What We're Writing--Debs on Nuts and Bolts

DEBORAH CROMBIE: When I first started writing, I devoured anything I could find about how other writers wrote. Computer or paper, morning or evening, outline or no outline. I was sure there was a magic bullet somewhere--a formula you could follow for tackling what sometimes felt like an insurmountable task.

It turns out that there isn't (or at least I haven't discovered it,) other than butt-in-chair, which just so happens to be the hardest thing for me. But I'm still fascinated by the nuts and bolts, how other people do this weird exercise in making things up and turning those things into a finished book, so earlier this week when Hank gave us a peek at her editing process, I was agog. Hank keeps track of her edits! 

I am the edit queen, I swear I can edit a page fifty times, but I do not keep track! I don't save drafts, either. Once something is over-written, it is gone forever. Yikes! Contemplating this makes me feel a wee bit insecure, as if I'm writing without a safety net, but I think doing it any other way would totally discombobulate me. 

As for what I'm writing that might disappear into the ether, I'm still plodding away at Kincaid/James #20. Is there a prize for tortoise authors, I wonder...

It's hard to find a spoiler-free snippet, but here, edited even as I copy-pasted, Gemma and her sergeant visit a restored barge on the Thames. (This is not the barge described, but a view of the same stretch of the Thames above Teddington Lock.)

They reached the sturdy-looking ramp and Gemma strode up it ahead of Butler, and onto the deck of the boat. Before she could knock on the cabin door, it opened and Mabel was jumping and sniffing at Gemma’s legs, the fan of her tail wagging madly. Gemma crouched to stroke her. “Hello, lovely girl. Nice to see you again.” She glanced up. “Davey, this is Mabel. We met yesterday.”

“Mabel, enough,” said John Quillen, now visible inside the cabin. “Inspector,” he added, then acknowledged Butler with a nod. “Sergeant.” His t-shirt and cargo shorts made Gemma feel seriously over-dressed, but he looked more haggard than he had the previous day. He was unshaven, his wavy dark hair disheveled. “Do come in. I take it you didn’t have any trouble finding us.”

“You might have warned us about the parking,” said Gemma as they followed him inside, softening the comment with a smile. “Wherever do you put your van?”

His features relaxed. “Ah. Sorry about that. Sometimes I get lucky. Otherwise, I have a mate who has a repair garage off the High Street in Teddington. He lets me leave the van in his yard when he has the space.” The three of them and the dog made quite a crowd in the barge’s tiny cabin and Gemma was relieved when Quill motioned towards the open interior doorway. “If you’ll go down, we can talk in the lounge.” Mabel turned and vanished into the opening with a bound. After another encouraging gesture from Quill, and with growing curiosity, Gemma followed the dog. She found herself on ladder-steep stairs and wondered if it might be easier to go down backwards rather than forwards, but she was already committed to the forward-facing descent.

At the bottom, she stood, gaping. Somewhere in her subconscious, she supposed she’d expected dark and dank in a living space that was at least partly underwater. But the light pouring from portholes and skylights flooded the long room before her, and her first impression was of colors, reds and blues and the golden warmth of wood. A drafting table anchored one end of the living area, and in the other, there was a small sofa, a coffee table, and an interesting-looking modernist leather chair.

With a pang, she realized it reminded her of the garage flat where she and Toby had lived before they’d moved into the Notting Hill house with Duncan and Kit. That tiny space had given her a much-needed sense of control over her chaotic life as a single, working mother, and she had loved it passionately.

I want to live on this boat! I wanted to live in Gemma's garage flat, too. Maybe my obsession with small, organized spaces is due to the fact that I live in a big, rambling, messy house.

REDs and writer friends, how do you manage drafts of your work? 

And readers, do you like references to previous books in a series?

P.S. Mabel is a liver and white springer spaniel, and I'm sure I'm projecting my spaniel desires, too.

P.S.S. If anyone has discovered that magic bullet, do let me know.

Debs Wobbles Nearer to the End

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We talk a lot in writing/reading circles about panster vs. plotter, as if these two approaches to writing were entirely separate. "Panster" meaning you have no idea what a book is going to be about when you start to write, "plotter" meaning you have a structured outline for everything that's going to happen before you put a word on the page.

But I strongly suspect that for most of us, however we describe ourselves, it's much more of an evolving spectrum. I may call myself a "plotter" but that mostly means I like to have a little "basic capsule," "who-why-when-where," for the actual crime. That gives me something to contruct the rest of the story around.

Then, for example, I begin to add ideas, as in the book-in-progress, Kincaid/James #20:

"Gemma has a challenging new job at a troubled police station" +

"I don't know much about London's canals but wouldn't it be fun to set a book there/Little Venice," +

"The Thames west of London/history/houseboats," +

"Family stuff/new nanny, etc.," +

"Melody plotline," +

"Backstory plotline," +

Etc., etc.

(Houseboat moored on the Thames above Teddington Lock.)

Those were some of the initial building blocks. But those concepts don't tell me how they are all going to fit together, and especially not how my detectives are going to figure it all out by the end. From there I usually do a very rough scene-by-scene outline of a few chapters at a time. Any more than that and I know that what I thought was going to happen will have squirmed all out of shape.

Also, none of this "planning" stuff means that a new thing can't suddenly appear and whack me upside the head, which has happened over the course of the last half a dozen chapters!

My math tells me that this book is now almost 90,000 words, which means I had better figure out what happens between here and THE END. ASAP. And that means back to the outline drawing board.

And in case you're wondering where Duncan is in all this, he's very much in help and support mode, and has his own connection to the case.

Here's a little snippet I wrote earlier this week of (spoiler-free) Duncan and Gemma, in a little interlude at home.

Having finally settled the little ones, Gemma came back downstairs to find the kitchen and the sitting room dark. Puzzled, she checked the study but it was dark, too. Then a movement outside the patio French doors caught her eye. Duncan stood just on the other side, his back to the house. At first, she thought he was taking the dog out, but Geordie lay on his back on the sofa, paws in the air and the lighter fur on his belly gleaming in the dim illumination from the small lamp on the bookshelf. Tess and the cats were upstairs with the children.

Duncan must have heard her because he turned and eased the door open as she came up to it. “Shh,” he said. “Don’t let the dog out.”

Gemma slipped out to stand beside him. “Wait,” he whispered, his breath tickling her ear. So, she stood, barely breathing, and he slipped his fingers through hers.

A low iron railing separated their small flagged patio from the expanse of the communal garden, where its rolling grass, kept cut short, was dotted with large trees. The moon was almost full and as her eyes adjusted, the unshaded grass looked silvery against the deep, dark patches beneath the trees.

And then she saw it, movement, a flitting shape, and then another. Cats? No, their bodies were too large, she realized, the muzzles too long, the ears too big. The tails were wrong as well, too bushy for cats.

They were foxes, and they were playing, chasing one another, then rolling and tumbling in the grass, then jumping back up to start all over again.

Watching, enchanted, Gemma thought suddenly of Karo Fox’s little cottage and the array of fox prints on the sitting room’s walls. Were there foxes on Eel Pie Island, she wondered? And would they know they’d be welcomed in Karo Fox’s garden?

She gave a shiver as the cooler night air began to penetrate the thin fabric of her t-shirt and Duncan let go her hand to put his arm round her.

“Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s leave them to it, shall we?”

Speaking of London's secretive communal gardens, here's another chance to enjoy a fictional visit!

GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS, Kincaid/James #17, is on sale on all e-book platforms for $1.99!

In which Gemma investigates a death in an exclusive Notting Hill communal garden, while Duncan delves into wrongdoing in the highest echelons of the Met, in a case that could cost him his career, if not his life.

AND the audio version is also on sale on CHIRP for $3.99!

Dear readers, are you a planner or a pantster in real life, or do you wobble somewhere in between?