Write Over Your Head

At Bouchercon last month, a woman hung back as I was signing books after a panel presentation. When everyone else was through, she approached me timidly. Apologetically--and much to my delight--she pulled my entire oeuvre out of her huge bag for me to sign.

“I love your work, it’s so twisty,” she said, and I blush while I share this with you, but I did not discourage her, “and there’s a darkness I love. And it chases the light.”

She said that was why she had brought me a special story. One she wanted me to tell. It involved a contracting company and some branches of local government. Corruption, though as far as she knew, there was no murder. “But I can see the edges of one there,” she told me.

She said it was a story ripe for telling. “With it being so twisty and all, I just knew it was something that would be great for you to tell.” While she explained it to me, her face opened up like a flower being hit by full light. She just seemed to grow a little bit. Expand.

Now understand, there is no shortness of stories in my world. That is to say, I have enough of my own. Like a lot of writers, I don’t have trouble finding tales to expand upon, only the time and the discipline with which to tell them. But that wasn’t the only reason I turned her down. While she shared all her twisty details, her face was alight with passion. And it was clear there was only one thing I could say.

“This is your story,” I said to her. “You have to tell it.”

“Oh no,” she replied. “I never could.” She said she really did want to write a novel. Was, in fact, working on one. But she wanted to write a hobby mystery. A cozy. Perhaps with quilting. Or a stained-glass hobbyist. “That’s a very different sort of book.”

We talked for a while, but I couldn’t shake her from this idea: she felt that the story she saw--the one she wanted me to write--was beyond her scope as a storyteller. More: in her own mind, she didn’t belong in the place where this story fit.

People who love mystery novels often talk about genre ghettos and snobbery from the literati. The fact is, though, that the restrictions we place on ourselves are often a lot worse than those placed upon us. However, the walls we create are artificial in most cases.

No matter what branch of mystery-writing we find ourselves occupying, we are all telling deeply human stories; stories that quite often are given weight by matters of life and death. Cozy, noir, historical, procedural, detective ... when you’re writing, don’t worry about where your story will fit or--perhaps more importantly--if the story you want to tell fits the expectations others have for you.

Write the story that’s in your heart. Always. Is the story bigger than you are? Maybe that’s a good thing. Push yourself to learn how to slice the material in a way that enables you to share it. John Irving said it better than I can, so I’ll quote him here: “If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital. If you don’t feel like you are writing somewhat over your head, why do it? If you don't have some doubt of your authority to tell this story, then you are not trying to tell enough.”

My story has a sad ending, though I hope some day to add a postscript. My little friend of the passion for bigger stories than she felt as though she could tell went away with her beliefs intact. I’m not done pushing, though. And maybe that’s even why I’m writing this now. I want to tell her again--and I want to tell you as well: write the story that’s in your heart. Always. If you do any less, you’re cheating yourself, cheating those who are waiting for your stories. Hell, you might even be cheating the world.

Don’t worry about what it is you’re creating; certainly not while you’re writing it. Don’t worry about where it will fit. Doing so is the surest way to create pap.

Is the story bigger than you are? That’s OK. Like Irving says, maybe it’s even necessary. Expand to fill it if you need to. But check your heart. What story is there? That’s the one to write.