Writing Fiction Longhand

            Shakespeare did it, and so did Dickens. Tolstoy, too, for that matter. In fact, up until about a century ago, everybody did it. Everybody who wrote, anyway.

            I’m talking about writing in longhand, with a pen and paper. Before the age of the computer, before typewriters came into wide use, everyone wrote in that fashion. Over the years, a number of people have believed (and still believe) that doing it that way, putting actual pen to actual paper, makes someone a better writer.

            Unless you were William Faulkner. He used a pencil, rather than a pen. A soft pencil on a cheap, ruled drugstore-style pad. He said it was important to him to be able to actually feel the words as he was writing them.

            And then there was Hemingway, who wrote on a typewriter, but what would you expect? He used to be a journalist.

If They Can, So Can I

            Being a recovering journalist myself, and being of the computer age, I’ve written all of my first three books on a computer. I do the outlining and plotting longhand, using a fountain pen and good paper, but when it comes time to do the book, I sit in front of the computer and let the fingers fly over the keyboard.

            Until this time. As I was finishing my third book, NotDeath, But Love, I decided to try something different. I’d write the first chapter of the fourth book (title still undetermined) in longhand with a fountain pen, or pens, just to see how it would feel to do that, and to see if I could detect any difference resulting therefrom in my writing style.

            In anticipation of the experience, I visited Silberman Brown Stationers in Seattle during our recent trip there. It’s an elegant stationery store, located at street level of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel downtown. When I said I was looking for a pad of high-quality paper for writing with a fountain pen, the knowledgeable clerk steered me to Clairefontaine Triomphe, a French luxury brand. I bought one pad lined and one unlined.

Feel the Glide

            I used the ruled paper, of course, and now that I’ve finished the first draft of the first chapter, I wish I could give a more definitive answer to the question of what difference it made to write fiction longhand. I’m really not sure.

            The experience was certainly different, inasmuch as he words weren’t coming out as if shot through a fire hose. I’m a fast typist and tend to really get on a roll when I write, and doing it by hand definitely slowed down the proceedings.

            One consequence of this, which may or may not be a good thing, is that it gave me more time to think about (and have doubts about) the quality of my writing. When I finished the chapter, I felt less confident about the quality of it than I had of the first chapter of the two preceding books.

            Then I showed the manuscript to Linda, who said she was drawn in by the story elements and that it seemed faster-paced than my other books. I wonder if writing it out is enough work that you steer clear of excessive verbiage and perhaps do more editing as you’re writing. I don’t know. I’m going back to the computer for Chapter 2, but think I’ll try doing the first chapter of the next book in longhand as well to see if I gain any further understanding of the process. I need all the understanding I can get.

It's Terrific! It's Terrible!

            At the moment I am hip-deep in the final revisions of my third mystery novel, Not Death, But Love. This is the period in producing any book, when it is not a happy time to be an author. From a creative standpoint, the book has been let go, and all that remains is the drudgery of making sure the commas are in place, the quotes are closed, the style is consistent, and the sentences are as tight as they can be.

            Nevertheless, when shying from the task or considering making short shrift of it, I am reminded of the one-star review I read for another self-published author’s work: “Next time, he should consider spending some money on an editor so he doesn’t put out another book so full of typos to an unsuspecting world.”

            I don’t want to get a review like that, and fear can be a powerful motivator.

When Perspective Vanishes

            Something else happens to an author at this stage of the game. By now, I have been living with this book for so long that it is hard to maintain any sort of perspective toward it. Reading the manuscript yet one more time, I find myself overreacting to almost everything in it.

            If I read a paragraph that strikes me as being good, I begin to have fantasies about the ghost of Tolstoy appearing before me and tipping his hat in tribute. If I read a paragraph that strikes me as being not quite right, it can be only a matter of seconds before I’ve gone to the conclusion that the whole book is garbage and the only thing to be done with it is to hit Command-All-Delete and start all over again.

            It is not at all uncommon to encounter two such paragraphs back-to-back within the span of a minute. The mood swings are scary, and I am grateful to have the self-discipline not to act on my worst impulses.

The Power of Stet

            I have, by the way, hired an editor for this book, and she was well worth the money. What I am doing now is reading the manuscript, chapter by chapter, noting her comments and corrections, and doing additional revisions on my own initiative. Even though I’m adding, as well as subtracting, I figure the final manuscript will be a thousand words shorter by the time I’m done.

            In doing this, I am coming face-to-face with my own mental tennis match. Several times now, I’ve marked a change on the manuscript, then when I set down to enter the revisions the next day, I looked at the change and decided to leave it the way it was in the first place. I came of age in the days of manual proofreading, and one of the proof terms of the time was “stet,” which means, “ignore the correction.” I am stetting a lot as I lurch toward the final version of the book.

            Even so, the version that goes live May 27 won’t be the final one. Everything changes, and, for all the attention my editor and I have paid to detail, there will be things to be corrected after publication. I believe in the book, so I will make those changes. I want it to present as well as possible to the readers.

Reviews, Honest and Otherwise

            One of the people I follow on Twitter put up a post recently asking why it’s easier to get people to shell out money to buy your book than it is to get them to review it if they get it free. I feel her pain.

            Probably the great delusion of every self-published author is that once the book is out, a couple dozen friends will quickly post positive reviews on Amazon. Hah! A lot of them won’t even download the book on a free promotion day, and half the friends who actually do buy the book will insist on getting a hard copy from you directly. That means, of course, that Amazon has no record of the sale and won’t let them do a review, even if they wanted to. Which they usually don’t.

            On the plus side, that means the reviews of the book pretty quickly get honest, which means the author has at least a marginally real idea of how his or her work is being received.

4.7 Out of 5 Stars

            My first mystery novel, The McHenry Inheritance, is currently averaging 4.1 out of 5 stars, with the overwhelming percentage of reviewers now being strangers. What mattered most to me about the reviews was that no one gave it fewer than three stars. That said to me that, whatever they might have felt about the book’s strengths and weaknesses, the reviewers at least conceded it a fundamental level of writing competence. That helped me have the confidence to write the second one.

            The second book, Wash Her Guilt Away, came out less than a year ago. Fewer friends reviewed it than reviewed the first, so nearly all the reviews are from strangers. When I put the book up on Amazon, I held my breath. I had tried to build tension and interest at the beginning through character development and atmosphere, rather than action and bloodshed, and had no idea how that would play. When the first three reviews from strangers came in at five stars, I heaved a sigh of relief.

            By the way, the second book is now averaging 4.7 out of five stars. I feel it’s a more fully realized work than the first one, and it’s good to see that, so far at least, readers are agreeing.

Who Writes Reviews, Anyway?

            Even so, it seems to me that my books aren’t getting as many reviews as the sales numbers indicate they should. Part of that might be that the readership probably skews older, and older readers are a bit less self-absorbed and inclined to think the world is waiting for their opinion.

            Which got me to wondering what kind of reviews an undisputed classic gets. So I checked the Constance Garnett translation of Anna Karenina on Amazon and found that it had been reviewed by more than 1,200 people. I wonder why any of them thought, at this point, that anyone would care about what they had to say.

            Another interesting thing was that Anna Karenina averaged 4.1 out of 5 stars in its reviews — same as my first trashy mystery and lower than the second. So much for the idea that the crowd generally gets it right. And you have to feel a bit sorry for poor Tolstoy. His book went up on Amazon after all his friends were dead and couldn’t help him out with a positive review.

Mickey Spillane, Reading Instructor

            Earlier this month, I heard a school principal make a good pitch for the value of mystery novels. I was at E.A. Hall Middle School in Watsonville, talking to seventh and eighth graders about my own mystery, The McHenry Inheritance, and Olga de Santa Anna, the principal, was in the audience.

            I forget what prompted her remark, but the gist of it was that reading fun books, such as mystery novels, is a good way of both learning and getting pleasure from reading. As an example, she cited her mother, whose first language was Spanish, and who learned to read English through the novels of Mickey Spillane.

            Somewhat forgotten now, Spillane (1918-2006) was the first hard-boiled detective writer to become a huge bestseller. I, The Jury, his debut book featuring detective Mike Hammer, was published in 1947 to supplement his income as a comic-book writer.  It sold six million copies, and he never looked back. All told, his books have sold more than 225,000,000 copies.

Meaning? Don’t Even Think About It

            Critics hated his books, which they panned for their graphic sex and violence, but Spillane ignored them and laughed all the way to the bank. In later years, some post-modern critics tried to find deeper meanings in his books, and, to his credit, he dismissed them as well. He was a hack who had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams and was content with that.

            Olga’s remark about her mother, though, took me back to eighth grade. I learned to read before first grade, by following Sports Illustrated on my father’s lap. A lot of my childhood was spent with my nose stuck in a book. When I reached junior high school, my mother, in one of her few failures as a parent, tried to get me to read Literature — stuff like Moby Dick and Great Expectations.

            It didn’t work. I much preferred trashy mysteries and sports stories, and mom was beside herself. Finally, she went to Mrs. Castlen, the librarian at our junior high school, to vent. Mrs. C. heard her out and finally said, “Don’t worry about it. Just be glad he’s reading and enjoying it. His taste will get better as he gets older.”

            Perhaps she should have stopped after the second sentence. It’s true that two great high school English teachers, Carroll Irwin and Ruth Carruth, taught me to appreciate and enjoy Moby Dick and Great Expectations, and it’s true that I subsequently received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature.

The Redeeming Value of Junk

            The college degree in that subject has hardly guaranteed me a lifetime of well-compensated employment, and it’s an open question what reading the great books has done for my character and moral fibre. There are no doubt plenty of people out there who would be happy to tell you that I’m far from a model citizen.

            Would the world be a better place if everyone read Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain?  I have my doubts. But I have no doubts at all about the wisdom of what Mrs. Castlen and Olga de Santa Anna said.

            Learning to read, and learning to enjoy it — however that may be accomplished — is always a good thing. Reading is the most fundamental skill of the educated person, and when it isn’t accompanied by a sense of dread, there’s always room to move on and acquire new depths. Some will dive in head first, and others will barely dip a toe in the waters. Mickey Spillane may lead to Henry James, or maybe to Jim Thompson, but either way the door’s been opened a crack.

The Lost Virtue of Brevity

            In his excellent mystery My Late Wives (1946), John Dickson Carr, writing as Carter Dickson, tells the story of serial killer Roger Bewlay. With a wittily observant eye, Carr shows how Bewlay targets vulnerable virgins of a certain age (early thirties, considered past marriage in those days) and woos each according to her ruling passions. One he takes to the symphony; another for long walks along the beach promenade at Brighton, and so forth.

            The result, in each instance, is the same. The lady in question falls head over heels in love, marries him quickly, signs over all her property to him, and they go off on an idyllic honeymoon, from which only Bewlay and the lady’s property emerge. A chance occurrence leads police to become suspicious and another allows them to close the net on Bewlay. But at the end, he slips away and vanishes into the vastness of metropolitan London.

            And that’s just the first 12 pages. The rest of the book takes place 15 years later, when it appears that Bewlay has returned to his old ways, and the detective, Sir Henry Merrivale, attempts to catch him once and for all.

Telling the Story Succinctly

            Carr, a master storyteller if ever there was one, was able to cram enough material for an entire book into a fairly short chapter. In today’s world of mysteries and thrillers, the opposite seems to be happening. More and more books seem to be taking 250 pages of story and stretching it into 350-400 pages.

            How and when this happened is a mystery to me, but I can trace some examples. One successful author began writing about 30 years ago and originally wrote brisk 250-page books. Then she started adding characters, and in subsequent books, each character had to be brought in, often to the detriment of the narrative. On the other hand, she sells way more books than I do, so either the readers don’t care, or they like her enough to put up with it.

            The bloat in book size affects even older books. I have in hand a recently published copy of Agatha Christie’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? In this version, the spacing between lines is generous to a fault, as are the margins. That makes what was probably a 225-page book originally come out at 279 pages.

            When I wrote my mystery, The McHenryInheritance, I deliberately tried to keep it to 200-225 pages so it could be read on a cross-country plane flight or on a rainy afternoon. It came in at 200, but I wonder if anyone appreciates the brevity.

Longer Movies, Too

            Movies, like books, seem to be getting longer as well. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot, writing about her father, the actor Lyle Talbot, noted that a number of the films he made for Warner Brothers in the 1930s were an hour and ten minutes long. These days, it’s hard to find any movie that comes in at less than two hours. It seems as if fewer directors today know how to move a story along, the way directors like William Wellman, Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks used to do.

            In 1935, MGM made a movie of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, starring Greta Garbo and Frederic March. The book is more than 800 pages, but after some competent scriptwriters got through with it, and it was turned over to veteran director Clarence Brown, he was able to get Anna under the train in a brisk hour and 35 minutes. If they tried to make it today, they would sink so much into stars, costumes, props and locations, it would turn into a three-hour epic and probably be less entertaining than Brown’s version. Less is often more.