A Week – So Long, So Short

After a week on the Oregon coast I feel that distorted fluctuation of time in which it passes so quickly, it seems as if the trip just started, and moves so slowly there’s a sense, as I walk from room to room, that I was gone for a very long time.

The week watching the waves and walking miles of beach was too short. The buildup of day-job email and unread blogs make it seem far longer than a week away.

So much can happen in a week. The leisurely reading of my novel wiped away the elation of being “done” now that I see the polishing will be more a sanding and scraping than just a buffing. During the week, I received notice that a short story “wasn’t what our readers are looking for” and an acceptance for a story that is “very well written, with excellent tension-building”. (My story So Lucky will appear at EveryDayFiction — short fiction in your inbox, daily. The publication date is TBD).

It’s so hard to leave the ocean and unstructured days, but so good to be home, chipping away at rough passages in the novel.

No Longer Spun About Genre

After years, yes I mean, years of spinning, obsessing, talking, googling, studying other books that “might” be like mine, I’m finally settled about my “genre”.

I have badgered family and friends and critique group partners about my obsession. I’m embarrassed to say that I even rushed up to a stranger at a writers’ group and moaned about my dilemma. (He had introduced himself and offered to share insights into the publishing business, so I felt somewhat justified.) I’ve blogged about my obsession. I’ve settled on a view and then unsettled. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with it. In part, it’s a marketing thing. Although I’ve read some agent blogs that state it’s not critical, others say it’s important to know where you fit in the market.

Since I’m very close to finishing my final draft – as in tomorrow! I plan to spend the next few months pulling out the silver polish and a buffing pad. For me, that means reading my entire novel out loud. I’ve learned the hard way that this is critical to polishing my fiction. Reading a short story aloud is slow going. I imagine reading 90,000 words aloud will take some time.

When my voice gets raw and I need a break, I’ll be working on my one-line pitch, my synopsis and my query letter. Hence the intensifying of my panic – how do I describe this novel?

Categorizations of fiction in Writer’s Digest  and the like tell me Psychological Suspense is a sub-genre of Mystery / Crime, but a lot of research points to thrillers and suspense as in clock-ticking, global stakes and violently murderous high drama. So I’ve been, I think rightfully, concerned that using the term Psychological Suspense would mis-lead. For years, I clung to this descriptioin, but worried that it discusses film more than novels.

I was settling on Psychological Suspense, feeling a bit more comfortable, using the term on my website, but still, the unease nagged at the back of my mind.

Today, I was wasting time, as I’m prone to do when I’m writing and I pause and my brain panics and leaps to that great time-wasting universe called the web. I ambled over to the Mystery Writers of America website … no idea why. I saw that they didn’t restrict their membership to “mystery” writers, but included crime. I dropped down a level and found they invite writers of Mystery/Crime/Suspense to join. hmmm. I don’t recall seeing the “suspense” category before.

For the hundredth time, I googled, this time with a slightly different phrase, “what is suspense novel”. The first hit was this article. I struck gold. I found these nuggets:

1. The writer of a suspense novel casts his dispassionate eye as much upon the passion, as upon the deed it produced
2. Suspense novels are not even necessarily about crime, whether committed or contemplated, though it is true that most include some form of law-breaking or misdeed.
3. Suspense novels often have an undertone of unease, of nebulous threats. This is perhaps especially common in those about domestic life, by such writers as Ruth Rendell herself, or Celia Fremlin.
4. [Patricia]  Highsmith believes that only criminals are free; but also that we are all criminals, to a greater or lesser extent. It is much more common though, for criminals in suspense novels to be demonstrably deranged.
5. Those of Ruth Rendell, for example, have their peculiarities traced in approved psychological style, to childhood experiences and deprivations, and often their misdeeds are sparked off when a precarious equilibrium is accidentally destroyed.
6. In Ruth Rendell’s books, the bland faces mask obsession and neurosis.

The passion as much as the deed … some form of law-breaking or misdeed … an undertone of unease, of nebulous threats … domestic life … we are all criminals … their peculiarities traced to childhood experiences and deprivations … a precarious equilibrium is accidentally destroyed … bland faces mask obsession and neurosis. That describes my current novel, and the others lurking in my mind, dribbling out into my notebook, fermenting in the virtual desk drawer.

I regret the long post, I try to keep it brief. And I know this post is mostly for me, because I just had to blog about how very happy I am today. A perfect place to be the day before I finish the final draft of my  novel.

(I guess I can cut my hair.)

I Can’t Help It

I can’t help it that I look at the dark side of things. Or maybe a better way to phrase that is, I’m cynical. Tell me something’s perfect and my knees jerk up to my gut. Perfect? — not in this lifetime.

It seems like once a month I read a newspaper article that quotes this mantra: This doesn’t happen in our neighborhood.

My dark side rises up, screaming, why? Why do you think this doesn’t happen in your neighborhood? The questions pile on like a bunch of footballers. (Not a word I usually use, but I’m reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves and this word came up in the coverage of apostrophe uses. I assume it’s a British thing, maybe my British friends can let me know.) Anyway, the questions pile on:

• is your neighborhood filled with perfect people?
• do shootings, stabbing and murder only happen in “bad” neighborhoods? what is a “bad” neighborhood, anyway?
• drunks never careen through your neighborhood? because no one in your neighborhood drinks and drives?

The story that prompted this round of questions was a man fleeing the police who smashed his car into someone’s bedroom. If something like “this” doesn’t happen in your neighborhood, it’s because you’re lucky!

The similar quote comes after murder, usually: he was such a nice man. Really? You knew this because he waved at you when he brought in his trash cans? He brought in his trashcans on time? Is that what made him “nice”?

I suppose most people read comments like these and feel compassion (I do) or relief that it didn’t happen to them (I do), but those are fleeting emotions. Immediately my brain leaps to the dark side of life: murder, betrayal, hatred, lying, secrets, stealing, self-absorption, cruelty — the stuff of fiction, but especially the stuff of psychological suspense.

It might have a little to do with my job — I’m a competitive analyst. I’m always looking for flaws, for marketing claims and PR statements that can be poked full of holes and shown as half-truths. But it’s mostly just the way I’m wired. I can’t help it.

Bad News / Good News

They always say, which do you want first – the bad news or the good news.

I always like the bad news first. It never seems as bad when the good news follows quickly.

The bad news is, my lovely summer lull that allowed me lunch breaks to blog and write flash fiction have been sucked up by the day job monster. It’s back to eating at my desk, working after dinner. Yuck. Hopefully the after dinner part will end next week.

But there’s good news. I’m on track with my novel re-write. And this morning, I finished early — almost unheard of — and had time for a quick flash and a short post. I started the day feeling more like a writer than a marketing geek.