and start following the letter’s advice.)

The upside of all this is that I learned a lesson about writing, a lesson about developing characters.

Stay tuned ….