And here it is: her second novel. Enjoy!
The Best Piece of
Writing Advice I’ve Ever Heard
I wrote several stories when I was a child. They
were pretty dreadful, and at the age of nine or ten I had no idea how to make
them better. So I stopped writing fiction.
If only I’d kept on. My writing
and my storytelling abilities would have improved.
Instead, I became an avid
reader and went on to study English literature at university. I was told that I
had a talent for putting words together. After university, I became a newspaper
journalist because it involved writing. And I’ve been writing and editing
newspaper and magazine articles for the past thirty years.
But deep down I wanted to write
fiction instead of relating facts. I wanted to create my own stories instead of
reporting those of other people.
One day I overheard a
conversation between a newspaper editor and a fellow reporter. This reporter
was a terrific newshound. She could sniff out a good story and track down
wonderful sources to interview. But she had trouble building an article out of
her wealth of information. She’d get stuck on the first sentence.
“Just jump in and start
writing,” the newspaper editor told her. “Don’t worry about the opening. You
can come back and fix it. Turn off your internal editor, and write the story down
just as if you’re telling it to me.”
Turn
off your internal editor. The words resonated. As a journalist, I never had
problems writing articles. I had to write to deadlines, and at daily
newspapers, those were usually daily deadlines. I had no choice but to submit an
article and move on to the next. I had no time to listen to internal editors
when I had editors in the newsroom saying they wanted that article ASAP.
But I remembered the internal
editor I’d listened to as a child, and I realized that I was vulnerable to that
voice when I was writing fiction. And that was because I was working completely
on my own, without deadlines and without feedback.
I decided to take another run
at fiction writing.
With some difficulty, I managed
to tune out my internal editor while I was writing. I focused on getting the
story out, sentence by sentence, page by page. Later, the following day or the
following week, I revisited these pages with my editor’s voice turned on but
firmly in check. I tightened and reworked sentences and paragraphs. I discarded
entire pages if necessary.
I joined a writers’ group that
meets once a month. This provides deadlines, and I work well to deadlines. I
joined networking groups such as Crime Writers of Canada and Sisters in Crime. Several
years ago, I left my full-time job at a Toronto newspaper and became a
freelance journalist to free up more time for fiction writing. I submitted work
to literary contests.
Slowly, I made progress. I had
short stories published in anthologies. I made the shortlist on some pretty
prestigious writing contests. Then last year, my debut mystery, Safe Harbor, was published as an ebook
and a paperback by Imajin Books. Its sequel, Black Water, has just been released.
I’m still vulnerable to my
internal editor who likes to compare my writing—usually unfavourably—with the
works of other writers. I need to tune out these comments, and with practice, this
becomes easier to do. The voice will always be there, and it can be useful when
my work needs editing.
But it has to be kept firmly in
check.
Rosemary McCracken
has worked
on newspapers across Canada as a reporter, arts reviewer, editorial writer and
editor. She is now a Toronto-based fiction writer and freelance journalist. Her
first mystery novel, Safe Harbor, was shortlisted for Britain’s Crime Writers’
Association’s Debut Dagger in 2010 and published by Imajin Books in 2012. You
can buy it here.
Black
Water, the second book in the Pat Tierney series, has just been released at the
special introductory price of .99! You can buy it here.
