What gets easier when you stop trying so hard?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: For the last week I’ve been in warm, lovely Key West Florida enjoying the company of dear friends and my grandkids who are on school break and happy to spend 24/7 in a swimming pool. 

My granddaughter has been swimming competitively after school, and the first thing she wanted to know was: how many laps would she have to swim to make a mile. It’s a lot.

She then proceeded to swim that many laps, stroke after stroke, skimming through the water, apparently effortlessly. Flip turn at the end of each lap. Pushing off and shooting back.

I watched her in awe.

I swim more like a beached whale, not convinced at all that the water will support me. Struggling and fighting for every stroke. Exhausted by the end of a few laps. Exhausted and bored.

Sometimes writing feels like that. Such a laborious process at times, and so effortless at others when I'm in the groove and can lay down word after word without breaking a sweat.

Can you swim like that, at one with the water, as it were? Write like that when the ideas flow?

Or maybe there’s some other activity that you do better when you stop trying so hard?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hallie, I love swimming, but it’s a struggle for me (since I don’t like to put my whole face in the water!) Still, there are times when I’m so delighted to just be in the pool, enjoying the water and the movement, that I feel transported, which does also happen in writing.

Back when my knees allowed me to run, I used to compare writing to my regular three mile loop in our neighborhood. The first mile was ALWAYS agony, puffing and panting, my muscles complaining, wondering why the heck I was doing this to myself. Then, right around the start of the second mile, I broke through, and could enjoy my effort and the pace and the scenery around me. The third mile was triumphant - yes! I can do this and I am! It was a great feeling and I miss it.

There’s nothing like the flow state in writing, when it stops feeling like you’re laying a wall brick by brick and suddenly becomes flying. I think it’s those times that keeps us going.

RHYS BOWEN: when I was a child swimming was in an unheated pool. We learned breaststroke, swam a width and got a certificate. We swam in the cold sea on vacation, so I never got proficient.

But then I discovered snorkeling. Put a mask and find on me and I am one with the water. I can go forever, as John will tell you. Once in Grand Cayman I followed the reef out, never looking up or hearing him shout. When I did look up the shore looked as if someone had drawn a pencil line far away. I looked around. Not a soul in sight. Then I had to swim all the way back to a frantic John

Most of my married life we’ve had a pool so swimming is something I do every day. Our kids were all competitive swimmers!

 As for writing: every book is the same. First hundred pages in pure panic mode, convinced it’s never going to work. Then next hundred getting into the rhythm and seeing the way ahead and the last hundred or so rushing at full steam.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m a good solid swimmer, though it’s never quite effortless. I wonder if I write like that too? I’d like to write like Rhys (except for the pure panic), but for me it feels like the beginning is joyful.

But then the original spark runs out of juice and I’m left wondering how I can possibly fill more pages.

JENN McKINLAY: I like swimming in pools but not laps because…boring. But I love diving games or basketball or volleyball in the pool.

Clearly, I’m not a regimented swimmer. I am not a deep sea ocean swimmer because sharks,,,duh. But like Rhys, I love snorkeling or boogie boarding or paddle boarding.

I think writing is similar to swimming for me only in that if it’s boring, I can’t do it. The second I lose interest in my story a fictional someone is getting murdered or heartbroken or hit by a witch’s curse.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, you must be having such fun with the kids! I liked swimming when I was a kid but not so much these days. I don’t like getting my face in the water–a big handicap! At least not in chlorinated water.

The few times I’ve been snorkeling I have loved it but I have to be able to touch the bottom. I’m terrified of deep water. Maybe this is why I like to have a road map when I’m writing?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I think absolutely everything works better when you stop trying so hard, the secret being that you have to work so hard and learn so much in order to be able to not have to try as hard. I’m an experienced okay swimmer , and once absolutely caused a gasp from my grandson when I did a perfectly good dive off the side of the pool. I think he thought I was incapable.

But do I love swimming? No. I love floating on a raft in the pool with a book and a glass of lemonade. That’s pretty fabulous. Or walking in the ocean up to my ankles.

Let’s just put it this way. My feet like to swim.

As for writing and swimming. I do a lot of preparation mentally and emotionally, then I dive off the end in a great wave of enthusiasm, swimming swimming swimming until whatever the equivalent of page 36 is.

Then there is a lot of treading water going on. A lot. Of. Treading water.

Then comes the persistence, and when I see the shore, I have a sudden spurt of energy.

But yes, absolutely, those days that I am at one in the writing water, that is the reason I keep doing it.

HALLIE: I do find it's the same way with cooking. When I'm in the groove, I'm not stressed at all and improvising... the food comes out tastier. Ditto Falling asleep: definitely works best when I stop trying.

And that scary feeling when you enter a room full of strangers? Just relax and lean into it. Conversations will flow.

What about everyone else? What gets easier when you stop trying so hard?

What We're Writing: If Summer Never Ends by Jenn McKinlay

 

JENN McKINLAY: I'm on deadline. I'm probably going to be late because this current romcom IF SUMMER NEVER ENDS (May 2027) has taken a few unexpected turns, such as...

     The look on Lorelei's face. I wanted to take a picture and frame it. She opened her mouth and then closed it. She blinked once, twice, and then opened her eyes wide. She glanced from the donkey's backside to me and then she huffed a sigh of outrage.

     “That is not a thing, Chance,” she said. “A donkey can’t tell if a person is lying.”

     Maybellene stomped her foot and brayed again.

     “Test her,” I said. “Tell her two truths and a lie.”

     “No, I am not playing whatever game this is.” Lorelei turned to walk away.

     “What’s the matter? Afraid?” I taunted her.

     “Afraid!” she scoffed. “That a donkey can tell if I’m lying? Get over yourself. I’m not afraid of anything, it’s just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard and I know you’re pranking me.”

     “Am I?” I bit my lip and wagged my eyebrows at her. She glowered and I almost did a fist pump when I realized I was getting under her skin. I gestured to the donkey in the stall. “There’s only one way to see if it’s true. Two truths and a lie.”

     “This is ridiculous.” She gestured to Maybellene. “There is no way a donkey can tell if I’m lying and how will you know if I’m fibbing or not. We haven’t seen each other in a decade. You have no idea what’s happened in my life.”

     “That’s a fair point.” I scratched my chin. “I guess you’ll have to keep it to things I do know.”

     “Such as?”

     “You sing in the shower,” I said. “Really loudly.”

     Her face turned bright pink and she said, “I have never sung in the shower, you must be remembering a different girlfriend.”

     Maybellene spun around in her stall and stuck her head out over the half door. She stomped her foot and let out a bray that I swear sounded like the word “liar”.

     Lorelei jumped. Her eyes went wide. She tentatively put her hand on Maybell’s nose. “That was just a coincidence, right?”

     I shrugged. Maybell snuffled Lorelei’s hands and pockets as if a snack might have magically appeared.

     Lorelei narrowed her eyes at the donkey and said, “I stole a car when I was a teenager.”

     Maybellene didn’t bat an eyelash, but I did. “You what?”

     Lorelei waved a hand at me. “I returned it, it was fine.”

     “Say something I know,” I said. She was quiet for a moment, sifting through the memories of our time together to choose something I could verify.

     “Chance Whitaker was my first love.” Lorelei’s voice was soft and there was a vulnerability in it that about broke me.

     Maybellene didn’t even flick an ear. It was the truth.

     Lorelei glanced at me and said, “You know that’s true. I told you at the time.”

     “You did.” My voice came out hoarse and I cleared my throat.

     We glanced away from each other as Lorelei pondered what whopper to tell the donkey. She drummed her fingertips on top of the stall door and then snapped her fingers. “Got it.”

     “I was Miss North Carolina 2017,” Maybellene let out a high pitched heehaw and stomped around her stall.

     Lorelei burst out laughing. “I know it was a lie but you don’t have to be offended by it. It could have happened.”

     The donkey brayed again and Lorelei turned to face me with her eyes twinkling. “You know that was a lie as we were dating at the time and I am not a pageant girl.”

     I smiled at her. When she looked at me with that sparkle in her gaze, it was hard not to feel as if I’d been transported back in time to the summer we fell in love. The urge to hug her was almost too much to resist, but I liked my arms attached to my body so I refrained.

JENN: I think this snippet best answers the question, where do you get your ideas? Y'all, I have no idea where a lie detector donkey came from but I am already ridiculously fond of Miss Maybellene.

Side note: Lorelei and Chance pop up in THE SUMMER SHARE (May 2026) as a very small subplot and I liked them soooo much, I gave them their own story. 

Do you enjoy it when side characters get their own stories? Yes, no, or maybe?

What We're Writing Week: Julia is Plotting and Planning

Go ahead, enlarge the heck out of it.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: For everyone who read AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY, noticed there wasn't some life-changing cliffhanger ending, and sent me an email wondering if This Was It for my mystery series, relax. I'm working on a proposal for Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne #11!

 If you did NOT notice, and you DON'T care, please don't tell me,  I'm sensitive.

So a proposal is basically an outline of the book; here are the characters, here's what's going to happen, and this is how it all turns out.  Some authors are whizzes at this; me - not so much. Part of my problem is I've never had to do this before! 

I have had to submit "proposals" before inking a new contract over the years, but to be honest, they've been more like breathless cover flap copy. I'm pretty sure I ended one with, "Can they find the killer before he strikes again?" I know, I know. I'm wincing, too.

Of course, every other proposal happened when I was still under contract to St. Martin's.  Now, I don't blame my editor or publisher for not re-signing my while I was working on  the last book. I mean, AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY was overdue. By eleven years. If I were them, I'd want some evidence indicating I know what I'm going to write, and that hopefully, the book will be in by ( or before!) the end of the decade. 

Starting with story structure helps.

So, what's my process? I started with two facts, both handed to me by readers during my book tour in November/December. One was about the annual New Year's Day Polar Plunge at Lake George, NY. The other came from a couple who witnessed that polar plunge end in, if not disaster, total chaos, as spectators ignored the warning cones on the lake ice and fell in!

Now, dear readers, doesn't that sound like the perfect set-up to find a body floating in the dark and ice-clotted water?

For every book, I need to figure out what Clare and Russ (and Kevin and Hadley) are doing;  what's driving them, what problems besides the murder are they going to confront and hopefully overcome. But this time, I'm adding two more major characters.  NYDEC Ranger Paul Terrance and newbie lawyer Yixin "Joy" Zhao appeared in the last book, because each had a specific role I needed them to fulfill in order to tell that story. As I wrote forward, their parts got larger and larger, and I have to admit, I fell a little bit in love with them. So, apparently, did readers, because I've gotten countless emails and comments asking to see them again.

Sadly, I didn't plan ahead, because Paul works in the Adirondack High Peaks and Yixin was dead-set on finishing up her job in Albany and moving up the ladder in DC. So now I have a real puzzler - how do I get these two back to Millers Kill?

Walker will probably need some $$ too...

No, I'm not going to tell you, I want you to buy the book once it's out. (Now Youngest has her MSc, she's talking about law school, so I'm going to need every penny I can scratch up.) 

Have you read other authors who introduced new characters you fell for?  And for those of you in Massachusetts or Vermont, I'm appearing with Paula Munier at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley in March 3 and at Norwich Bookstore in Norwich on March 5. I'd love to see you there!