The Question Writers Hate by Clare O'Donohue

JENN McKINLAY: A million years ago when dinosaurs roamed -- okay, more like seven years (in 2011) it just feels like a million -- I was fortunate enough to be paired up to sign books with this sharp cookie, Clare O'Donohue. I remember because my best friend Annette flew all the way in from Connecticut to go to the signing and afterwards she said, "I am buying all of that woman's books. She's amazing." I totally agreed and we did. So, here is Clare, breaking down the inner working's of the writer's mind for us while we celebrate the release of her new book Beyond the Pale, which is out TODAY!!!

I FINALLY HAVE AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION WRITERS HATE:

Clare O'Donohue

Every writer has been asked this. At every conference, on every panel, at every book signing. “Where do you get your ideas?” It’s probably the most asked question novelists hear.

The most hated question? “Where do you get your ideas?”

It’s not that writers are curmudgeons (okay, yeah, maybe) it’s just an impossible question to answer. Mostly ideas are not there, and then they are. Like the name of the person who sat next to you in sophomore English. One minute your brain can’t come up with a thing, then BOOM. There it is.

            At the risk of annoying all my fellow writers, the next time this question gets asked though, I’m going to raise my hand high, yelling, “Call on me!! Call on me!!” like the perfect student I never was. Because I know exactly where I got my idea for Beyond the Pale.

            Since I was a little one I’ve dreamed of traveling the world and having a passport filled to the brim with stamps from far-off places. But, you know, work, family, life, excuses. I have traveled a lot, seeing all but three states in the US (Alaska, N. Dakota and Idaho, just hang in there I’m coming). And when my idea was forming, I’d already been to what others might see as an impressive amount of foreign shores – twenty countries. But, ever greedy, I wanted to see more.

So, before you could say book research, I came up with a plan – create a mystery series with each novel set in a different country. Travel, writing – two birds, one tax-deductible stone.

The original plan was to have my main character be a single woman in her early 30s who inherited (Won? Found?) a large amount of money and decided to travel. At her first country she’d happen across a murder, meet quirky, possibly dangerous people, see the sites, and solve the crime. Book #2 would be similar, except different country. Genius!

I thought about my main character potentially meeting a love interest in book one. Would he follow her to country #2? Would there be a new beau in #2? If I wrote twenty books in the series would she end up with an admirer in every port? Plus, who would she talk to, who would she trust? Yeah scratch that. I’d already done the beginning of a relationship in my Someday Quilts series, and the end of a relationship in my Kate Conway series. I decided instead on featuring a couple, long married, and focus on the middle bit of a relationship, where you love, understand, and slightly annoy each other. That bit. Genius!

But would they just trip over bodies in every country? I’d already done that too – and nothing wrong with it, I’m here to say. Agatha Christie built a nice career out of body-tripping mysteries and I’m not fit to shine her shoes, so nothing against it. But maybe, I thought, I could mix it up. Give them a professional reason for all the bodies that will inevitably pile up across a long series. Spies. I felt particularly good about myself with that one. Genius wasn’t big enough. I’d write a Thin Man meets James Bond spy novel. That way there’d be a reason for all the travel and all the danger. It opened up a world of possibilities of bad guys, and crimes, and international intrigue.

But who would my husband and wife be? That took some time. I wanted smart people, capable of taking care of themselves but not so capable that they wouldn’t really be in danger. Accidental spies. College professors (he’s a World Literature professor with a reputation for sniffing out forgeries, she’s an International Politics professor who once trained to be in the CIA). They would know a lot about each country so the location would become a kind of character in the novel, they would bring special skills, and they would – of course – have each other to rely on even when they couldn’t rely on anyone else. And, I’d get to sneak in stuff I know from having an International Politics degree (Double genius because I’m finally using my college degree!)

My idea, in spits and spurts, was formed. A long-married pair of college professors sucked into helping Interpol but finding that instead of a straight-forward assist, they’ve gotten themselves caught between an international crime ring and a dangerously off-the-book subgroup of the famous international police organization.

I patted myself on the back coming up with all that. I did sort of feel genius-y. But then that’s what ideas are like. They’re promises mixed with ego and dash of optimism. That’s why writers are so loath to hear people talk about how special their ideas are. We want the real thing – the thousands of words on paper – thing. And now I have it. It may not be genius, but it feels good to see my idea become an actual book. And it doesn’t hurt that it took several stamps in my passport to do it.

Clare O’Donohue is the author of Beyond the Pale, the first in the World of Spies Mysteries. It’s set in Ireland. She visited Argentina, her thirty-third country, earlier this year, which will be the setting for book #2.

Okay, Reds, what about you? Answer the hated question -- where do you get your ideas?

Beyond the pail

HALLIE EPHRON: Writers everywhere got a giggle out of a widely copied headline from The Oregonian celebrating the debut of the Oakland A's switch-pitcher Pat Venditte.

Blogs had a field day with it:

From Snopes.com: "Oakland A’s reliever Pat Venditte may be able to throw with either hand, but he can’t pitch underwater."

The Washington Post quipped: "... well, let’s just say he made a splash."

It reminded me of a sadder news story I'd read a few weeks earlier about a victim who was "killed by a rouge bullet."


I like to collect these turns of phrase, especially the ones where the mistake renders a new layer of meaning. My cache includes
- Beyond the pail
- Have a quick peak

And in my own writing, there was the time I was talking about a bowls and instead wrote bowels. Fortunately someone (not me) caught that before it went to galleys.

Here are the nearly-alikes that I often confuse:
discrete discreet
descent decent
dessert desert
crêpe crepe
ascent assent
peak peek
liable libel
mold mould
rein reign
cache caché
plow plough

Have you made some interesting "typos" in your manuscript? Are there words that trip you up?

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: It's so funny that you put this up — only this morning I was having a steak/stake moment — yes, I was talking about a metaphoric vampire, so it was stake — but does the "steak" mean I'm unconsciously hungry? Tired of mostly vegetarian life? What should I make for dinner?

Hallie, I also do discrete/discreet and descent/decent and others. I think we U.S. Americans are so much-mouthed when we speak that the differences are unintelligible, making for vague spellings. (Or, you know, that's what I tell myself.)

A friend recently mixed up "vaginal" and "vestigial" in conversation — that was a bit confusing until we sorted it out....

And I always have to remind myself about "Hear! Hear!" as opposed to "Here! Here!"

HALLIE: Is it "Hear! Hear!" -- really??? And what about "making due" or is it "making do"? I could go either way. And "cut the muster" or "cut the mustard"?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It's making do, no question.  And yes, Hear, hear.  Cut the mustard. (But why, that I don't know.) Pass muster. (That I do. Military.)

But is it carrot AND stick approach? Or is it: carrot ON A stick approach? Or is it: carrot or stick approach?

And don't even get me started an effect and affect. I men, I understand it, I do. I just can't remember it. And it ALWAYS sounds so wrong..I just avoid it.

It's like one of my (very funny but strangely-educated) pals once said to me-- "This is SO difficult! I't like Godot pushing that boulder up the mountain."

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, it's "Carrot AND stick." Because you use both to get the donkey to do what you want:-) And Sisyphus! How funny. "Discrete" and "discreet" get me every time. I think it's because I was a biology major, where "discrete" means "apart of detached from others." So confusing. And "affect" and "effect." But then I have the British stuff to contend with, too, like "inquiry" and "enquiry." Ack.

Oh, what is the "pale", by the way? And why are we beyond it?

Hallie, I'm glad someone caught "bowel." :-)

HANK: But I always imagine the carrot hanging from a string tied to the end of the stick, and the rider holds it out in front of the mule, and the mule keeps walking toward the always-ahead-of-him carrot. Carrot ON a stick. which is still, carrot and stick. And string. But you are not whapping the mule with the stick.

RHYS BOWEN: I have always struggled with spelling (unlike my friend who got a stoke of the cane for every word she got wrong and was thus a terrific speller. I also have to battle with Transatlantic differences. Draft versus draught.

Discrete  is a big stumbling block for me. Affect/effect also really have to think through that one every time it comes up. Don't you think that soon English will be purely phonetic and thus none of this will matter?

I can answer the Pale question. In the middle ages villages had a fence of stakes (not steaks) around them and that was called the pale. If you were beyond it, you outside society. BTW a pet peeve of mine is the use of "outside of"

HALLIE: So what words and expressions trip you up? And Susan, I hope you'll share what your friend was trying to say when she used vestigial instead of vaginal, or was it the other way 'round? Rhys, that's brilliant! I never knew the origin of "beyond the pale." And I'll never hear the play title WAITING FOR GODOT without thinking of Sisyphus.