WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MY WRITING WHILE WRITING

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Writing short introductions to each of my Diana Poole stories for the book that is now in production, I learned a few things about myself as a writer.

1. I am a very female-centric writer. I’m using the word female instead of woman because the later takes on a political edge. My male characters are strong and well defined, but my stories are about the relationships between women. I knew this, but I didn’t realize how consistent it was. In fact there is only one story, Killing The Sixties, that is about a man.

2. The mother/daughter theme haunts many of my stories in different variations. No matter how hard I try to move away from this, I am drawn back to it.

3. You can ask writers where their ideas come from and they’ll look at you with vacant eyes as if their souls have just left the building. Lining my stories up I was surprise to see that many of my ideas came from listening or eavesdropping. One story was created because I heard a man talking about another man and he used two words—dirty blonde. The man wasn’t talking about this other man’s moral character or hygiene, but his appearance. I turned the male dirty blonde into a female dirty blonde and her moral character became very important. Another short story came about because I overheard a mother and daughter in a department store dressing room arguing over a dress. They were ruthless. And it was the tone of their angry unloving voices that was the catalyst for The Good Daughter. Ephemeral, but it works for me.

4. There is always a dead body; but usually in my creative process the murder is the last thing I think about. Once I am emotionally connected to my characters and have them firmly placed in their own lives, I’m free to ponder what would lead this person to murder or be murdered. Even when describing the catalysts for these stories I had to remind myself to put in the mystery element.

5. What if . . . could any of us write without those two words floating around in our heads? I never realized how important they were.

6. I think a writer, at least this one, has a different facility to remember certain things. I can’t remember telephone numbers, people’s names, grocery lists, keys, etc. But I can remember what people wore and snatches of their conversations from years ago. I think this information has pushed out all the practical things I need to remember, but thank God I don’t write about the practical things

7. A mystery/suspense story needs atmosphere and a sense of place. Mine is Hollywood; but I learned that it’s my ambivalent feeling toward Hollywood that creates the atmosphere. For me the area doesn’t exist except for a sign on a hill. Hollywood is a business not a place.

8. Diana Poole is the closest I have come to capturing myself on paper and yet we are not the same at all. I won’t try to explain it.