News Without Words

Work-in-Progress Report #2: Elizabeth Buzzelli

From the remote and frozen shores of Starvation Lake, Elizabeth Buzzelli writes this account of her writing life in January 2008:

“I heard today that my deadline for the second book in the Emily Kincaid mystery series is March, not June, as I've been telling myself. So I frantically counted words and found I am within striking distance of the end---70,000 words written--and have no reason to panic. The way I work, when I've finished what should be a first draft it isn't really a first draft. I work back and forth---two steps forward, then back to see if the steps hold weight. At a little beyond the middle of the novel I go back to the beginning to see what I've forgotten, whose eyes I've changed from blue to brown, how I can strengthen the plot, and how badly my syntax has deteriorated. So, I've done that.

“The story is flowing. Emily Kincaid and her friend, Deputy Dolly Wakowski of the Leetsville police, are deeply involved in an old double murder. The bones have been analyzed. The sad remains have names. And now the women are desperately hunting for a murderer while at the same time Dolly is finding family and Emily considers remarrying her ex husband and moving back down state, to Ann Arbor.

“Winter is supposed to be a great time for writing. I live in a snow belt, a mile from where Gloria Whelan used to live. She wrote a book every winter, she once told me. I envied her then and envy her still. I stand at the window in my studio looking out at a monochromatic world with not a single passing fox, or deer, or turkey, and I wonder what normal people are doing--maybe playing in the snow, or gathering in coffee shops for wonderful conversations. I go back to my desk having settled into deep self-pity and pound out another paragraph before coming up with the bright idea of taking myself into town for lunch.

“Since there aren't many restaurants in the nearest town, lunch turns out to be a sandwich at Arby's, by myself because I haven't called anyone and don't really want company. I sit there and smile at the toddlers who meander past. Sometimes an elderly lady takes pity and says something nice. Mostly I read--a thing I could have done at home. Or do the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. Then I brave the cold and snow and roads too dangerous to be on and go back home to slide down my driveway and go back to the studio and stand at the window and wish just one damn squirrel would come scalloping by.

“So, will I make the deadline? Of course. But it won't be due to a steady forward stream of perfect prose. It will be that last push: a chapter a day just as spring comes softly over the hill. I'll probably miss the intimations of hope. I'll miss the first pregnant fox passing on the other side of my meadow (which used to be a pond). I'll miss the orioles diving and the robins going crazy. I'll be in there, nose to the computer, doing rewrites and cursing all those heavenly winter days I frittered away.”

Elizabeth Buzzelli, who always gets her work done, has a non-mystery story entitled THE VW BOARDING HOUSE currently available for download on Amazon. You can read it, review it and recommend it for a publication prize. Her DEAD DANCING WOMEN (the first Emily Kincaid mystery) will be out in fall of 2008, and the sequel, DEAD FLOATING LOVERS, is the book currently nearing completion.

Work-in-Progress Report #1: Jerry Dennis

Jerry Dennis’s most recent book, THE LIVING GREAT LAKES, explored a subject he can’t leave behind. Here’s what this Traverse City writer has to say about what he’s working on now:

---

“I’m well along on a new book, A WATCHER ON THE SHORE, which I expect to send to my publisher about a year from now. The shore of the title is both literal and figurative: the one ringing the five Great Lakes; and the one we’re born onto, where we’ve erected our cities and composed our philosophies, where we spend our lives telling stories around campfires at the edge of the unknown.

“For most of the past year I’ve been living in houses on the five Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, staying for a week to a month at a time in places that interest me, including Northport’s own Cathead Point, where I stayed in a beautiful house all of last January. The other places I’ve stayed have varied from a two-room log cabin on Lake Superior to a 20-million-dollar mansion on Lake Michigan—a dozen or so in all, each drenched with character and each offering a widely different view of the lakes. My usual routine was to spend the evenings reading, the afternoons out in the world exploring, and the mornings writing, using as a guide the ancient Japanese essay genre called zuihitsu, or ‘following the brush.’ (The ‘brush’ in my case is a Sarasa Zebra 0.7 black pen.) It’s been a new way for me to compose, and has opened up many possibilities for surprise. When I started writing about stones on the beach, for example, I found myself meditating on randomness and beauty. Waves during a storm suggested the myths in almost every culture that created order out of the primordial chaos. The death of loons from botulism led to an inquiry into our place in nature and how our attitudes about it are changing.

“As with all my books (and, for that matter, my life), I’ve proceeded without much planning, following my instincts and trusting to serendipity. Along the way I’ve been fortunate to receive a great deal of assistance, starting with the generous people who invited me to stay in their houses. I’m also nearly speechless with gratitude to the Kellogg Foundation, Wege Foundation, and Great Lakes Fishery Trust, which have provided grants to support me while writing the book, and for Tim Ervin, Becky Ewing, and others at the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute and Northwestern Michigan College, who facilitated the grants. They’ve given me a wonderful gift, the result of which, I hope, will be a rich and deeply textured work.

“Now I’m home for the winter, writing every day in my studio/sanctuary in the loft of our stone barn, and spending evenings by the fireplace with Gail, reading novels and playing cribbage.”

---

Thank you, Jerry, for this window into your writing world, for all the books you have written, and for those yet to come.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!