Writers Archives - Kim Batchelor

Dec 05 2016

Satan’s Tips for Being a Terrible Critique Partner

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Hello. Satan here. Sure, I’m best known for war, pestilence, brussels sprouts and those songs in commercials you can’t get out of your head. And some of you have met me because we’ve made a little deal for your soul. You know who you are.

Now some tips for those critique groups you’re all involved in.

As a writer, too (I’m the author of all those bestsellers you tried to read and thought were garbage), I know the value of participating in a critique group. I thought I’d share some of my views on how I approach my role as a critique partner which I do for fun.

Don’t make suggestions. Instead tell the writer how to do it the way you’d do it. That’s what they’re there to hear, right?
Read too carefully. Look for anything to criticize. There’s got to be something to point out. Something nit picky. Maybe the font?
Don’t read carefully enough and make an irrelevant comment. This is one of my favorites. There’s nothing like it that’s more frustrating for the writer who isn’t allowed to talk while being critiqued. I enjoy how their faces turn red.
Don’t read at all. Or don’t pay attention when the writer is reading his or her own work. Just act bored and stare at your nails.
Engage in revenge critique. No one says anything negative about my work without getting an irrelevant comment back.
Use your body language to full effect. Eye rolling. Furrowed brow. Clenched teeth. They all work for me.
Pop in and out of established critique groups. When you’ve got all you need, drop out. There’s nothing like stepping on the heads of others as you claw your way to the top.

So feel free to use any of these tips. Productive and respectful critique groups are not my friends. Too much competition from better writers.

Oh, by the way, I’m running a year-end sale on soul acquisition. Hurry before this deal runs out. Contact me. I’m all over Twitter.

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Oct 03 2016

Bouchercon 2016 Part II: Observations as a Writer

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Two weeks ago I attended my first Bouchercon, a convention named for one of its founders, Anthony Boucher. For those of you who have never heard of Bouchercon, it’s a volunteer-driven convention focusing on mystery and suspense novels and thrillers. Since it is a convention that attracts both writers and readers (and most, like me, a combination of the two), I thought I’d divide up my impressions into what I got out of this almost fifty-year-old gathering.

One of the highlights of attending for me as a writer was a revolving ‘panel’ of writers not participating in other panels. The panel was known as the “Continuous Conversation.” I wasn’t sure what to expect when I was scheduled, but it turned out to be a pleasure to be interviewed by the moderator with one other author for almost an hour. (A couple of authors skipped their slots which allowed me to stay a little longer.) We ended up with a small but enthusiastic group who heard us talk about what inspires us, where we get our stories, the value of workshops for us, and other topics.

Several workshops, too many for me to attend them all, dealt with craft—setting, research, social media, and, apt for a mystery conference, crime scene investigation. Markets were discussed on several panels. I’m not currently a reader of “cozies,” mysteries with less edge and absent of gruesome violence, but I learned that food related cozy mysteries are very popular and demand is good.

One of my favorite sessions was on “Corsets and Crime,” a panel made up of writers of historical mysteries. Many of the panel members—Tasha Alexander, Laurie King, Lyndsay Faye, C.S. Harris, Deanna Raybourne, and Susanne Calkins—are historians or very adept at historical research. A couple of the useful tips for someone writing fiction came out of this panel. Laurie King, known for her bestselling novels of Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, said her strategy was to research only as much as she needed to know to draft the novel, then fill in the blanks. Authors should avoid being drawn into the “research vortex,” when the research becomes so interesting they can’t stop themselves. Several panel members confessed to having to struggle against this, especially when historical research is part of their training. I not only learned how successful authors of historical mysteries do it, I found some new authors whose books I look forward to reading.

I have a police procedural sitting in a drawer and I’d like to take it out someday and revise it for possible publication. Unfortunately, the only disappointing session I attended was one on weapons. I’d expected to hear about different weapons and how an investigator investigates their use, but I didn’t receive much information on this topic in the workshop.

I’m happy to be on the volunteer committee of the 2019 Bouchercon in Dallas, the 50^th anniversary of the convention. This meant that I spent some time staffing the Bouchercon table, and will order session downloads of some of the sessions I missed. I’m looking forward to our opportunity here in Dallas to take on this convention that has become an institution. We’re already in the process of planning, and hope it will continue to be an opportunity for writers as well as readers to find plenty that enhances their work.

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Sep 19 2016

Bouchercon Part I: Diversity

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Yesterday, I returned home from New Orleans and my first time to attend Bouchercon, an annual convention dedicated to authors and fans of mystery, suspense, crime fiction. Bouchercon is named for Anthony Boucher, who with a group of volunteers established the first Bouchercon in 1969. It has since grown into a conference attended by hundreds of people; this year the attendance is estimated to be 1800. I am part of the committee organizing Bouchercon 2019 in Dallas, when the convention celebrates its 50^th anniversary.

I started on Wednesday by attending a preconference afternoon session on diversity sponsored by Sisters in Crime (SinC), an organization founded by author Sara Paretsky in order to, originally, promote women mystery writers. With much discussion of the need for diverse books and protagonists, as well as supporting characters, I found this and a separate conference session the next morning to be very valuable. Since one session went on for five hours and the other about an hour, both with multiple presenters, there’s too much that was shared to be able to describe it all in only one blog post. What I will do is list a few highlights.

The afternoon session began with a brief talk and extended Q&A with author Walter Moseley. His remarks were wide ranging and it hardly does justice to summarize them. He started with a rousing call to action on issues of social justice and described the importance of diversity as part of that call. He let us know that we are all people of at least some color. The critical issue is expanding in our writing the inclusion of voices that are too often unheard.

Here are the main points I took from each of the other presenters:

Greg Herren, author of the Chanse MacLeod and Scotty Bradley mysteries: Throughout a humorous presentation, Greg’s best advice was ‘drop the gay male friend,’ especially if he’s your only gay character. Include gay, lesbian, transgendered characters, just don’t make them stereotypes or sidekicks.

Cindy Brown, Agatha-nominated author of the Ivy Meadows mysteries: Cindy was part of the afternoon session and another session the following day that addressed the challenge of creating characters with disabilities. She talked language—use a person with a disability and avoid the use of disabled and ‘handicapped’ (especially) as descriptors. The disability is something the person has, not the totality of the person. She also advised against terms like ‘other abled’ and especially cautioned about how we describe people who use wheelchairs for mobility; e.g., wheelchair bound.

Also important, Cindy educated us on how we should think of disability. It’s not just physical but also mental. Depression and other psychiatric disorders can also be disabling.

Linda Rodriguez, award winning author of the Skeet Bannon mysteries: Linda stressed the importance of really doing our homework when we want to include a character who comes from a different experience from our own. She used author Tony Hillerman as an example; the Navajo thought he ‘got it right’ with his Navajo characters, and even embraced him as an honorary member of their nation. Some were upset by the secrets about the Navajo that a few members shared with him, an outsider. Linda joined the chorus that we diversify our characters; we just need to do our research and expect that there will often be criticism. Do it anyway.

Frankie Bailey, PhD, author of the Lizzie Stuart and Hannah McCabe mysteries, criminal justice professor, and director of Justice and Multiculturalism in the 21st century at the University of Albany: Dr. Bailey covered several topics on dialogue, but two of the most important points she made were (1) be careful of walk-on characters who can be easiest to stereotype, and (2) while women and persons of color have been hired in significant numbers in many police and fire departments, they can be subject to feeling like “insiders within” these organizations.

To recap the overarching theme: We need to incorporated diverse characters in our writing, know more about the people we write about and where they come from, create fully fleshed out characters, and get feedback from people living within the skin and cultures similar to these characters.

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Aug 25 2016

Magical Realism: The Magic and the Real

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Remedios the Beauty represents purity while walking about the Buendía household without wearing a stitch of clothing. Remedios the Beauty, always oblivious to the men who lust after her. And in a magical moment, Remedios the Beauty, while hanging clothes on the line, is suddenly caught up in a brisk wind and ascends into the heavens.

After reading this passage, I was hooked.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner for Literature and the best-known writer of what has come to be known as “magical realism,” created Remedios in his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The ascendance of Remedios is the ‘magic.’ The ‘real’ of Remedios may be a story of girls who actually disappeared. Those girls, unmarried and expecting babies, ended up in convents, out of sight of those who would judge them. For me, the breathtaking passage where Remedios ascends will always be bound up in the other story of girls made invisible by circumstances.

Isabel Allende combined ‘magic’ and ‘realism’ in her House of the Spirits—ghosts stand in for strong feelings. Salman Rushdie incorporated the dualistic real/magic in several of his books, and wrote about the concept of magical realism in an article in the New York Times Book Review shortly after Garcia Marquez’s death.

The term ‘magical realism’ is not without controvery—many Latin American writers feel pressured by some to write in Garcia Marquez’s style even as they reject it for their own writing. Many of those who do don’t like the term; I’ve heard suggest ‘hyper-realism’ as a substitute.

It doesn’t matter to me what it’s called, I’m drawn to books that include the fantastical standing in for the real. I frequently insert fantastical elements into my own writing. In The Island of Lost Children, flying and mystery rivers and horses made of sea foam also represent something more profound.

Just recently I finished a lovely book, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton. From the very beginning the reader knows that Ava is born with wings, and the presence of wings keeps Ava trapped in her own home because of her mother’s fears for her. The ending is stunning. Through this book, I dipped my toes in a familiar yet alien universe. My review of the novel is here.

I have read many books considered magically realist, among them Beloved by Toni Morrison, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman—who often writes novels considered to be in the magical realism genre—is a book where the fantastical is only an illusion.

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” So begins One Hundred Years of Solitude. The image of ice and its importance in the memory of a man facing the firing squad—those words and similar images made me return to the book not once but three times. I’m not sure the meaning of ice in the world of Macondo, but I’m certain it’s important in conveying something outside the most obvious thing.

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May 17 2014

Vicki Caroline Cheatwood, Playwright

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Vicki Caroline Cheatwood is an award winning playwright and screenwriter with seven full-length plays and several shorter plays to her credit, in addition to screenwriting projects that include one recognized at Cannes. In 2002, her screenplay Air (Escopa Films) won the Special Jury Gold Award at Worldfest Film Festival, and in 2005, the dark comedy feature 10:10 was a finalist in the Austin Film Festival. She has been a finalist for several national play writing honors, including the Heideman Award (The Risen Chris, Actors Theater of Louisville), The Julie Harris Playwright Award (An Hour South), and the Eileen Heckart Drama Award (Manicures & Monuments).

One of her more recent plays is the powerful, Ruth, a beautiful re-imagining of the Hebrew/Old Testament story of Ruth and Naomi, set in contemporary America and focusing on the issue of immigration and displacement.

While we talk, Vicki and I are sitting on the terrace of this beautiful home on Lake Como in Italy drinking frothy glasses of San Pellagrino and enjoying slices of a wonderful pie.

For those of you in the Dallas, Texas area, Vicki’s play “Manicures & Monuments” opened June 2014 at WaterTower Theatre in Addison.

KB: Vicki, talk a little about your work. What are the projects you’re most proud of?

VC: Right off the bat, PUP Fest comes to mind. It’s the annual young playwrights festival produced by Kitchen Dog Theater and Junior Players of Dallas. I’ve been involved with PUP Fest since the beginning, something like 13 years now. It’s amazing to think of how many young artists – writers and actors – who have been positively impacted by the program. Very cool!

KB: I like to focus on imagination and inspiration in our storytelling. What’s the most unusual thing that’s ever inspired you?

VC: Road trips have always been a big source of inspiration for me. My play “Manicures & Monuments” began as a “Hey, what if…?” question to my husband, as we were driving down the highway in his red Ford Ranger.

On another road trip – probably in that same little pickup – headed east from Dallas on some little two-lane highway, Mark was driving and I was looking out the window. We passed this little house situated right off the highway, a little old farm house, and there was a man sitting on the porch, a farmer, dressed in his work clothes, but he had a cane. We were going 60, 70 miles an hour, so it was just a flash of this image, but it really hit me. This old man, still getting up and putting on his overalls, hat, boots, jacket – but he’s not able to work anymore. I started thinking about all the other porches, and all the other people who sat on them, sidelined, unable to participate in their own lives anymore. I jotted down some notes, and went off and wrote a play about life, death and religion: “Fits & Starts: The Sacred Heart.” It ran on Off-Off-Broadway, and was reviewed in Variety. It bombed, but hey, it was reviewed in Variety!

KB:Wow! Off, off broadway and a review in Variety. That’s more than cool.

I’m intrigued to know more about your screenwriting projects. I’ve heard of Cannes. Never been there. Have you met George Clooney? Sorry, I digress.

VC: It’s one of the biggest honors of my life thus far, to say that I had a film that was screened at the Cannes Independent Film Festival. The producer/co-director of the film, Keith Oncale and Shawn Washburn, the other co-director, did fly to France for the screening of our film “break.” There was no way that I could go. Even if I’d had the money, my husband was very ill and in treatment for throat cancer. The day of the screening, I walked around at work struck by this odd, vague depression of having something so huge happening, and being so disconnected from it. I finally told one of my coworkers, “Hey I wrote a movie, and it’s screening at Cannes in France today.” She said something like “Wow, really?” and then we went on with our work.

That whole period of time seems like someone else’s very bad dream. And damnit, I didn’t get to meet George Clooney!

KB: I didn’t realize that this was all going on during that very difficult time in your life. That has to have been very tough–having something that you would have celebrated come right in the middle of that bad dream.

I originally had an interest in screenwriting, but it seems so dog-eat-dog-steal-idea business, something I don’t worry so much about when writing fiction. What’s your take having been closer to that business?

VC: I like writing screenplays, but I don’t think I’m a screenwriter. I like the challenge of writing pictures, visuals, but my gift is writing dialogue. As far as the business goes, other than my two produced short films, I’ve had very limited success in screenwriting. I have two feature-length screenplays that got circulated around and got great feedback, but that’s as far as it went. I was a finalist one year in the Austin Film Festival, which gave me close access to some big name producers, writers, actors and agents, a couple of whom seemed interested in my work…and that’s as far as I got. My friend Stephen Dyer, a producer and screenwriter who’s had good success, likes to say, “Hollywood is the only place where you can die of encouragement.” He didn’t originate that quote, but he’s sure lived it. As have my other friends who have done very well in films and television.

Probably the best advice about screenwriting that I’ve had as a writer came from the very fine actor Donal Logue, who brought a film that he’d directed to the AFF that same year that I was there. He told me to play to my strengths, to keep writing plays, and that they – meaning Hollywood –would come looking for me. And he was right, to a point. After the Austin festival, they did. Nothing came of it, so far, but I’ve had a couple of thrilling phone conversations. There’s not much more exciting and strange than taking a call from big-name producer, while you’re at work crouched behind a counter, wearing a zoo uniform and praying that nobody comes in.

KB:Maybe someday you can wear that zoo uniform to the Tonys when you accept your award for best play. It paints a great picture.

Since I’m currently working on my own Biblically-based novel, a re-imagining of the life of Mary (Maryam), the mother of Jesus, I’m most interested in how your play, Ruth, came to be. How was it originally conceived?

VC: The seeds of “Ruth” came from my participation in a Disciple, an intensive and brilliantly designed study course that looks at the Bible as literature and history, as well as theology. I had such a rudimentary understanding of the Bible before going through Disciple. The stories really came alive for me, especially Ruth’s.

KB: In addition to “Fits & Starts: The Sacred Heart,” have the Bible/religion or Biblical characters inspired you in other ways?

VC: I wrote a short play about Jonah, a vaudeville/comedy. I love Jonah. He’s so me. Pissed off at God, and constantly running off in the opposite direction. And the story of Jael, the housewife who drives a tent stake through her enemy’s head. That one really stuck with me. Pun intended.

KB:Ha! I must learn more about this Jael. I, too, sometimes feel like I’m being pulled dragging and screaming toward my own Nineveh.

Of all the plays ever produced, what play do you wish you’d written?

VC: A cash cow! One that runs forever, and ensures that even if my sons grow up to marry women who can’t stand me, I’ll never end up living in a government-funded nursing home.

Seriously – I wish I’d written “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Something that real, charming, funny, and grounded. And, fundable by the wife of a major celebrity.

KB: Finish the following: “I someday want to see a play of mine produced starring _________ and ______ .”

VC: Me and George Clooney, but of course.

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