PecanSpringsJournal

Catching Up

I took a holiday from blogging while I finished the book and worked on a couple of other writing projects. for those of you who've been following this project blog (the writing of Wormwood) a note about the disappearance of the posts. This blog was set to display only the current month, so you needed to look in the archives for the posts in November, October, etc. I've changed the setting to display the maximum number of calendar days, but as time passes, the posts will continue to be moved to the archives. Go there for a look.

Now, back to business, catching up. I'm finished with Wormwood, although there is still some clean-up/fix-up to be done to the last couple of chapters--and Bill has yet to read and critique the full book. The book (one printed copy plus an e-file) isn't due until the end of March, so I have some time to work out the wrinkles and crinkles in the last chapters and write the end note on wormwood, the signature herb.

Turned out to be more problems than I anticipated in pulling the two stories together: the Shaker back story and the mystery that China has to solve in contemporary time. And I always have trouble with disposing of the villain at the end of the book, because I don't want the conventional shoot-em-up conclusion. But I lived with the problem for some weeks, until I was eventually struck by a bolt from the blue: you'll understand the full significance of that when you read the book. Which won't be until April 2009 at the earliest. Next steps: final cleanup, submission (end of March), revisions requested by the editor (sometime next summer, if any), copyedit (November-December), bound galleys (January 2009), and bound books (April 2009).

Writing log. Altogether, I've logged 95 calendar days on the project, 67 working days, and 87,000 words (which will probably be close to 70 working days and 90,000 words, when all is said and done). This book seemed to stretch out forever, primarily because I took time out for the blog tour and time out when my daughter came for a week's visit. We'll call this done for now, since I need to turn to another writing projects: getting the final text of the memoir (now titled Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir of Marriage and Place) ready for the editors at the University of Texas Press, which will publish it in Fall, 2009.

Reading Note. Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.--Eudora Welty [I wonder if families tell stories any more, or do they leave storytelling to the television?]

Writing practice

In a recent comment, Dani asked several questions that I hear fairly often. Here they are:

Do you have a set writing schedule? A certain time of day that you get in your xx number of words? Days off from writing? Are those scheduled? My great challenge with writing is staying on task. I read recently that one author wouldn't allow himself to pee until he wrote his quota everyday. :D I'm about ready to try that.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes. (Re: peeing. Whatever works.)

Writing calendar. I'm writing two series at the moment, which means two books a year, with hard deadlines. I also write an "extra" book about every 18 months, usually with a softer deadline. If I didn't organize my work, I couldn't meet the deadlines, hard or soft. So I calendar my projects, just the way you calendar projects at the office. I give each book a 90-day slot on the calendar, hoping to get 60-some good writing days out of that period and still leave time for life. I calendar six months a year for series writing (China Bayles, the Cottage Tales), which gives me plenty of time for an "extra" project, like the short story collection, the Book of Days, the memoir that will be out in 2009, and fun editorial work, such as What Wildness and the book review site.

Writing schedule. I am enormously privileged: writing is my day job. Which means that I go to work when everybody else does (rather than writing nights and weekends, the way I did when I was first getting started and I was still working at the university). I show up at the computer about 8:30, after morning chores and the morning dog walk. I work on the current project until 4:30, with some time off for lunch. I allow myself to be distracted by Bill, email, interesting Web stuff, uninteresting household stuff (laundry etc) and dogs. I aim for 1500 words a day and usually get it, more or less. At that rate, it should take me just under 60 days to come up with about 85,000 words. Add in another 10 days for revision, and I'm up to about 70 days. To reduce the forgetting factor, I prefer to corral as many consecutive days as possible for the work (yes, this does include weekends). I don't like to work half-days. If I've got to go somewhere in the afternoon, I don't try to write in the morning, I do the laundry instead. As I said, writing is my day job. It's a wonderful privilege. It's also a responsibility, and I take it seriously.

Days off. Sure. There are scheduled days off. This month, I planned to take time out to speak in Lubbock, Dallas, Georgetown, and at the Texas Book Fair. I also went to Austin for a couple of Story Circle events: Reading Circle and the launch of the Kitchen Table Stories. And I planned to take Thanksgiving Day off to cook, knit, and watch a movie (Amazing Grace--good!). But there are unscheduled days off, too. A sick dog, a four-hour power failure, shopping, an emergency trip to the dentist, an unexpectedly large pecan harvest, garden work (has to be done in the daytime now, with dark coming just at dinner-time).

Staying on task. A deadline is a great motivator. And humans are great procrastinators. Without a deadline, most of us won't stay on task. I give myself quotas and set myself deadlines--these are the monkey tricks that keep me sane, as William Conrad says in Heart of Darkness. But writing is my life. I love it. I have to do it. Staying on task isn't a problem for me. It's making time for other life stuff that is often my challenge.

Writing practice. Years ago, when I first began studying Buddhism, I saw the connection between sitting practice and writing practice. (This was before Natalie Goldberg began writing her books about writing and Zen practice. She saw it too.) For me, writing is a kind of meditation practice. When I'm writing, I'm paying attention, the best kind of attention, to the real world at large, to the imaginary world of my fiction, to the interior world of mind, the sound of words, the play of thought. I do this best when I'm focused, clear, intent, motivated (either by the pressure of the story or the pressure of the deadline). If an unnecessary distraction comes up, I let it go. If a necessary distraction comes along, I pay it the attention it deserves, then come back to the work.

Reading about writing. There's lots of good stuff about writing out there. Natalie Goldberg and Anne Lamott, for instance. Oh, and Stephen King--I really like his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. King is a 2000-word a day guy (he doesn't do the laundry), and quits only when he gets it done. He's also able to think about the writing life, as well as live it. I like that.

Reading note. The biggest aid to regular (Trollopian?) production is working in a serene atmosphere. It's difficult for even the most naturally productive writer to work in an environment where alarms and excursions are the rule rather than the exception. When I'm asked for 'the secret of my success' (an absurd idea, that, but impossible to get away from), I sometimes say there are two: I stayed physically healthy (at least until a van knocked me down by the side of the road in the summer of 1999), and I stayed married... The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible. And I believe the converse is also true: that  my writing and the pleasure I take in it has contributed to the stability of my health and my home life.--Stephen King, On Writing

A two-story novel

Actually, all novels have more than one story--in the sense that every character has a story. The more complex the character's story, the more complex the character. For the novelist, the trick is to pick out the most compelling of the stories, foreground it, and weave all the other stories together around it, behind it, in the background. In a mystery series, we usually assume that the most compelling story belongs to the detective, whose job it is to solve the mystery and create a more or less appropriate ending for the story of the bad guy. That's how it almost always works in first-person mystery novels. China's story is foregrounded, the other stories (Ruby's, Sheila's, McQuaid's, Brian's, etc) play out in the background.

But Nightshade, which will come out in April, is different. In that novel, two detectives are at work--China and McQuaid, so both their stories are foregrounded, China's story told in her usual first-person voice, McQuaid's story in third person, present tense.

And now Wormwood, which is different still. I wanted to set China's story in a Shaker village--a reconstructed village, a living museum called Zion's Spring. The mystery in China's story (a murder, covering up an embezzlement) takes place in present time. But I also wanted to tell a story set in the past, about the lives of the Shakers who once lived in Zion's Spring. So I'm crafting a two-story novel: China's story is told in her usual crisp, authoritative first-person voice; the Shaker story, set in 1912, is told in a variety of voices and media (narration, dreams, letters, journals, newspaper articles, even drawings). These multiple stories alternate, overlap, and intersect in what I hope will be interesting and thought-provoking ways, so that we see both the present and the past from multiple and often contradictory points of view. I haven't got all this worked out yet, of course. But the process has been challenging. For me, and I hope for you, when you sit down to read the book.

And maybe you'll come back to this blog to see what I've written about the process (and to read the comments)--which might extend the reading experience in some new ways. More about that in another post.

Writing log. I was gone for a few days at the beginning of November (book talks, etc) and the blog tour took more time than I expected. And there was the pecan harvest to deal with (200 pounds, when we weighed it all out!) and a sick dog, and so on and so forth. Life happens.

Here's an update. I've been working more or less steadily for two calendar months. (I know: it seems MUCH longer to me, too!) So far, I've managed to corral 44 writing days out of 60 (this includes 5 days for revision of the first half of the book). I'm up to just over 60,000 words (about 3/4 done). I have about 25,000 words to go, or some 16-17 writing days. I won't quite finish in early December, as I expected, because my daughter is coming next week for a visit (yay!), and then I'm heading out to NM to join Bill for Christmas. But what the heck. Fiction can wait. China will just have to twiddle her thumbs until I can get back to her.

Reading note. I tell a story the way some people eat an Oreo cookie.--B.E. Zalman, quoted in Room to Write, by Bonni Goldberg

Point of view

One of the first things a fiction writer has to do is to choose a point of view: the character from whose perspective the story will be told. Sometimes the point of view is anchored in one character or another. Sometimes it floats from one character to another, either tightly or loosely. The author needs to decide how much control she wants to exercise over the point of view. For much more on this technical subject, go here.

When I started the China series, I chose first-person POV. Mostly, this was because I wanted to create a distinctive voice (both internal speech and speech) for China, but I have to confess that I was also operating under the influence of Nancy Pickard (the Jenny Cain series) and Sue Grafton, who was up to "F" when I began to think about China. And to tell the truth, FP POV is somewhat easier for a novice novelist, because the novel (except for other characters' dialogue) takes place in one character's brain--so to speak. That is, when you read a China novel, you're getting all (and only) China's take on everything in the world, except when another character speaks.

You can see the advantages, especially in a series of books. Once I got to know China, it was really easy to slip into her character and let her tell the story. And readers enjoy it, too because once they get to know China, they find it easy to slip into her character. If the POV character is friendly and inviting, FP POV can have a "friendly" feel to it that readers enjoy and look forward to. (Conversely, if the POV character is angry, ugly, bitter, readers are likely to be put off.)

On the other hand, FP POV is devilishly hard to work with when you're writing a mystery. To be fair, I have to put out all the clues, not hold anything back. The readers know everything that China knows, and if I'm not careful, they will solve the mystery before she does. (I handled a clue clumsily in Rosemary Remembered and got lots of mail from people who thought China was totally dumb for not spotting the give-away clue when they did.)This is a real problem because I have a mix of readers (don't we all?): people who work hard at solving the mystery, read a lot of mysteries, and are very good sleuths; and people who read for the characters and don't give a flip for the mystery. I have to write for both.

And it's also a problem over a long series, like China's, when readers (and/or this author!) get a little . . . well, bored with the China-only books. In Nightshade (comes out next April), I told part of the story from McQuaid's point of view. He and China are working to solve the same case, but from different angles. He knows things she doesn't know, and vice versa, and the readers get to know it all (but are still, I hope, surprised by who-dunnit). To easily distinguish between the two voices, I chose to tell McQuaid's story in third-person POV, present tense. I'll talk more about that when you've had a chance to read that book.

I've set it up differently in Wormwood (the book I'm working on now), where there is the present story (told from China's familiar FP POV) and the past story, told from several points of view. The two stories intersect much more loosely than do the China/McQuaid stories in Nightshade. I'm eager to know how you'll respond to both of these experiments. Some readers will probably prefer the simpler FP POV. I'll hear wails of "not enough China!" Others will welcome the experiment. So we'll see.

Writing log. I had to spend several writing days this week paying attention to my upcoming blog tour (scheduling, writing posts, setting up web pages, etc.). The announcement goes out tomorrow, but you can have a preview peek at the schedule here. And since the announcement of the new book review website went out on Monday, Paula, Linda, and I have been deluged with queries that had to be handled. As a result, I've only logged three writing days in the past six, with a total of 3k words--not much forward progress. But I straightened out some plot snarls, added some in-depth characterization, and thought of another twist. So I'm feeling okay about it. I'm up to 43k words, about 50% done, and pretty much on schedule, aiming to complete the book by the first or second week of December. I'm out Tuesday-Thursday in the coming week, too (Lubbock and Dallas). Friday will be catch-up, and Sunday is the Texas Book Festival. I'll be glad when I can arrange more consecutive writing days!

Reading note. And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.--Sylvia Plath

Recipes, herbs, and other embroideries

Sorry. I'm writing, just not writing as much about writing as I planned. We're enjoying a huge pecan harvest here, and dealing with these wonderful nuts (my job: shucking) is cutting into my blogging time. Also, I'm weaving, which effectively accounts for the rest. You can read about all of that kind of stuff here.

I've been wanting to write here about what I think of as the "embroideries" of the China books: the herbs, herb lore, and recipes that so many people enjoy. When I started the series in 1992, mysteries, by and large, didn't include these domestic "extras." The focus was mostly on the plot, ma'am, just the plot and not much else. In fact, in the 1930s, much-revered mystery author Dorothy Sayers decreed that the mystery shouldn't even include any romance, since it was a distraction from the story--meaning, from the mystery plot. No extras, please, no embroideries. Nothing that might distract the detective from the pursuit of the perpetrator. Plot comes first, last, and always in these early mysteries.

But over time, the whodunnit has ceased to be merely a plot-driven puzzle. By the time I started the China series, readers had become more interested in characterization, and since there were many more women readers (and since publishers were interested in selling books to these readers), it became possible for women characters in mysteries to do practice some of the domestic arts. With her herbs and the emphasis on foods, China was among the first of these "domestic" mystery divas (although I like to think that she's edgier than most of the other domestic detectives). She wasn't quite the first gardening sleuth; that honor goes to Celia Grant, the protagonist in a 10-book British horticulture series that ended in the mid-90s. And I wasn't the first to include recipes in mysteries: Virginia Rich did that in her first Eugenia Potter mystery in 1984, and she did a darn good job of it, too. But China has certainly continued longer than most. And if you ask me, the "embroideries" go a long way toward explaining her success. (Sorry about that, Dorothy Sayers.) Judging from my mail, lots of people read China's mysteries just for the recipes.

But I have never wanted to use the plants and foods in these books as merely distracting extras that keep the reader entertained while the detective searches for clues. For me, the challenge has always been not just to "embroider" the mysteries with odd bits about plants and cookery, but to build this material into the plot, characterizations, settings, and all the other business of a novel. I want my embroideries to be useful.

Plants are particularly wonderful in this regard, because they carry so much additional baggage. Many plants have strongly symbolic meanings--wormwood, for instance (the title of the book I'm working on), which carries the traditional connotations of bitter repentance, unhappiness, sorrow, and guilt. Or nightshade (the title of the April 2008 release), a plant family that is deeply ambiguous, containing dire poisons (belladonna, datura, henbane) and nourishing food (tomato, potato, eggplant). Plants aren't just beautiful, they do things. Bloodroot stains like blood and you can't wash it out. Dill keeps the witches (and evil) away. Rosemary helps us remember. So I try to build these characteristics into the books, a practice that usually, in the course of the research, teaches me much more than I already knew and helps me to broaden my characters and give their actions a deeper significance.

Wormwood is strongly symbolic. Here is the headnote to Chapter 4 (it may not stay there): The name wormwood is said to have derived from the legend of the Garden of Eden, where it sprang up from the track made by the serpent as it was driven out of the garden. When Adam and Eve were expelled, too, wormwood formed a dense hedge, barring their return.

Think about this in terms of the Shaker village I'm writing about, a kind of Utopia (at least, that's how it looked from the outside), a paradise. But there's a serpent in this paradise (isn't there always)? And once you've been tempted, have fallen, and been evicted, you'll never get back in--wormwood (bitter guilt) will keep you out. I love the way symbolic elements like these, derived from the plants themselves, suggest stories. For me, discovering the stories hidden in these "embroideries" is a wonderful part of the writing process.

Writing log. 20 writing days, 29,000 words--which means that I am about one-third finished with the book. Time for the first body to appear. (My dear D-I-L kids me about finding the body around page 100 in every book--and yes, here it is.

Reading note. I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book. —Lydia Marie Child, author of The American Frugal Housewife (1802-1880)

Franchises and other mystery matters

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when Bill and I were writing for the Hardy Boys series, we had a great editor named Bill McKay. Bill was a Hardy Boys fan from way back, and was wise in the ways of the series. Wise in writing mysteries, actually. He understood how a mystery worked, unlike some of the editors we worked with on the Nancy Drew series, who were sometimes more interested in Nancy's wardrobe and love life than in the mystery. He always gave us good advice about plots and characterization--helpful, back in those days when we were pretty much just starting out.

One of the things that sticks in my mind from those days was Bill McKay's smart advice about the detective's "franchise." Every detective, he used to say, has to have a very good reason for being involved with the case. He (or she) has to be motivated. The cop's franchise is simple, right? Solving the crime is his job. It's what he gets paid to do. Private eyes also get paid to solve the crime: somebody shows up in the detective's office with a mystery, slaps down a retainer, and the PI gets down to cases (usually a little more eagerly if he is broke or bored or both).

But amateur sleuths--the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, China Bayles, Kate and Charles Sheridan, et. al--have to have a different reason for being involved in the investigation of a crime, what Bill McKay called the detective's franchise. Miss Marple's friend is unjustly accused of murder, and Miss Marple has to find the real killer. Somebody is sending poison pen letters to Nancy's pal George, and Nancy has to get to the bottom of it. A man shows up and announces that he's China's brother and he thinks their father was murdered--what's she going to do about it? A baby is left on Beatrix Potter's doorstep: why? whose? who left it there?

Bill McKay used to insist that the franchise be believable (within the context of the story), and never let us get away with a sloppy, unrealistic franchise. That was twenty years ago, but to this day, I never sit down to start writing a mystery without thinking about the franchise. The mystery I'm writing now, for instance. For very good reasons, I want to set it in a Kentucky Shaker village, which I've named Zion's Spring. By what believable mechanism do I get China there? She and Ruby and Cass are busy on the home front--why will she agree to go to Kentucky? Who wants her at Zion's Spring, and why? The answers to these questions involve Bill McKay's "franchise," and answering them takes me the better part of the first two chapters, and I'm pretty well satisfied with the way they turned out.

I hope, when you read the book, you'll agree that it's a realistic, believable situation. I also hope that you'll think about this issue the next time you read a mystery--any mystery. Does the detective--cop, PI, or amateur--have a strong franchise, or a weak one? Do you find the situation credible? Maybe yes? Maybe no? Maybe sort of? I'll bet that the answers to that question will have a big influence on your reading of the book.

Writing log. Making progress: 12 writing days, 17,000 words. I worked on the back story today, trying to alternate between that and the main story (worked on that yesterday), to keep in touch with both. My big concern is that I have too much material, and that I won't be able to tie the two stories together (maybe that won't matter?) I ran across a mention of "gift drawings" yesterday, and hung one on a (fictional) wall, although I don't have any clear idea how I'm going to use it. Also ran across a novel called The Believers, published in 1957 and reissued by the University of Kentucky Press, which I am happily reading. Giles is a strong regional writer with a full understanding of the period and place (the South Union Shaker village in the 1830s). Wonder why I've never come across her before. I often learn more from a good novel than from a history book.

Reading note. Motivation means what-do-they-want-and-why? With strong motivation, you'll have strong conflict. Your main character, first of all, should be striving for some life-or-death issue. Perhaps literally; perhaps only because happiness is at stake. In the long run, happiness is always at stake.--Phyllis A. Whitney

Research 1: site visits

Research. On this huge topic, I hardly know where to start.

Okay, focus, get systematic. With this book, Wormwood, I began the research with a couple of site visits, always (almost) fun. So I'll start there. One of the visits was maybe 25 years ago, to the Canterbury NH Shaker community--although maybe that was so long ago, it doesn't count. Or maybe it does, since it was probably the impressions I recalled from that visit that came to mind when I began thinking about setting a China Bayles novel in a Shaker village--impressions of peacefulness, order, cleanliness, serenity.

The most recent visit was in April 2006, when I was on book tour in Kentucky. I planned a day off (not an easy thing on a book tour!) and drove from Louisville to the Pleasant Hill village. I had my camera and a notebook and came away with photos, notes, and lots of ideas--there would have been lots more, too, if I could have stayed all afternoon. I left, not because I wanted to, but because there were tornados in the neighborhood (honestly!), which made me just a little nervous. I drove back to Louisville--and there was a tornado there, too, that night, just a couple of miles from my hotel. Not a good day for site research. Or maybe, in fact, it was a good day, for it reminds me that sometimes order and serenity are disrupted by uncontrollable events (an important reminder for someone who is writing a murder mystery).

If you're a writer (or you want to write), site visits are a good place to start. You'll run into things you'd never encounter otherwise. Who knew, for example, that when Bill and I went to the Royal Duchy Hotel in Princetown, on Dartmoor, in SW England, we would encounter a full-size poster of Conan Doyle--which would remind us that yes, indeed, Doyle had been there, writing The Hound of the Baskervilles. And that became one of our Robin Paige mysteries, Death on Dartmoor. Now, you can take the virtual tour online. (Yes, you can virtually visit the prison where Charles took the fingerprints of the inmates, and the church where he met Doyle, and the hotel where they all stayed--and you can listen to a lecture while you're watching. Pretty nifty!) Back then (way back 1998, before virtual Internet tours), we had to actually go there.

But even though you can take a virtual tour, that won't bring you the feel of the biting wind on your face, or the smell of the heather, or sight of the gray clouds racing across a lowering sky. (Or a tornado, as the case may be.)

So, do a site visit, if you can, with a camera and notebook. Give yourself plenty of time, and don't let your partner/spouse/friend hurry you along. Take the time to make good notes of everything around you: trees, plants, building materials, furnishings, vehicles, sounds, smells. Every place has a history. Get a sense (you can build on this later, in book-based research) of the history of the place, the people. What political/social events shaped it? What's the history of its natural environment? You can never tell when some little thing will turn into something important for your story.

Oh, and be sure to visit a local bookstore and ask to see books about the local area. When I visited Pleasant Hill, I browsed through shelves of books I would never have found elsewhere. I bought a big stack and had them shipped home, where at this moment they are scattered across my desk and the floor, within easy reach. I couldn't write this book without them.

From my log book: 8 writing days, 10,700 words. I finished a pretty solid draft of Chapter 3 today, and did some more work on the plot--both the back story and current story. (Yes, I know today is Saturday, but when I'm writing, I really hate to skip a day, because I forget where I am in the story. And since I know I'm going to have 70-some days invested in the writing part of this project, I'd rather they be as consecutive as possible.

Reading note.

And lo! earth yet shall blossom,
Though the brighter morn delays;
For God perfects the harvest,
Yea, after many days.
--Mother Ann Lee

What time is it?

I didn't get very far today--sidetracked by some Story Circle work (the "secret project" that Paula Yost and Peggy Moody and I, and now Linda Wisnieski, have been working on) and by some other writing-related stuff (talks I'm giving that need descriptions and bios). I'm probably putting off writing, but that's okay. I've been at this long enough to know that something's always cooking on the back burners, and pretty soon it'll boil over and I'll be back in business again.

What's cooking right now is the issue of time. You probably know that I love historical fiction. One of my very favorite mysteries is The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, in which the detective, confined to bed, solves the murder of the princes in the Tower--and Richard III didn't do it. I enjoyed writing as Robin Paige with Bill, doing those Victorian/Edwardian mysteries (some of those historical mysteries had historical back stories!). And I'm having fun with the Cottage Tales, set in 1905-1913 in the Lake District. I've also been playing with historical back stories in the past several China novels. The death of her father, which threads through Hearts, Dagger, and Nightshade, takes place 16 years before the time of the story. China's job, as detective, is to recreate the past, to find out what really happened 16 years ago.

So I love fooling around with narrative time. And when I decided to set Nightshade in a Shaker village, I thought (probably too confidently), that it would be fascinating to set one mystery in Shaker time, a second in China's time, and tie the two plots together--somehow or other. (Don't ask me, because I don't know yet.)

But when in Shaker time? When the village--Zion's Spring--was first established, around 1820 or so? Or when it was flourishing and the herb business was in its prime, in the 1850s? Or I could set it during the Civil War, which in Kentucky was a cataclysm, or after the War, when things were beginning to fall apart, or in the first decades of the 20th century, when the Societies were closing, one after another. Or even in the 1930s, when Deborah Woodruff set her Kentucky Shaker mysteries. I can see a different story in each of these periods, can't you? Any one of these eras would have its own special interest, special appeal.

But I have to choose one. (Yes, I do, since this is only a back story, and can occupy only a third to a quarter of the whole novel.) After letting the question stew for a while, I've chosen the 1890s. There--you see? Just a couple of days ago, I was thinking the 1870s! And when I actually start putting down dates, it may slide into the early 1900s. It's still a bit unclear at this point.

But whether it's 1895 or 1905, my reason is the same: in all of the 19 Shaker villages in the country, this was probably the most conflicted period. It was clear that things were falling apart. There weren't enough strong young people to do the work, there was thievery and embezzlement and worse, and the World's People were encroaching upon the peace of the village. Some people are trying to hold onto the quiet center of their faith, keep everything together, but it's difficult, it's really impossible. Like the very beginning of the Shaker Societies, the ending was a chaotic, unsettled time, the stuff of good fiction. If I can't make a story out of this material, I'm not much of a writer.

So now I have a setting--Zion's Spring--for China's main story and the Shakers' back story, and a time for the back story, more or less. Of all the elements of fiction, I always think that the place and the time are definitive, because they control so many of the other elements: the way people talk and work and live, the way they relate to one another, their issues and concerns, even the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the tools and technologies they use.

While we're talking about this, I want to mention Sue Grafton's S Is For Silence, which I wrote about some time ago. I like the way she brings together two stories: the story of what happens on four days in July, 1953 (told from the point of view of the people involved) and the story of Kinsey's investigation in 1987, told (as usual) from Kinsey's first-person point of view. Her development of the 1953 plot is very strong, and her use of period detail is excellent, A+++. Grafton is very much worth studying, for all kinds of reasons. And if you're writing a first-person mystery, of course, she's the first writer you should turn to.

Enough for tonight. I got a new book today, Gleanings from Old Shaker Journals, and I want to skim through it. In the next entry, I think I'd like to talk about research, resources, that sort of thing.

From my log book: 6 writing days, 7800 words. Some days I've made my 1500-word goal, some days I haven't. But I'm making progress.

Reading note. Why send to Europe's bloody shores/For plants which grow by our own doors?--from the cover of the first Shaker herb catalog, printed in 1830

Setting: Where in the world?

Okay, right down to business here. I've known for maybe 5-6 years that I'd like to do a Shaker book, and settled fairly early on Kentucky, mostly because I had visited Pleasant Hill. In fact, I thought at first (for several years, actually) that I'd set the novel there--thought it would be more interesting for people to be able to read about a place they'd actually visited. And it's a beautiful place, as you can see from the gorgeous photos on the website. China would go to Pleasant Hil to an herb workshop, maybe, or to give a talk, or consult on a garden project, and (as usual) she would run into a mystery.

But then I began thinking about the mechanics of the mystery plot (I know, I know--YOU may not need a mystery in a China novel, but my editor does, and so do at least 50% of the readers). And when I got down to the nasty details--dirty tricks, maybe arson, certainly one dead body, maybe more, dastardly motives, buried secrets--Pleasant Hill seemed less and less like the right setting. Can you see why? The people who have restored the buildings and keep the grounds and staff the services are really nice people. I don't want to "victimize" or "villainize" any of them (even if only fictionally).

Also, when you use an actual site, you are bound by what exists or existed there, more or less. Take the village of Sawrey, for example, which I'm using in the Cottage Tales. It's a real place. You can go there and visit and look around and check the settings in the books against the village itself. But that's hard to do, and in some ways limiting. And I didn't want to do it for China's Shaker book. I wanted more freedom than that.

So I decided some months ago that this was going to be a fictional Shaker village. Yes, in Kentucky, but not at Pleasant Hill or South Union, the only two real Shaker communities in the state. I'd put it somewhere else--beside a mineral spring, say, where people could come for the "healing waters." (I thought first of a hot spring, but then Bill suggested a mineral spring--he didn't think there were any hot springs in Kentucky--and I like that idea better.)

So the book is set at Zion Springs, which is a fictional Shaker village northwest of Lexington, sort of, in an area where there is a rather famous mineral spring, Drennon Springs. I read about it once, and an Internet search turned it up again. Drennon was the site of cabins (1820s) and an hotel (1840s), which failed when an outbreak of cholera occurred there. (That would do it, wouldn't it?) The Shaker village itself, which failed in 1910 (about the same time that Pleasant Hill and South Union failed), is now the site of a "living museum," modeled on the one at Pleasant Hill. Since it's a fictional setting, I have more freedom in constructing it--I can create all the spaces I need for the plot. Since it's based on real-world places, however--Pleasant Hill, Drennon Springs--I have something concrete to start with. It will feel real, at least to me.

Today I finished the introduction (added some stuff about the Shakers' decline and fall), and started writing the first chapter. It's set in Pecan Springs, at a picnic, which gives me a chance to get all the Pecan Springs characters into the book. China doesn't want to go off on this jaunt to Zion Spring, but Ruby and the others are encouraging her to go. Setting this chapter in a familiar place, with familiar characters, will satisfy (at least partially) those readers who hate it when China leaves town on an adventure. And it helps to anchor the story in the context of China's on-going life, which as you know is what the series is really all about.

Word count (I'm going to start putting it here, at the end of the entry, so you can see where I am in the process): 3800. These books are usually around 85,000 words, so you can see I have a way to go.

Getting Started

The next China Bayles (#17, due out in April 2009), is called Wormwood, the old-fashioned name for Artemesia absinthium. This is the third of the "out-of-town" books, set elsewhere than Pecan Springs, TX, China's home base: Rueful Death was the first, then Bloodroot, and now Wormwood. I like writing out-of-town books, not only because it gives me a break from the usual settings and cast of characters, but because it gives me a chance to explore a different setting, different characters, a different plot problem. Some readers don't like this kind of alteration in the "natural order" of things, but I learned long ago that I need to give myself a break, or I won't be able to stay engaged with a long series. My attention span is pretty short, as it is.

You probably know that the authors of your favorite series books are at least one, sometimes two, books ahead of you. In the China series, Spanish Dagger was finished in January 06 and published in April 07, Nightshade was finished in January 07 and will be published in April 08, and Wormwood will be finished (the writing gods willing) in January 08 and published in April 09. If all goes according to plan, that is. According to my plan, and the publisher's contract.

For several years, I've been promising myself to set a book in a Shaker village. The Shakers were the most important growers/marketers of medicinal herbs in America in the 19th century, and the villages I've visited are lovely. I might have done it a couple of books ago, but I got involved with a trilogy within the series that started with Bleeding Hearts and ends with Nightshade, involving China's reluctant investigation (with her half-brother, Miles) into her father's death. Once I started that, the Shaker book had to wait. But Nightshade is done, China can get on with her life, and I can get started on the Shaker book.

Yesterday, I set up the file and put in the standard pages (title page, acknowledgements, etc.--some of which are currently blank). Then, guessing that a great many readers won't know a lot about the Shakers, drafted a brief introduction: 800 words, unedited. This is the sort of thing I usually save for the end of the book, like the historical notes I write for each book in the Cottage Tales series. But in this case I want it at the beginning of the book, to give readers some historical background. Otherwise, I'm afraid they won't be able to figure out some of the backstory references, which might otherwise be too oblique.

I've already done some plot work, mostly in my head, but also in some notes I made a couple of weeks ago, while I was driving back from New Mexico and listening to Bloodroot, which is my favorite of all the Chinas. The contemporary plot of Wormwood involves at least one (maybe more--I'm not sure yet) of the characters in Bloodroot. There'll be multiple plots in the book, as usual: a backstory plot that's set in the 1870s and a plot that focuses on what happens when China visits the reconstructed Shaker village, Zion's Spring.

I've never blogged a WIP before, so I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing here. Let me know what you'd like to hear more about, less about, or whatever, and I'll try to fit it in--maybe not right away, but eventually.

And thanks for reading this, and my other blog, and all your comments. People used to say that writing was a lonely occupation. Not anymore!

Reading note.

Go work with ardent courage,
and sow with willing hand
the seed o'er barren deserts
and o'er the fertile land.

And lo! earth yet shall blossom
though the brighter morn delays
for God perfects the harvest,
yea, after many days.

--The Life and Gospel Experience of Mother Ann Lee
(East Canterbury, NH Shakers, 1901)