The life of a mystery writer

 6 8 2022

We have it so hard! Here we are trucking along, trying to get a mystery published. Bragging to our friends that we know how to commit the perfect crime. Doing all our research, working hard on it. Then we decide to try it out.

 

 

Not our fault if we get caught. We tried.

 

 

The above is what I imagine was going through the head of Cynthia McDonnell, aspiring mystery writer, who decided to let her LEO husband, Don McDonnell have it. Googling her name will bring up a lot of info on this case.

 

 

Here’s something about her case:

https://forensicfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Cynthia_McDonnell

If that one goes away, which it might, here’s another article:

https://delanirbartlette.medium.com/cynthia-mcdonnell-murder-she-wrote-badly-4c2425ae1e50

 

 

True confession: I watch old Forensic File reruns and sometimes watch them more than once.

 

 

There’s another case now. I remembered watching this old one when the current case was settled. This wife is a romance writer, so maybe she had even less chance of success. She did write an essay entitled “How to Murder your Husband” but maybe it wasn’t well done. I didn’t read it. She, Nancy Brophy, was convicted last month.

 

 

But this older case is more interesting to me. I want to know if anyone was critiquing her work, and what courses she took to learn how to write a mystery. Because this was far from perfect! She did everything wrong! First, she said it was a break in. But she forget to make it LOOK like a break in. Then she decided to tell them it was a suicide, and concocted a big, wild, fake story to go with that. But she had no idea how to make it look like a suicide. It didn’t.

 

 

The part that makes an impression on me is that her bookshelf was used to make her look guilty.

Her bookshelf, from the show:

 

 

My bookshelf, photo taken yesterday:

 

 

See why this worries me? Mystery writers, I’ll bet all our shelves look like this, yes?

 

On Writing

 

9 29 2021 On Writing

 

I just want to touch briefly on something I’ve had on my mind before it vanishes, as those things tend to do sometimes.

 

I’ve been reading, in a couple of places, about contrasts in writing styles. The gist of these essays were that there are two styles, likened to nails and headlights. You either nail down you plot ahead of time, or see only as far as a headlight as you go along. These styles are also called “pantsing” and “plotting.” It’s been my feeling, and I thing I’ve written it here before, that every writer is actually a combination of these two. No one plots every single detail before they start writing and never changes a thing. Also, no one starts writing having no idea at all what they’re going to write about. Like, what shall I touch upon today? Ice cream, romance, murders, windows, game shows? No, the story and the characters unfold for both kinds of writers, for every writer. That’s why this is called a creative process. The story is being created.

 

One of my sources is this article from the Suite T blog, an offshoot of Southern Writers Magazine:

https://southernwritersmagazine.blogspot.com/2021/09/do-i-use-nails-or-do-i-use-headlights.html

 

But I have to add one more thing that helps me to say what I want to say in my fiction, as I headlight and nail along. That’s a quote by Georgia O’Keeffe that hangs on my office wall. I bought it in the O’Keeffe museum in New Mexico (which you should visit if you get a change). My photo doesn’t capture the fine print, which is: “Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.”

Image is mine