Maine Crime Writers

Read, Write, Reverse, Repeat.

If you want to be a writer, you need to do two things. You need to read and write. And then do it in reverse. And repeat. That’s all. Simple.

In Stephen King’s book, On Writing, he espouses that reading is breathing in, and writing is breathing out. Reading is the intake of oxygen that nourishes the creative output of writing. You cannot be a writer unless you read and write. It is that simple.

That being said, it is important not to read and regurgitate. The reading must be tossed around in your mind, molded, shaped, reformed—and emerge as your individual creation.

And you cannot agonize over every page, every paragraph, every sentence, and every word. You must read to nourish your creativity, and then let it flow in the form it wants to take. There will be time later for tinkering.

Read, Write, Reverse, Repeat.

AND DON’T FORGET! One lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bundle of books!

There are some novels that have crimes in them that are not crime novels. Then there are some novels that have crimes in them that are crime novels. So what’s the difference?

Maybe this isn’t the right blog to do it, but I’ve started writing a different kind of novel, something more family oriented and uplifting, but with a crime being the hub by which all the action revolves around, if you want to call it action. So is it a crime novel? My natural writing instincts are to veer in that familiar path. But my creative side is telling me to go in a completely different direction.

The problem with being an established crime writer is that we get pigeonholed in our genre. Now there’s nothing wrong with that if writing crime is what you aspire to for the rest of your life. Once you land an agent that agent”s interests are narrow in scope, especially if the writer he or she represents has a history of writing in that genre. Only the big time writers get to write in different genres: James Patterson, John Grisham, Colson Whitehead, Thomas Pynchon.

This is not to say that I want to completely abandon writing crime novels. I started my career writing horror and transitioned to crime, which is what I’d always wanted to write. But at this stage of my career I feel the need to try something different. Hey, if I want to win my Pulitzer or National Book Award, I won’t get it writing genre fiction, which to be honest is a bad rap. Because I find that some of the best writers come from the crime family tree. I’ve always believed that George V. Higgins deserved one for his novel THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE.

Since my agent retired last year, this has put me in a quandary. Do I need two separate agents, one for my crime fiction and one for my other novel? Will I even finish this new novel I’m working on? I can’t think any of those matters right now. If I’m going to do it, now is the time for me to try something different.

Writing novels and getting published is getting harder and harder, especially in the age of AI. What challenges are you finding as you get older? What new opportunities are you looking to explore? Let me know what you think of my dilemma. Any advice will help.

Oh, and Book 2 of my crime trilogy, CRUEL TO BE KIND is now available.

Best,

Joe

In Los Angeles

I hate to admit it,  but I needed a wake up call. I got stuck in my latest crime/mystery novel and fell a bit into allowing the distraction of the world’s off-kilter, askew-ness, imbalance, WTF-ness, wake-up-and-smell-the-stinky-coffee-ness, kick-in-the-head-realization-that-the-mind-divide-of-my-fellow-human-beings-is-wide-ness to grab my attention. This has made my progress slower than normal. Distraction. I love the “work” of writing and being stuck (and distracted) is not fun and getting jolted out of it is great.

This trip to Los Angeles to see our kid has been a good and healthy thing. Let me tell you why:

My daughter, Lil, has a great sense of humor.  Dry.  Quick. Sometimes silly. Rarely cruel in her observations on life and people. She’s living in the town she was born in – Los Angeles and she has chosen a tough career – comedy. Not the stand-up kind (but I get the feeling she is moving into this (but I don’t pry – as my friend reminds me – the best after-eighteen parenting is benign neglect). In high school (in Los Angeles) she did theater (musicals, dramas, comedies) but she also started going to an IMPROV workshop and continued that in college in Boston.

She moved to Chicago and (in three years) worked her way up to the Main Stage of Second City – one of the premiere comedy sketch venues in USA.

Some of these faces above you’ll recognize as Second City former performers that eventually got national/international recognition.

Now, Lil’s back living in LA, she performed at UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade). UCB is ALL improv (not written sketches that you memorize and then might jump off from), so it’s about knowing the technique of how to get a beginning, middle and end and making a cohesive piece of comedy that will hold together just using your chops and thinking on your feet.

Now she is in the Sunday Company at the Groundlings – pretty much all sketches – it’s the other premiere sketch comedy venue in the USA. Some of the faces that have come out of the Groundlings that you might recognize:

 I’ve met a lot of her ‘comedy’ friends and, off-stage, they are a very serious bunch. They work their asses off and commit to an insane writing schedule. They’re writing/observing/working on ideas all the time, ‘cause comedy and sketches can be ephemeral – if they are topical, they may only live in one performance, if they are more based on ebbs and flows and oddities of humankind, they can last longer and be tweaked and repeated. But you always want to give the audience “the new” –

Poster outside theater where our kid and her cohorts are performing now.  Our kid is in the top right in all black.

                  Here’s her schedule at the Groundlings (there are 10 people in the comedy troupe, so each is going through/doing the same thing). You’ll see there is no time for distraction:

• MONDAY: Each comes up with 3-4 sketches (in the best possible world, sketches that have beginnings, middles and ends, last around 5 minutes and reflect on the vicissitudes and crazy, odd elements of life, ones that will make people laugh, think, hopefully see something in a new way, etc etc.). Each person writes their sketches, character bios, figure out who in the comedy team would be good in the sketch along with them, cast them, list what props/sets/costumes they will need.
  • Do “day job” work too (comedy, at the level she’s at which is quite respected, doesn’t pay well)
  • Specifically for my kid: Work on her “other” comedy show that she is contracted to produce/perform in twice a year at a cool theater near the LA River (this is a two-hour multi-cast “play” called THE BABY: RADIO MYSTERY HOUR.
  • This April trip was planned so we (hubby and I) could see the next installment of this play – it was wild fun with live “foley” (sound effects), a theatre of 200 which was sold-out (which is good because she wrote it with another person and they produced it too and thus get a cut of the house – a mini-mini-mini-ka-ching).
• TUESDAY: Polish the Groundlings work and write one more sketch in case the Monday ones don’t impress the director.
  • Do “day job” work that pays most of the rent and prepare other performance/comedy stuff.
• WEDNESDAY: Pitch day.  3 pm to midnight. At the Groundlings theatre, pitch sketches to the director and pitch why they are “worthy”.  Of course, the director (like our publishers/editors) has his/her own taste and the director now is in charge of making a choice that affects their lives and hard work. Cold-read sketches with the other actors/comedians and act in the other members of the company’s sketches.
  • Day job
  • Other comedy stuff/writing
• THURSDAY: Director (using his/her own taste) chooses the 10-12 sketches that “make the show”. He gives notes to the writers of those sketches. (So the possibility of having your sketch chosen is dear – about one in four?). The unchosen get put into the “maybe next show pile” and that can suck.
  • Day job
  • etc
• FRIDAY: Rewrite day according to director’s notes and get all the elements needed for the sketch nailed down, get the costumer/musical director (there is an in-house band), stage manager, lighting and sound people all set
  • Day job
  • etc
• SUNDAY:   ALL DAY. 10 am to 7 pm rehearsal.  Show starts at 7:30 pm and it’s always sold out (really nice theater on Melrose Ave in Hollywood seats about 150 people) and remind self that there’s no wiggle – you have to be on tippy toes of fast comebacks and fun comedy and fulfill the sketch while responding to the audience… (Basically don’t do something stupid like break up with your loved one that morning…)
• And then MONDAY is there again, and it starts all over.

So this trip to LA has been great for me. To see how hard these young comedians work, how many ideas they have to generate and commit to and write, to see them work together, and see them always pushing forward and supporting each other and then blowing off steam at local bars or gatherings.

Back to not letting the grass, fertilized by a world I worry about, grow under my feet.

Her writing life is  really a lot like we go through.  Not that week to week “end of a project” (we tend to take 6-12 months  for a full project?) – but it’s the same sort of grind, excitement, generation of ideas and support  –

Speaking of support – MAINE CRIME WAVE is May 30!!!  Saturday!!!!  Mechanics Hall in Portland Maine. 8:30 for coffee/gather and then 9 -4:30 or so.  So many great panels and workshops and chance to talk to fellow authors!  SIGN UP NOW!   And consider starting the “gather days” on Friday night – May 29th  –  NOIR AT THE BAR at Bellflower Brewery (66 Cove Street in Portland)-  Maine Writers reading from their work and prizes and a lot of fun.  Info at the website below!

https://www.mainewriters.org/maine-crime-wave