My name is Kate Conway and I’m an investigative reporter for a serious New York monthly magazine named Clarion.
I would like to make it clear right away that nothing makes my day happier than putting CEOs in jail or in the grave by exposing wild and wicked crimes in the highest and often strangest of places.
Some people say I am driven. But it’s much simpler than that. I believe the world would be a much better place if people knew the truth about things. And that’s why I fight corruption and evil and lying and deceit and anything that falls short of the truth.
I live in Greenwich Village and I own a Mazda Miata painted bright red and a cat named Spats. My father is a retired member of the NYPD with a bullet (also retired) in his right lung—and he proves quite handy now and then.
When it comes to men I’ve had my ups and downs. Although I have these horrible freckles over my face and arms and chest, my father’s side of the family also chose to endow me with fiery-red Irish hair and eyes that smile a certain way. When these elements join with my no-nonsense personality I seem to wind up in one high-octane relationship after another.
But while I have your attention let me assure you that I would never allow anything like sex to interfere with tracking down high-profile scumbags. It just makes things more entertaining for both of us.
The Mounting Storm is the first of three thrillers with yours truly as the female protagonist. So stick around—we're just getting started.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Read This Sample Chapter from "The Mounting Storm"
KATE SAT ALONE AT THE BAR, annoyed that Winston had not arrived first. She was passionate in her hatred of having to wait for anyone, anywhere, even if it was Winston’s invitation and Winston’s restaurant and Winston’s table. She hated power games of any kind, especially the one called Keeping the Other Person Waiting.
She’d been awake since shortly after two this morning—when she received the frantic call from Freddie. She immediately phoned her father, who told her to double lock her doors and not leave the house until he called back.
When Paul called again he said he’d alerted the inspector in charge of the Hate Crimes Task Force, his African-American friend Harlan Sprague. They’d shot up to Freddie’s apartment and had things under control.
They’d sent Freddie to visit his Aunt at her summer residence in Saratoga Springs with instructions not to return until Sprague said it was safe.
Kate glanced at her face in the mirror behind the bar. The black and blue mark had receded in size and morphed into a more artistic yellow and green. She’d covered it partially with a paisley scarf and teased her Irish red hair into ringlets that covered the rest.
But she wasn’t going to wear her designer shades. She wanted to be able to see Winston, study his sad, gray eyes—and let him gaze at the look of professional dedication in her green eyes. It was strictly business, nothing more she’d convinced herself.
When Winston arrived ten minutes late, he pushed through the crowd and headed directly for her, nodding to several friends along the way instead of pausing to chat. He apologized and she took his arm and let him lead her to his table in the front room.
He ordered half a dozen appetizers to share along with a sirloin salad for each and a bottle of Merlot from a small French vineyard. Kate saw him glance at the forehead, but noted with appreciation his reluctance to say anything unless she brought it up.
Kate was certain Frank Beasley would have clued Winston in on the ‘accident’—the same way Frank kept Kate in the loop on office politics.
Winston complimented her again on the award while Kate agreed he was absolutely right in his belief that her piece on the White Slave Trade, even though the headline rang with supermarket tabloid horror, was the stronger story.
Reeking of middle class suburban fear, it had propelled Long Island’s locksmith industry to a new level of prosperity. Shades of the National Enquirer or not, who was going to argue with someone determined to give you a pat on the back and honor you with another award? Then she decided to get down to business.
“Is WinCom going to buy Clarion and fire all of us?” she asked.
He laughed. He had been expecting the question, but not with the express train urgency she gave it. Seeing the smile in her eyes, he relaxed.
“Frank Beasley and I were Skull & Bones at Yale, and we both flew choppers in the Guard. He made it clear I can trust you,” Winston said, looking around the room and lowering his voice.
“It happens to be true we are in the middle of serious negotiations,” he went on. “Let’s just say that when the time comes we want the machinery to be oiled and ready to rock and roll.”
He saw the worry return to her face. “I wouldn’t be concerned if I were you,” he said. “Even before you won the Maggie my people told me you were their bright and shining star. You’re the franchise player, Kate—no doubt about it.”
“Oh, thank you, kind sir, for allowing me to live,” she said, pushing back her Irish red hair and drilling him with her eyes.
“But in my role as investigative reporter I am forced to ask how you expect to reconcile WinCom’s right-wing, take-no-prisoners politics with Clarion’s progressive and very human attitude toward the world? Be honest, Winston—will your father be running the show?”
He looked offended. “I’ve been given free reign along with a blank check. My goal is to expand WinCom’s circulation base by broadening our viewpoint. And I want to begin the experiment where it will be felt the most—with a small but gutsy magazine like Clarion.”
She had expected her question to strike a nerve but found his answer hard to believe. Wishing to show mercy, she flashed a quick smile and changed the subject.
“I love the way you financial guys boost careers and snuff them out just by snapping your fingers or pressing a key on a calculator,” she said.
“Get used to it,” he said. “It’s the new American way of life. Survival of the fittest, profit-wise.”
A long pause. As if by a signal, they both looked down at their plates and took a few bites. She was finding him an obnoxious bore.
Whether liberal or conservative, she detested blabbermouth success stories from second-generation know-it-alls, people who inherit thriving businesses, almost always men who waltzed to success on the battered shoulders of enterprising fathers willing to risk it all.
She was looking at one.
Burdening him with this handicap helped make up for the fact that she found him so devastatingly attractive. The muscular build. The soft vulnerability in his eyes. The Brad Pitt stubble of beard. The deft and sure movements. A height that forced her eyes to tilt slightly up to meet his. A face chiseled like a Greek god. And at almost twenty years her senior, the perfect age.
In addition to all this was the fact he had gobs of money and a certain style to go with his charming manners. That’s it, she decided. He was a charming prick.
“Of course,” he said, looking up from his sirloin salad, “we would want to maximize our chances of making a profit.”
She pointed at him with her fork. “What do you mean by that?” she said. “Charge admission to see the writers burned at the stake?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “We would want to look at repositioning the magazine. Ratchet it up or down half a notch. Or maybe sideways to take in more circulation.”
“I always thought we were right where we belong,” she persisted. “Halfway between the Harpers-Atlantic Monthly crowd and Vanity Fair. Or maybe a better way to describe us would be Vanity Fair without all that glossy celebrity hype.”
“Which wouldn’t leave much,” he said, dipping a roll in olive oil.
She wondered whether to scream, cry, or submit her resignation. But then something came over the handsome Scrooge.
“Look, Kate,” he said, pushing back from the table. “I didn’t mean to ask you to dinner to talk about how to save a venerable, old magazine from the scrap heap. Sure this is a business we’re in. But the only ideas worth putting major bucks behind are the bold and new ideas.”
He turned to her, a certain desperation in his eyes. “If you have any ideas—please, I’d love to hear them.”
It was the moment she’d been waiting for ever since her lunch with Frank Beasley.
Without taking her eyes from Winston’s, she reached into her bag and pulled out her trusty Magic Marker. She pushed the dishes and glasses aside and, as the couple at the next table turned to watch, began drawing.
She drew a large rectangle and in it put a circle that touched the edges. In the circle she put two eyes, a nose and a mouth. At the top she wrote in large letters the word FACES. She scribbled thick black scrolls where the headlines and subheads would be.
She explained the concept of an ‘idea’ magazine, thought-provoking but with lavish color photographs shot by Annie Liebovitz. It would have the feeling of class that you got from Town and Country, the sensuality that came from Vanity Fair, the substance and satirical bite of The New Yorker.
The ideas would come from anyone, not just celebrities or famous people or people who had made it.
They would come from people who had ideas for improving things that needed improving. Getting a grip on crime, poverty, and hunger. Exposing dishonesty and hypocrisy in politics and business. Dealing with the truth about racial injustice, drunk drivers, education, AIDS, rapists, the environment, stock market fraud, pornography, Hollywood, advertising, fashion, world peace.
But there would be one big difference from the forest of important magazines you always felt you had to read but seldom did.
You would have to read FACES.
It would have the zeal of Mother Jones but with a more profound and meaningful thrust. It would have the exuberance of Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine but with more depth and meaning. It would be the coffee table magazine that never made it to the coffee table. It would be quoted more than any other magazine.
It would be the ‘in’ read and not just another slick with the annual list of the top twenty or fifty or one hundred movers and shakers—the old “people to watch” hooey that every magazine seemed to be doing and which made everyone look like they had paid to get mentioned, which in many cases they had.
And, yes, it would have advertising—beautiful, rich four-color sections and spreads and pull-outs for gorgeous furs, for expensive cars, for diamonds, for travel and resorts, for exotic foods, for cosmetics, for beautiful designer clothes—because if you were an advertiser you would simply have to be in FACES.
When she finished, Winston looked up at the ceiling for a moment that was so long she found herself looking up with him. Finally, he lowered his eyes and gazed steadily into hers.
“I’m having a few guests out to my place in the Hamptons for the holiday weekend. I would like you to be among them.”
Kate absolutely despised the Hamptons, the phoniness, the money, the rivalries, the conspicuous display of worldly goods whether they be real estate, cars, clothes, jewelry, or even the children whose parents seemed determined to go the distance for the title of MKIBSBTYK—My Kid Is A Bigger Spoiled Brat Than Your Kid.
The Hamptons were the perfect marriage of Big Money and Bad Manners. She much preferred the laid back quality of upstate New York or the Berkshires or even the saner parts of Cape Cod.
She looked at him before answering, digesting all over again his coolness, his incredible confidence, his mastery at what he does, his extremely good looks. And his eyes, those wonderful gray eyes with their look of sadness.
“Yes, I’ll come,” she said. “I love the Hamptons.”
On the way out, he handed her a box he had checked upon arriving. It was wrapped in gold foil and tied with a ribbon. He told her not to open it until she got home.
After hailing a cab and helping her inside, he apologized through the open window for neglecting to compliment her until now on the pants suit she was wearing.
It was black, of course.
She’d been awake since shortly after two this morning—when she received the frantic call from Freddie. She immediately phoned her father, who told her to double lock her doors and not leave the house until he called back.
When Paul called again he said he’d alerted the inspector in charge of the Hate Crimes Task Force, his African-American friend Harlan Sprague. They’d shot up to Freddie’s apartment and had things under control.
They’d sent Freddie to visit his Aunt at her summer residence in Saratoga Springs with instructions not to return until Sprague said it was safe.
Kate glanced at her face in the mirror behind the bar. The black and blue mark had receded in size and morphed into a more artistic yellow and green. She’d covered it partially with a paisley scarf and teased her Irish red hair into ringlets that covered the rest.
But she wasn’t going to wear her designer shades. She wanted to be able to see Winston, study his sad, gray eyes—and let him gaze at the look of professional dedication in her green eyes. It was strictly business, nothing more she’d convinced herself.
When Winston arrived ten minutes late, he pushed through the crowd and headed directly for her, nodding to several friends along the way instead of pausing to chat. He apologized and she took his arm and let him lead her to his table in the front room.
He ordered half a dozen appetizers to share along with a sirloin salad for each and a bottle of Merlot from a small French vineyard. Kate saw him glance at the forehead, but noted with appreciation his reluctance to say anything unless she brought it up.
Kate was certain Frank Beasley would have clued Winston in on the ‘accident’—the same way Frank kept Kate in the loop on office politics.
Winston complimented her again on the award while Kate agreed he was absolutely right in his belief that her piece on the White Slave Trade, even though the headline rang with supermarket tabloid horror, was the stronger story.
Reeking of middle class suburban fear, it had propelled Long Island’s locksmith industry to a new level of prosperity. Shades of the National Enquirer or not, who was going to argue with someone determined to give you a pat on the back and honor you with another award? Then she decided to get down to business.
“Is WinCom going to buy Clarion and fire all of us?” she asked.
He laughed. He had been expecting the question, but not with the express train urgency she gave it. Seeing the smile in her eyes, he relaxed.
“Frank Beasley and I were Skull & Bones at Yale, and we both flew choppers in the Guard. He made it clear I can trust you,” Winston said, looking around the room and lowering his voice.
“It happens to be true we are in the middle of serious negotiations,” he went on. “Let’s just say that when the time comes we want the machinery to be oiled and ready to rock and roll.”
He saw the worry return to her face. “I wouldn’t be concerned if I were you,” he said. “Even before you won the Maggie my people told me you were their bright and shining star. You’re the franchise player, Kate—no doubt about it.”
“Oh, thank you, kind sir, for allowing me to live,” she said, pushing back her Irish red hair and drilling him with her eyes.
“But in my role as investigative reporter I am forced to ask how you expect to reconcile WinCom’s right-wing, take-no-prisoners politics with Clarion’s progressive and very human attitude toward the world? Be honest, Winston—will your father be running the show?”
He looked offended. “I’ve been given free reign along with a blank check. My goal is to expand WinCom’s circulation base by broadening our viewpoint. And I want to begin the experiment where it will be felt the most—with a small but gutsy magazine like Clarion.”
She had expected her question to strike a nerve but found his answer hard to believe. Wishing to show mercy, she flashed a quick smile and changed the subject.
“I love the way you financial guys boost careers and snuff them out just by snapping your fingers or pressing a key on a calculator,” she said.
“Get used to it,” he said. “It’s the new American way of life. Survival of the fittest, profit-wise.”
A long pause. As if by a signal, they both looked down at their plates and took a few bites. She was finding him an obnoxious bore.
Whether liberal or conservative, she detested blabbermouth success stories from second-generation know-it-alls, people who inherit thriving businesses, almost always men who waltzed to success on the battered shoulders of enterprising fathers willing to risk it all.
She was looking at one.
Burdening him with this handicap helped make up for the fact that she found him so devastatingly attractive. The muscular build. The soft vulnerability in his eyes. The Brad Pitt stubble of beard. The deft and sure movements. A height that forced her eyes to tilt slightly up to meet his. A face chiseled like a Greek god. And at almost twenty years her senior, the perfect age.
In addition to all this was the fact he had gobs of money and a certain style to go with his charming manners. That’s it, she decided. He was a charming prick.
“Of course,” he said, looking up from his sirloin salad, “we would want to maximize our chances of making a profit.”
She pointed at him with her fork. “What do you mean by that?” she said. “Charge admission to see the writers burned at the stake?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “We would want to look at repositioning the magazine. Ratchet it up or down half a notch. Or maybe sideways to take in more circulation.”
“I always thought we were right where we belong,” she persisted. “Halfway between the Harpers-Atlantic Monthly crowd and Vanity Fair. Or maybe a better way to describe us would be Vanity Fair without all that glossy celebrity hype.”
“Which wouldn’t leave much,” he said, dipping a roll in olive oil.
She wondered whether to scream, cry, or submit her resignation. But then something came over the handsome Scrooge.
“Look, Kate,” he said, pushing back from the table. “I didn’t mean to ask you to dinner to talk about how to save a venerable, old magazine from the scrap heap. Sure this is a business we’re in. But the only ideas worth putting major bucks behind are the bold and new ideas.”
He turned to her, a certain desperation in his eyes. “If you have any ideas—please, I’d love to hear them.”
It was the moment she’d been waiting for ever since her lunch with Frank Beasley.
Without taking her eyes from Winston’s, she reached into her bag and pulled out her trusty Magic Marker. She pushed the dishes and glasses aside and, as the couple at the next table turned to watch, began drawing.
She drew a large rectangle and in it put a circle that touched the edges. In the circle she put two eyes, a nose and a mouth. At the top she wrote in large letters the word FACES. She scribbled thick black scrolls where the headlines and subheads would be.
She explained the concept of an ‘idea’ magazine, thought-provoking but with lavish color photographs shot by Annie Liebovitz. It would have the feeling of class that you got from Town and Country, the sensuality that came from Vanity Fair, the substance and satirical bite of The New Yorker.
The ideas would come from anyone, not just celebrities or famous people or people who had made it.
They would come from people who had ideas for improving things that needed improving. Getting a grip on crime, poverty, and hunger. Exposing dishonesty and hypocrisy in politics and business. Dealing with the truth about racial injustice, drunk drivers, education, AIDS, rapists, the environment, stock market fraud, pornography, Hollywood, advertising, fashion, world peace.
But there would be one big difference from the forest of important magazines you always felt you had to read but seldom did.
You would have to read FACES.
It would have the zeal of Mother Jones but with a more profound and meaningful thrust. It would have the exuberance of Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine but with more depth and meaning. It would be the coffee table magazine that never made it to the coffee table. It would be quoted more than any other magazine.
It would be the ‘in’ read and not just another slick with the annual list of the top twenty or fifty or one hundred movers and shakers—the old “people to watch” hooey that every magazine seemed to be doing and which made everyone look like they had paid to get mentioned, which in many cases they had.
And, yes, it would have advertising—beautiful, rich four-color sections and spreads and pull-outs for gorgeous furs, for expensive cars, for diamonds, for travel and resorts, for exotic foods, for cosmetics, for beautiful designer clothes—because if you were an advertiser you would simply have to be in FACES.
When she finished, Winston looked up at the ceiling for a moment that was so long she found herself looking up with him. Finally, he lowered his eyes and gazed steadily into hers.
“I’m having a few guests out to my place in the Hamptons for the holiday weekend. I would like you to be among them.”
Kate absolutely despised the Hamptons, the phoniness, the money, the rivalries, the conspicuous display of worldly goods whether they be real estate, cars, clothes, jewelry, or even the children whose parents seemed determined to go the distance for the title of MKIBSBTYK—My Kid Is A Bigger Spoiled Brat Than Your Kid.
The Hamptons were the perfect marriage of Big Money and Bad Manners. She much preferred the laid back quality of upstate New York or the Berkshires or even the saner parts of Cape Cod.
She looked at him before answering, digesting all over again his coolness, his incredible confidence, his mastery at what he does, his extremely good looks. And his eyes, those wonderful gray eyes with their look of sadness.
“Yes, I’ll come,” she said. “I love the Hamptons.”
On the way out, he handed her a box he had checked upon arriving. It was wrapped in gold foil and tied with a ribbon. He told her not to open it until she got home.
After hailing a cab and helping her inside, he apologized through the open window for neglecting to compliment her until now on the pants suit she was wearing.
It was black, of course.
Monday, May 21, 2012
"The Mounting Storm"--the First Kate Conway Novel in a Nutshell.
Nothing will stop investigative reporter Kate Conway when she begins to suspect that America’s powerful media czar, the brazen Stirling Winship, is not the British-born Cambridge graduate he claims to be. While tracking down a stolen Claude Monet masterpiece, Kate uncovers one grim deed after another in the tyrant’s rise to power—while unexpectedly falling in love with the man’s son.
Will her torrid relationship with the man of her dreams survive when the ultimate truth regarding the father’s past explodes in a deed that traumatizes an entire city? Will Kate pry open the horror of the deception before it’s too late? It’s all here—in the heart-stopping pages of The Mounting Storm—the lightning-fast chronicle of dark and sinister doings that thriller lovers have been waiting for.
--From the jacket copy of The Mounting Storm, the first in the series of Kate Conway thrillers.
Will her torrid relationship with the man of her dreams survive when the ultimate truth regarding the father’s past explodes in a deed that traumatizes an entire city? Will Kate pry open the horror of the deception before it’s too late? It’s all here—in the heart-stopping pages of The Mounting Storm—the lightning-fast chronicle of dark and sinister doings that thriller lovers have been waiting for.
--From the jacket copy of The Mounting Storm, the first in the series of Kate Conway thrillers.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Get Out of My Novel, Mr. Cruise. Disappear. Scat. Begone.
In The Lion and the Eagle, the first of my six novels, I didn’t want Tom Cruise to be the pattern for the major character, a 19-year-old Revolutionary War hero. I was writing ten years ago and Cruise was still qualified to squeeze into the role of a late teen, though just barely.
The trouble was, I couldn’t get the guy out of my mind. Love him or hate him, Tom Cruise was such a forceful character he took over the role without my permission. Such is the power of the movies to inflict their box office heroes and heroines on our imaginations.
Is it wrong for a beginning writer to rely on movie characters this way? Not if it enables you to spring a character to life. Of course, you’ll want to establish their originality by contributing a scar or a birthmark to spoil that perfect face, a limp from a war wound, or an angry way of looking at you stemming from a childhood beating by a stepmother.
But the movies are Big. And their stars are Huge. And if it will help get a story rolling, why not?
The trouble was, I couldn’t get the guy out of my mind. Love him or hate him, Tom Cruise was such a forceful character he took over the role without my permission. Such is the power of the movies to inflict their box office heroes and heroines on our imaginations.
Is it wrong for a beginning writer to rely on movie characters this way? Not if it enables you to spring a character to life. Of course, you’ll want to establish their originality by contributing a scar or a birthmark to spoil that perfect face, a limp from a war wound, or an angry way of looking at you stemming from a childhood beating by a stepmother.
But the movies are Big. And their stars are Huge. And if it will help get a story rolling, why not?
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Don't Be Shocked at What I'm Reading--or Not Reading
Like all aspiring new authors, I read/skim/eyeball/inhale all the new books so I know what's going on in our incredible world. But I'll confess right now, I don’t read as much as I should. First of all, I’m lazy. Secondly, I like to think that I’m too busy writing.
I read the opening and closing of novels to study plot technique and style. Among the authors I guarantee a reading from beginning to end are Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Elmore Leonard. But every once in a while I'll go on a reading kick to breathe some fresh air into my system.
McEwan’s style is not show-offy like many writers today. It tends to be spare, the way I try to write. Saturday is one of the best novels ever written.I just finished reading Solar and was taken by the aging down-on-his-luck Nobel scientist still trying to save the world.
I’m not Victorian in my reading tastes but I gravitate to older writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Salinger. I’ve practically memorized Farewell to Arms and The Great Gatsby. Like I said about McEwan, their styles are simple and no-nonsense and their stories move smartly. When you put them down you know what you have read.
Every once in a while a book will come along and knock me for a loop--usually with the mood it creates. Books like Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient," Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale," Kate Walbert's strange little love story "The Gardens of Kyoto," and a rare find in "Islandia," the only novel by a long since forgotten attorney from Philadelphia, Austin Tappan Wright.
I read newspapers. I love newspapers. Maybe it’s because I was raised on them, before television news came along and dominated our thinking. (As a kid growing up I would race down the stairs, grab the Cleveland Plain Dealer off the front porch and read it from page one to the comics in the back.)
This morning I read The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer on-line and for twenty minutes tried not to spill my coffee and granola on my copy of the Los Angeles Times.
I have books from the library right now by Tom Rackman, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Martin Amis. I’ll glance through them, pick up a nugget or two, but I won’t read them. (Though I can change my mind, as I did with Rackman's book, The Imperfectionists, which I wound up devouring.
Having finished this cranky little Blog, I guess I'm reading a lot more than I thought. Good thing. We authors need all the readers we can get.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Why Should Writers Blog?
Why should I be blogging? As a beginner, I ask myself that question about ten times a day.
When I Googled the subject (I'm learning you can Google anything) I got a ton of information from Dustin Wax and Jurgen Wolff and their blogs directed at writers.
Wax in particular says "The point of having a blog is to build your platform—to establish a presence in the marketplace. Therefore the blog should be about you and the topic that you write about, rather than just a random selection of observations." His suggested topics were:
• advice
• behind-the-scenes peeks at your topic
• reviews of relevant books you’re reading
• discussion of news events that impact your readers
Well, I'm happy to see I'm in the ballpark with almost all of my previous posts. So maybe this will provide some reassurance to other writers asking the same question.
When I Googled the subject (I'm learning you can Google anything) I got a ton of information from Dustin Wax and Jurgen Wolff and their blogs directed at writers.
Wax in particular says "The point of having a blog is to build your platform—to establish a presence in the marketplace. Therefore the blog should be about you and the topic that you write about, rather than just a random selection of observations." His suggested topics were:
• advice
• behind-the-scenes peeks at your topic
• reviews of relevant books you’re reading
• discussion of news events that impact your readers
Well, I'm happy to see I'm in the ballpark with almost all of my previous posts. So maybe this will provide some reassurance to other writers asking the same question.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Do You Like Sentences?
Just ran across a fellow blogger who quoted a passage from the writer Annie Dillard. www.anniedillard.com It made me remember something she wrote that really influenced me when I started writing. Unlike so many authors of textbooks and writing courses, Annie always dishes up insightfully down-to-earth advice. Here's my favorite passage:
Write Till You Drop
By ANNIE DILLARD
People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all. Strange seizures beset us. Frank Conroy loves his yo-yo tricks, Emily Dickinson her slant of light; Richard Selzer loves the glistening peritoneum, Faulkner the muddy bottom of a little girl's drawers visible when she's up a pear tree. ''Each student of the ferns,'' I once read, ''will have his own list of plants that for some reason or another stir his emotions.''
Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote ''Huckleberry Finn'' in Hartford. Recently scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.
The writer studies literature, not the world. She lives in the world; she cannot miss it. If she has ever bought a hamburger, or taken a commercial airplane flight, she spares her readers a report of her experience. She is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write. She is careful of what she learns, because that is what she will know.
The writer knows her field - what has been done, what could be done, the limits - the way a tennis player knows the court. And like that expert, she, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. She hits up the line. In writing, she can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil. Reason balks, poetry snaps; some madness enters, or strain. Now gingerly, can she enlarge it, can she nudge the bounds? And enclose what wild power?
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, ''Do you think I could be a writer?''
''Well,'' the writer said, ''I don't know. . . . Do you like sentences?''
The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ''I liked the smell of the paint.''
Write Till You Drop
By ANNIE DILLARD
People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all. Strange seizures beset us. Frank Conroy loves his yo-yo tricks, Emily Dickinson her slant of light; Richard Selzer loves the glistening peritoneum, Faulkner the muddy bottom of a little girl's drawers visible when she's up a pear tree. ''Each student of the ferns,'' I once read, ''will have his own list of plants that for some reason or another stir his emotions.''
Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote ''Huckleberry Finn'' in Hartford. Recently scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.
The writer studies literature, not the world. She lives in the world; she cannot miss it. If she has ever bought a hamburger, or taken a commercial airplane flight, she spares her readers a report of her experience. She is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write. She is careful of what she learns, because that is what she will know.
The writer knows her field - what has been done, what could be done, the limits - the way a tennis player knows the court. And like that expert, she, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. She hits up the line. In writing, she can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil. Reason balks, poetry snaps; some madness enters, or strain. Now gingerly, can she enlarge it, can she nudge the bounds? And enclose what wild power?
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, ''Do you think I could be a writer?''
''Well,'' the writer said, ''I don't know. . . . Do you like sentences?''
The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ''I liked the smell of the paint.''
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