The Art of writing versus the Craft of writing

After writing my blog post last week, I remembered a long discussion I had with a fledgling writer several years ago now. Before moving on, though, I need to make a declaration: I hate giving advice about writing.

There’s a pretty darn good reason (at least to my mind). You see, when it comes to writing, I’m pretty well self-taught. Sure, I took a lot of English classes through high school and university (I actually have a minor in English – whatever that means. But other than one pretty poor creative writing course in university, what you see on the pages of my novels is what I taught myself basically. That’s not to mean I’m a slacker or an iconoclast making my own way through the publishing forest through sheer pigheadedness. I read at least a dozen books on how to write. I studied what the great authors did a lot. I tried to discover what worked for me before I began showing anyone my prose. Even so, it was not the best. Yes, I was told it did show promise, but need work – and from some quarters, a great deal of work.

And this is why I would never want to teach a course in creative writing. I’m self-taught. That doesn’t mean I’m bad, it means that I don’t know more than what I need to do what I do. I’ve worked with many, many self-taught musicians who are absolutely fantastic, world-class as a matter of fact, and they’ve never taken a lesson in their lives. They are wonderful musicians, but I also know how much they are held back in some ways by what they don’t know because they never studied with a few good teachers. I’m in that situation with writing: I know only what I need to know.

Anyway, back to my story. This budding author didn’t get it that there are two facets to writing: the art and the craft.

The craft of writing is something you can be taught. It starts with the basics of punctuation, sentence structure, etc., then moves on to things like voice, construction of dialogue, description, pacing, story arc, all needed if one is going to develop the chops to be accepted as a writer. The process is a long and humbling one, but I think most people who are willing to put in the necessary time and practice can learn to do it.

The art of writing is something completely different. I suppose the word “talent’ could be used instead of “art”. To my mind, you either got it or you don’t. How many books have you read where the author has a completely deft touch with their characters. They just seem to effortlessly create memorable and believable people and it’s so transparent as to appear there’s nothing special going on. Then there are other authors who have to go overboard with quirks, kinks and screwball foibles to make their characters seem like something memorable. This poor author’s fingerprints are all over the writing. Simply put: they’re forced by their ability to try too hard. Writing “artists” can take your breath away with nine or ten words, uniquely describing something, or having a character say something so profound that you remember it years later.

The best writing is seamless and invisible. It has a unique flow. It has layers upon layers of detail and subtlety, but you may not notice that because it just reads so darn smoothly. The author leads you on a journey and you’re not even aware he or she is walking right next to you. That is the art of writing. And like I said: you got it or you don’t.

It may be there in many of us who write. I like to imagine that if I just dig deeper, try harder, I might be able to reach out and grab readers, giving them a few of those “WOW” moments. It’s the hope that keeps me going – it also makes me an inveterate re-writer, trying to coax some great moments out the tangles of my words.

I don’t know if the writer I told this to ever took my advice (it was about learning the craft of writing), but I wish someone had told me the same thing when I started out. It took me a long time and a lot of tough miles for me to learn it for myself.

_______________

I’m away this week, locked away from the world (no internet or TV) in a remote log house in eastern Ontario, struggling with words and trying to coax greatness out of my prose. Hey, it could happen!

Of Bases and Cases

The bases in question, if you have not guessed already, are the four nucleotide bases that make up the so-called "double helix" of DNA - DeoxyriboNucleic Acid - the complex molecule that carries within it the genetic makeup of an individual human being. The nucleotide bases, for the non-biological reader, are guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine: the sequences of these base pairs are coded using the letters G, A, T, and C.


                                        

                                             The DNA Double Helix


On the DNA double helix, guanine is always paired with cytosine, and adenine is paired with thymine, this giving the familiar G-C and A-T configurations.

Readers with a long memory and a taste for sci-fi films will probably recall that in 1997 a film was released that intriguingly, and cleverly, used the base-pair codes to fashion the film's title: GATTACA.


                                        

In addition to its sci-fi credentials, GATTACA was also a mystery-thriller that was well-received by the critics, even if it appears to have been a flop at the box office. The estimable Roger Ebert declared the film to be "one of the smartest and most provocative of science fiction films, a thriller with ideas." The scientific community was rather less impressed, although the molecular biologist Lee. M. Silver stated in a review in a scientific journal that "GATTACA is a film that all geneticists should see if for no other reason than to understand the perception of our trade held by so many of the public-at-large". I don't think that qualifies as a real endorsement of the film. I also don't think the "public-at-large" is a reliable source of opinion on science in general.

Anyone who reads mystery fiction, and especially anyone who reads technical material, will be aware that "DNA profiling" - originally, and inaccurately, known as "DNA fingerprinting" - is a standard and invaluable technology for solving crimes, especially crimes of violence such as murder and rape. DNA profiling is based on the fact that every person's DNA profile is unique; only identical (monozygotic) twins have identical DNA profiles. Hence the technology's value in identifying individuals on the basis of their DNA profile, through DNA extracted from bodily fluids: blood, semen, saliva, etc.; or from skin cells harvested from a victim's fingernail scrapings; or from strands of hair, as long as the hair root is present.

What is, I believe, somewhat less well-understood, is that DNA profiling is especially valuable in the exoneration of innocent people who have been incorrectly arrested and charged.

Herewith a quick perusal of some of the landmark cases in DNA profiling and forensic DNA use and application in crime detection.

• In the 1950s, Anna Anderson claimed that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. In the 1980s, after her death, samples of her tissue that had been stored at a Charlottesville, Virginia hospital following a medical procedure were tested using DNA profiling, and showed that she bore no relation to the Romanov Royal Family.

• In 1986, Richard Buckland was exonerated, despite having admitted to the rape and murder of a teenager near Leicester, the city where DNA profiling was first discovered. This was the first use of DNA "fingerprinting" in a criminal investigation.

• In 1987, in the same case as Buckland, British baker Colin Pitchfork was the first criminal caught and convicted using DNA profiling.

• In 1987, DNA "fingerprinting" was used in criminal court for the first time in the trial of a man accused of unlawful intercourse with a mentally handicapped 14-year-old female who gave birth to a baby.

• In 1987, Florida rapist Tommie Lee Andrews was the first person in the United States to be convicted as a result of DNA evidence, for raping a woman during a burglary; he was convicted on November 6, 1987, and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

• In 1988, Timothy Wilson Spencer was the first man in Virginia to be sentenced to death through DNA testing, for several rape and murder charges. He was dubbed "The South Side Strangler" because he killed victims on the south side of Richmond, Virginia. He was later charged with rape and first-degree murder and was sentenced to death. He was executed on April 27, 1994. Equally significant, David Vasquez, initially convicted of one of Spencer's crimes, became the first man in exonerated based on DNA evidence.

• In 1989, a Chicago man, Gary Dotson was the first person whose conviction was overturned using forensic DNA evidence.

• In 1991, Allan Legere, a serial killer and arsonist, was the first Canadian to be convicted as a result of DNA evidence, for four murders he had committed while an escaped prisoner in 1989. During his trial, his defense argued, unsuccessfully, that the relatively shallow gene pool of the region could lead to false positives.

• In 1992, DNA evidence was used to prove that Nazi doctor Josef Mengele was buried in Brazil under the name Wolfgang Gerhard.

• In 1992, DNA from a palo verde tree was used to convict Mark Alan Bogan of murder. DNA from seed pods of a tree at the crime scene was found to match that of seed pods found in Bogan's truck. This is the first instance of plant DNA admitted in a criminal case.

• In 1993, Kirk Bloodsworth was the first person to have been convicted of murder and sentenced to death, whose conviction was overturned using DNA evidence. The actual murderer, Kimberly Shay Ruffner, identified by forensic DNA technology, eventually pled guilty to the crime. Bloodsworth was released from prison.

Maryland v. King - The Supreme Court Decision

If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you will know that the United States Supreme Court recently brought down a landmark ruling on forensic DNA evidence. The ruling stems from the case of Alonzo J. King, Jr., who was arrested in 2009 on assault charges. When he was booked, the police took a sample of his DNA using a cheek swab. (The use of swabs from the inside of a person's cheek, which yields cells and their DNA, is one of the standard procedures.) The police did not have a warrant to do the swab, or have probable cause to think it would link King to any crime. However, King's DNA profile matched DNA evidence from a rape in 2003, and he was eventually convicted of that crime.

In 2012, Maryland's highest court struck down the state law that allows DNA collection from people who have been charged but not yet convicted, because, they said, it violates the U.S. Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision, in a 5-to-4 vote, the narrowest possible verdict, overturned the ruling and upheld the Maryland law.

The Supreme Court's decision saw an interesting pattern of alliances. Three "liberal" justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were joined by one of the most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia, in opposing the decision. Scalia believes that the Fourth Amendment clearly prohibits the use of cheek swabs in this way. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, stated that collecting DNA through cheek swabs, or any other procedure, is like fingerprinting, and is a legitimate part of the police booking procedure to identify a suspect.

The ruling is controversial. On June 3rd, the New York Times published an editorial damning the decision. On the same day, two eminent lawyers, Akhil Reed Amar and Neal K. Katyal, argued in an op-ed piece in the Times that the Supreme Court was correct in its decision and, moreover, that Justice Scalia (and by inference, the Times's Editorial Board) had misinterpreted the Fourth Amendment's meaning. It's fairly certain that the issue will remain controversial for some time.

When forensic DNA profiling first began to used back in the late 1980s, it was immediately controversial, with proponents and opponents lining up to argue the pros and cons. I think it is safe to say, though, that on the whole, the technology has proven itself. I am not aware that anyone has been wrongly convicted using the technology. I am also aware that a significant number of wrongly-convicted persons have been exonerated using the technology. The argument that is going on now, with this latest Supreme Court decision, is not that Alonzo J. King, Jr. was wrongly convicted of rape; it's agreed that he was in fact guilty, and fairly sentenced. The argument is over the process that identified him as the assailant in a vicious crime.

Most readers are probably familiar with "Blackstone's formulation" - from Sir William Blackstone, an English jurist and judge, in 1765 - that It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. History records that Benjamin Franklin went even farther than that, raising the number to 100 guilty persons from ten. There are of course dissenting opinions on that also.

I will leave the discussion to the lawyers and ethicists, while at the same time declaring my own opinion that forensic DNA technology has done far more good than harm, through delivering the wrongly-convicted from incarceration, while at the same time putting a lot of nasty people behind bars.

I will even go so far as to declare that I believe that, technology and budgets permitting, everyone should be fingerprinted and DNA-profiled shortly after birth. I suspect that some people will be appalled at the suggestion, and will cite Orwell's 1984 - recently back on the best-seller lists, by the way - and if such a policy were adopted, we would hear a great deal about Big Brother. Debate is good. I invite dissenting opinions. I will look forward to reading them.

An that's - 30 - for this outing.

Guest Blogger - M.L. Longworth

Our guest blogger this week is M.L. – for Mary Lou – Longworth:

For background, Mary Lou was born in Toronto in 1963; which, as it happens, is where my wife and I were living when our first daughter, Kristina, was born in November of that year. (The same month, coincidentally, that J.F.K. was killed in Dallas, but I will skip right past that.)

Mary Lou Longworth now lives in Aix-en-Provence, in Southern France, and has lived there since 1997. She is the author of three Verlaque and Bonnet mystery novels set in Aix:

        

Mary Lou, as her post explains, is working on a fourth novel.

The substance of her post is a guided tour – if you will – through Marseille. (In English, btw, it’s Marseilles.)

And now, for a first-hand look at Marseille by M.L. Longworth.

The New/Old Marseille

The current draft of my fourth book opens with a retired school teacher, Eric Monnier, looking back at Marseille from a boat out at sea. It’s at once beautiful – the old port, the limestone cliffs. hill-top Basilica Notre Dame de la Garde watching over the city; and ugly, too – the city can be dirty, noisy and chaotic. But what Monnier likes about Marseille is the city’s indifference to tourists. It makes no attempt to appease, much like Genoa or Naples. What you see is what you get. That is, until 2013, when Marseille became the European Capital of Culture.

For years we have been going to Marseille to eat; its restaurants outshine those in Aix-en-Provence. No contest. But we usually eat, and the  drive back to Aix. Last weekend, though, we stayed overnight, in a reasonably priced hotel in the old port, and soaked in the city's recent changes with awe and excitement.

The ring road that used to encase the old port has now narrowed, and two of its former lanes have become a giant sidewalk at the north end of the port. There’s so much more room now to stroll, and to enjoy the view of the boats, the sea, and the medieval forts that flank the mouth of the harbor. At the NE corner sits one of the many new structures that have been commissioned by the city; a flat-roofed open pavilion (thereby keeping the view of the port) with a mirrored roof, designed by Manchester-born super-architect Norman Foster. The photograph to the right makes it clearer:

A temporary visitors’ center, located behind the historic Town Hall is just as chaotic and mal organisé as one would expect from Marseille. But they were able to give us directions to one of the three newly constructed museums, the Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM); it’s a comfortable ten-minute walk down alongside the west side of the port, behind the Fort St-Jean. That day the museum's entrance was free, so the queue was formidable. We decided to visit another time, and walked along the fort which hugs the sea, to view the museum from the outside. For years I have been eyeing the stone benches that are built into the fort's wall, with their million-dollar view of the sparkling Mediterranean. I dreamt of taking a picnic basket filled with champagne and cheeses and cold cuts, and having a feast, basking in the sun. But the benches were inaccessible; that side of the fort has always been closed to the public. Now it is all open, and as we walked along the seaside, I overheard a woman say to her friends, who were visiting from Paris, that she too had always eyed those benches. There were about fifteen of us slowly walking towards the MuCEM, and as we rounded a corner and saw the museum, a spontaneous “Ahhhhh!” arose from our throats. Most of us stopped in our tracks; others scrambled for their cameras. The MuCEM is a gem, designed by the Marseille architect, Rudy Ricciotti:

                   

For hundreds of years this part of the port has also been inaccessible. Now you can walk around to the front of the museum, passing the white Villa Méditerranée, a performance space designed by the Italian Stefano Boeri, and walk along a huge newly-built square that overlooks the sea.

Part of the reason we stayed overnight was to witness Sunday morning’s Transhumance, when thousands of animals (mostly sheep and horses) were to be paraded through Marseille's downtown streets. A transhumance does occur every spring, but in the countryside; it’s the moment when shepherds take their flock up into the hills, or mountains, for summer grazing. I loved the idea of transplanting an ancient, rural, tradition into a 21st century city. We stayed at the New Hotel Vieux Port and had a good view from the breakfast room's windows:

But all is not new in Marseille; far from it. The city was founded 2,600 years ago by the Phoenicians; and so on Sunday we walked in the ancient Saint-Victor neighbourhood. We stopped at the Café de L’Abbaye for a traditional pastis, an anis-flavored liqueur:

  

The view from the café:

The Abbey Saint-Victor, built on a hill on the east side of the old port, was founded in the 5th century by Jean Cassien, a monk from Romania. A basilica was built of the site at the end of the 6th century (now the crypt), and the high church's construction, which is what we see now, above ground, began in 1040:

The fascinating, ancient crypt was closed due to renovations, but will reopen in July this year. There is plenty to see in the basilica, including this 5th century sarcophagus to the right.

Lovely details, including Christ heeling a blind man (right) and the sacrifice of Isaac (left).

Have you ever had a vacation, even a day or a weekend away, when you start seeing the links between places, and images, and people? It was in the abbey that it happened; not exactly an epiphany, but one of those moments when, as E.M. Forster claimed, ‘only connect.’ I had gone into a chapel at Saint-Victor to look at a 5th-century stone altar that had been brought up from the crypt; it was beautifully carved, and as I walked around it I noticed this:

A Transhumance! And, on the other side, these:

Birds eating grapes on the vine. And outside, opposite the church on a tiny square overlooking the port, was this: a vineyard.

I looked at that vineyard and across the port to the Fort St-Jean and realized that I'm just another visitor to this city; a city where people have been coming and going – in the past by boat, and now by car or TGV– for two thousand years. And the Marseillais continue to build their city: new museums, a vineyard, renovating an ancient crypt. They don’t care that Parisians and Aixois make fun of their odd expressions and strong accent; they remain themselves: fast-talking, gregarious, and generous in the best sense of the word. The owner of the restaurant La Cantinetta, where we had dined the previous night, joked in his broken English with our American relatives, causing them to exclaim that Marseille was their favourite city in France. As we were leaving he grabbed my shoulders and gave me the bise – a kiss on both cheeks. And in a way, we all became Marseillais that night.

Cousins

I'm writing this blog from Topsail Island, North Carolina. This post will be short because I've succumbed to the sky and sand. In fact, I've found my calling. I was born to be a beach bum.

Our three daughters and their husbands and children (my grandchildren) have all rented a house right on the beach. There are 19 of us. All three live in Colorado. Through the years, the grandchildren have developed close cousin relationships.

They are following the example of their parents. All of the daughters were devoted to their cousins when they were children. They had no brothers and the male cousins were close to the real thing. When they were teenagers, they bailed one another out of messes that were kept secret from their parents.

Cousin relationships are different from any other kind of family attachments. You could count on cousins. I was devastated a couple of years ago when the only remaining cousin on my father's side of the family died unexpectedly. Rosemary and I had just recently picked up the threads of our family history.

I don't know of any mystery series that revolves around cousins. It's a shame, because of the potential for characterization.

Random thoughts from a lost week

I'm writing this post as I sip coffee outside a bourban bar in Louisville, Ky. (Rest assured, I have not just crawled out of the bar but am up early each morning to write.) This week, I've made my annual pilgrimage to Louisville to read English essays. I'm with a thousand or so other exhausted high school and college teachers at the end of the long school year. This week is always tiring (reading hand-written essays from 8 to 5 each day) but also uplifting (it's amazing what some student writers can produce) and gives me hope for the future of fiction.

And what will that future look like? Recently, I spoke to a longtime fiction veteran, a man with numerous novels and short stories to his credit, who asked me why kids no longer read short stories. He'd been asked to judge a writing contest for college students and had been disappointed by the quality of the submissions. I told him the kids I teach don't read short stories, except in English and creative writing classes. Kids read graphic novels, though, and grasp multi-text (written, visual, ect.) narratives better than their adult counterparts.

So where does that leave the future of the short story?

Hopefully novel-length fiction is in a better place. I know Stephen King has publicly denounced the e-book recently, but given the youth's fascination with technology, I think we should all be pulling the the e-book to succeed. Will it save the short story, at least the straight text version as we know it? Who knows? But it might save the novel.

In other news, I received the first round of cover art for my December novel (see below). I like it a lot.

Old Flames and Their Uses

Last weekend I was at a family wedding and bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen for two years. The last time we’d spoken she’d been madly in love with Mr. X. Unfortunately, despite a promising beginning, the cad had cheated on her and eventually run off with her best friend.

In an attempt to cheer her up I said, “Well … I am looking for a victim for my new Vicky Hill mystery. Do you want me to kill him off?”

She was thrilled.

I emailed my friend a few questions and now it was my turn to be thrilled.

In fact, Mr. X was such an interesting character that I decided to write the story around him. Here are some snippets: Thinning hair, pasty white skin and a tendency to burn in the sun. He was a video game developer who specialized in special effects and—of course—was obsessed with playing video games as well. In college Mr. X was the captain of “Dungeons and Dragons.” He also started a dodge ball team called … Naughty Balls.

My friend loved Mr. X’s spontaneity. For their third (and as yet unconsummated) date he surprised her with two round trip tickets for a weekend in New York including dinner at a flashy restaurant and a Broadway Show. Mr. X was charismatic, romantic, smart, intelligent and funny—her ideal man.

On the flipside, she said his inability to be on time for anything drove her insane. Hence they nearly missed their flights to and from New York; they definitely missed their Broadway show and the maitre d’ let their table go when they showed up almost one hour late for their reservation. And of course, he cheated.

And finally … Mr. X. had an Achilles heel. He was highly allergic to water so every time he took a shower he came out in hives.

I always find it a challenge to build a new character from scratch. In fact, as I write more books I have a tendency to repeat generic characteristics despite keeping a Master Character Bible.

But now I have endless resources! When one reaches a certain age I find many of my friends have gone around the romantic block a few times (including myself). If a woman (or man) scorned finds revenge among the pages of my mystery book, then I’m happy to oblige and I’ve discovered a unique character.

Please note: Mr. X’s real name will never be revealed. But we know who you are. Don’t we Sandra? (Just kidding).

The budding writer

I know that every single published author has been asked at least once – and probably much more than that – the following question: How do I get published? Heck, I’ll bet most of us asked the same question of a published author (agent, editor or publisher) at one time or another. It certainly is not a new question, but it certainly is the most basic question for writers ready to make the next step forward.

There are many people who want to write books. There are some who even should be encouraged to write books. It is is the rare writer who doesn’t care whether or not they get published. Eventually, nearly everyone wants to hold that bit of paper, ink and glue in their hands, so that they can say out loud (or at least think), “I did this.”

There are also those who want to get published in the hope that they can make money, generally a whole pile of money. I will stick my hand up to say that I have thought about that along the way. The exact thought passed through my brain this morning, as it does most work days, when I sat at my computer to work on a large design project. Yes, it would be very nice to be able to make my living entirely by creating crime fiction novels.

Thing is, like most of the arts, there are superstars and then there’s the rest of us. It’s something to be faced.

When someone asks me the question: How do I get published?, I like to be able to always give them the straight goods, tell them the truth about publishing. If it’s at a social function or a book signing, that’s just not possible. I generally invite these people to get in touch with me, though, because they’re asking the most important question of all. To answer it is not a matter of nuts and bolts. They can get that from any number of books and magazine or online articles. What they often won’t get is the truth.

What I really want to pass on here is exactly what it means to get published, and what the act of getting published will ask of a writer.

I should preface the following remarks by saying that you just might get lucky, win the lottery, write such a goddam great work that publishers fall all over themselves from the get-go. If that happens to you, great! But it likely won’t.

So here’s my list and the things I tell anyone who asks me how to go about getting published. It’s the un-gilded truth. It’s blunt, but at the end, if you still want to move ahead on this idea, then welcome to the club. Perhaps you should be an author.

• You will be required to wait, sometimes for years, to get any answer out of a publisher, editor or agent. You have to be prepared to bug these people if they don’t reply after a reasonable period of time has elapsed, but you also have to learn extreme patience.
• You have to be prepared for someone to tell you your work is crap. A few will be nice. Many will be very blunt. If you can’t take that, then don’t show your work to anyone.
• Even if you do get a positive response and an offer of publication, you will almost certainly not be offered much money. (If the person asks you for money, then just walk away. They’re scamming you.)
• You have to educate yourself about the publishing game. This involves a lot of arcane terms, how the pipeline works (and how slowly!), and what your place is in it (think bottom rung hanging on by one finger). You have to know the terms that will be thrown your way.
• You have to be prepared to compromise. It could mean your ms being torn apart and reassembled in a way you might not like. Can you accept that?
• You will be expected to promote yourself – and do a good job at it. This goes for even the superstars (and many are superstars partly because of their promotional skills). You cannot hide in a garret. You have to be effective out in public. That’s a skill, and it can be learned. Be prepared to learn. If that doesn’t interest you, then stop right where you are.
• You have to be ready to promote yourself at any opportunity. Learn to love and use social media. Be ready to create and maintain a website. (You don’t have to necessarily do this yourself.)
• You will probably not make much money. Have I said that enough yet?
• Your publisher may drop you at any time. And that hurts…a lot.
• Critics may shred your work – and do it very publicly. Readers will trash your books on Amazon, Goodreads, any number of places. Suck it up, buttercup.
• You probably won’t see someone on a subway or bus reading your book. You probably won’t see it in airport book racks. You probably won’t meet strangers who tell you, “Oh you're that author. I really enjoy your books. (I once met a woman who told me, “I believe I read one of your books. I didn’t like it very much. You’re not a very good writer.” It was said at a party and several people heard the comment.) Get ready to possibly be the best kept secret of all time.
• You must find at least one person with the appropriate knowledge to read your ms and give you their honest, unvarnished opinion as to whether you should proceed with the next step (or whether you should be writing at all) – and then accept that opinion and act on it. Family and loved ones can generally not be relied on to provide this critical service.

Have I forgotten anything?