When you read the work of a fine author, what you see, generally speaking, appears flawless and flowing, as if it came naturally and without a lot of struggle.  Don’t you believe it.  Every author battles to get a work from their imagination onto the page.

I’m working on a novel right now.  When completed, it will be the eleventh in the Cork O’Connor series.  The title is Northwest Angle.  The book is set in one of the most remote areas of Minnesota, and the story, as I’ve conceived it, is a convoluted situation of misunderstanding, mostly as the result of prejudice.  People die and the where the finger of guilt points—with support of the evidence—is at the wrong man.  Even Cork buys into the local prejudices.  Add to the pot(boiler) some ruthless smugglers and a foundling child whom death follows like a shadow and you have the general ingredients of the story.

So I have a notion of what’s going to occur.  I know, more or less, the A, B, C of things.  What I’m struggling with is the information and occurrences that will naturally connect the plot points.  And therein lies the struggle.

In the past, I’ve usually outlined a book, or at least thought the plot through significantly, so I’m almost never worried about the dreaded question that keeps many mystery writers up at night: What happens next? But I’ll admit that in this manuscript I’m flying by the seat of my pants.  I struggle with chronology, structure, characters (way too many in this one, I fear), motivation.  In essence, everything.

I admit there are moments when I’m not sure I can pull it all together.  I think to myself, Every author is allowed a book now and then that falls short.  So maybe this is going to be the one.

I hate myself for even thinking this.  I don’t ever want to let myself or my readers down with an effort I didn’t put my full heart into.  So I struggle and lie awake at night and live with the fear of failure and every morning I get up and go to the coffee shop and give it my best effort.

I remember reading a note John Steinbeck sent to his editor along with the manuscript of The Grapes of Wrath. In the note, he apologized for the book he was delivering, feeling he’d somehow fallen short.  Even the greats have struggled.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the semi-annual retreat held by my writer’s group.  It took all of Saturday and most of Sunday.  There were eight of us.  We each read aloud from a piece we’re working on and the others read along silently and then critiqued the work.  By Sunday afternoon, we were all tired and at the same time energized as hell.

I’ve been a part of this writer’s group for eighteen years.  We have a name.  We call ourselves Crème de la Crime.  We’re all mystery writers.  Some of us are published, some are very close to publishing, and some probably never will publish.  Whenever I’m asked what I consider the most important element in my development as a writer, I always begin with Crème de la Crime.

In 1992, when I sat down to begin work on the manuscript that eventually became my first published novel, Iron Lake, and decided it was going to be a mystery (because I was desperate to be published and I stupidly thought any moron ought to be able to write and publish a mystery) I found myself stymied.  I wasn’t a great reader of mysteries at that time.  My father was a high school English teacher, and he raised his children on literature with a capital L.  Growing up, I didn’t even read The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.  So I didn’t know the first thing about how write in the genre.  What did I do?  I took a course at The Loft (a well-known center in the Twin Cities, devoted to the written word) called, I believe, How To Write A Mystery.  The class was taught by Mary Logue, a marvelous writer in many genres, including mystery.  It was a great experience, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.  When the class ended, ten of us who’d been students decided to form a continuing support group, and Crème de la Crime was born.

For eighteen years, we’ve met every Thursday evening to critique one another’s work.  I recall vaguely that in the beginning some adjustment was necessary for all of us.  Hearing your work criticized is never easy, and learning how to critique effectively is a learned skill.  Some of the original group didn’t survive the adjustment period.  Those of us who did have greatly strengthened our editorial ability over the nearly two decades of our association.

Every writer needs a good editorial eye.  And writers need to hear constantly that whether they’re published or not, the path they’re on is worthwhile.  (Our culture views success in so narrow a focus that publication and huge sales seem to be the most gauge of writer’s ability; what a travesty!)  A writer’s group can provide both these very necessary forms of support.

That said, not all writer’s groups are beneficial.  Like any human association, a writer’s group can be dysfunctional, and if you find yourself in one of these, get out as quickly as you can.  In my own mind, there are a few elements that can ensure the success of a group.  First, all members should be focused on the same genre.  Poets or essayists, for example, or even many literary fiction writers don’t have the frame of reference to critique a mystery effectively.  A group should meet regularly, and members should be willing to make that time commitment to the group.  And finally, writers should learn how to critique; there are a number of resources out there with good suggestions in this regard, but the bottom line is be respectful, be encouraging, and be honest.

I wish good luck to those of you searching for a group, and I hope sincerely that your experience is as profoundly beneficial as mine has been.

So okay, I’m off the road a bit.  Too much to do at the moment to begin Purgatory Ridge.

Among the many things on my plate has been preparation for the Midwest Writers Workshop at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana.  It’s a great workshop opportunity for writers in early career wanting to hone their skills and move their work toward publication.  Among the workshops I teach is an all-day intensive session that focuses primarily on Plot and Narrative.  It’s a session I love giving.

Honestly, for me, plot has always been the least important element of my books, but it’s the element I spend the most time worrying about, for this reason: For most of us, life, generally speaking, doesn’t have plot.  Things just happen, and more often than not, they happen in a chaotic way.  Or they happen in a plodding way.  They don’t have a dynamic, grabber of an opening.  They don’t have someone behind the scenes pulling strings you can’t see.  They don’t have dark motives or deadly consequences.  And they don’t wrap up neatly in the end.  All this is plot, and mostly it’s false.  But it’s probably what the majority of readers think about when they hear the word “story.”

Me, I think about all the other elements of story—language, character, setting, voice, for example, which are all aspects of narrative—and all of these seem to rise naturally from my own experience.  Although in my writing I try to use language in an interesting and powerful way, it’s still the medium for all my daily communication.  Every day I run into interesting people and work at analyzing their character.  In my stories, for settings I use the places I know well and that move me.  And I don’t know about other people, but I’m always internally narrating my life, so voice is always in my head.  These things come to me naturally.

But plot doesn’t.  Plot I have to think about, calculate, construct.  Usually, I think my plots out in advance, launching into the writing of the story only after I’ve been able to see the entire architecture and feel comfortable that all the pieces are in place and the plot is going to hold together.  But sometimes—and I’m there right now with my current project—I realize that the underlying motive is too weak to provide a good, believable foundation for all the action it’s supposed to support.  And I’m worried.  And I hate worrying.

Clever plots are interesting, but not as interesting as characters that ring true, relationships I can understand, settings I can see and feel and smell, or language that’s so good it makes my teeth hurt.  When I think about the books I love—To Kill a Mockingbird.  The Great Gatsby.  Mystic River.  In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead—I realize I love them not so much for the story they tell, but for the way in which they tell the story.