Writers' group last night.

Well, it's getting easier to go. My first one two weeks ago nearly killed me: having to read my work aloud to strangers was awful. And by the time everyone shared his/her perspective, I was convinced that my story had no merit whatsoever. Eight pages of "oh, my god; this sucks." By the time I got to the end, I wasn't even using different voices in the dialogue—just droning on in a near-monotone and hoping it would be over soon.

I picked a genre that had as few literary pretensions as possible, and that I happen to find incredibly pleasurable to read. Little did I realize at the time that mysteries are very, very hard to write well. All kinds of clues have to be laid in early, but the significant ones can't be noticeable—or must be explained away early on. Everything must be hidden in plain sight. And unless one is doing a police procedural—and I think my background forbids that—there is the pesky matter of explaining why ordinary citizens go rushing around solving crimes on their own in books, when everyone knows perfectly well that they don't do any such thing in real life. You have to get the reader hooked into the puzzle, because otherwise they won't suspend that disbelief. Why should they?

And of course at its best a mystery also stands alone as a novel; consider some of Dorothy L. Sayers' best Lord Peter mysteries.

Of course, I've given up on being the next Dorothy L. Sayers, and would settle for being readable. And on keeping my readers in the dark as to who actually did the crime until I want them to know.

And after one more session I'm going to run out of finished, polished, existing sequential chapters and will have to actually start writing to keep up with this. Eek.

Wish me luck.

Posted by: Attila at 11:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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