Who would have thought that killing people could be so much fun? Here I am writing this science laboratory based murder mystery novel and already I've learned a few big lessons:
1) Lowering your standards, gets words on the page fast.
2) Don't despair when you think you've lowered your standards too much! Pick up the 2 books you bought at the airport and browse. Realize your standards are fine.
3) Learn that killing people is not only EASY, it's FUN.
4) Why stop at just one? All the books have at least two murders, so go ahead, kill off that gerbil-like other guy too. He's got to be guilty of something (that part you can figure out later)
5) Tired of finding new adjectives to describe your book's location? Switch location. Add an exotic trip to coral reefs to find new snail toxins. Never been scuba diving? That's okay. Make it up! Later, there are fact checkers for that (aren't there?)
6) Finally, even if your characters aren't all that interesting, it's important to give them good heroes:
Like the one that my female graduate student character adores: Emelie Chatelet, an 18th century French mathematician & physicist. She figured out that Newton screwed up about the laws of motion: The energy of a moving object wasn't proportional to its mass x velocity, but rather velocity needed to be squared, e.g. E = mv2. Sound familiar? It should. Nearly two centuries later Einstein figured out e=mc2 based on her correction.
(In case you're wondering, her theory was demonstrated by dropping metal balls into clay. When dropped from twice the distance, they sunk 4x into the clay, i.e. the square of twice as far and not twice as far as Newton predicted.)
Plus, she was quite the independent women. Had numerous affairs (all fine with her husband who had his own) including Voltaire who said she was a great man whose only flaw was being a woman! She died at 44 after giving birth to a child from another affair (Voltaire was mad).
7) Accept (once again) that you aren't a woman genius, but do a couple of sun salutations for Carl Djerassi.
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4 comments:
And, as you demonstrate, the hero is compelling enough to drive a thousand seriel-killing novels. Bravo for the plan. How great to come back from the Spain having a manuscript in your hot little hands (such manuscript should save you from the despair of a lack of tapas, a lack of wine you may find upon your return).
Good job! I must lower my standards. And do some sun salutations. Good recipe for happiness!
I think low standards are just great. Your post is excellent evidence of this. Also, genius is overrated. My favorite category of genius--incidental genius, which your post is also excellent evidence of.
I too must learn the wisdom of lower standards.
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