by Maggie King
As a devotee of Nancy Drew, I wrote mysteries in grade
school. In high school I poured my considerable adolescent angst into bad
poetry. After that, the only writing I did for many years was journaling.
During the last year I lived in Los Angeles, three of my co-workers took
creative writing and screenwriting courses at UCLA Extension. I read their work
and was impressed by their talent. I also thought “I could do this.” I was a
member of a mystery book group (it was the model for the Murder on Tour group in
Murder at the Book Group) and felt
confident that I could turn out a mystery. When I moved to Virginia in 1996 the
first thing I did was to register for a writing course at the University of
Virginia. Two women, Margaret and Tristan,
taught the course and were extremely encouraging and supportive of their
students.
Despite the
title of this post, “My First Writing Effort,” I don’t have my first writing
efforts, the ones inspired by Nancy Drew in grade school. They seem to have
vanished—probably a good thing. But in that class at UVA I started the story
that would evolve countless times until its birth as Murder at the Book
Group, my debut.
I called it Death
Comes Knocking and intended for it to be a prologue. On October 14, 1996 I
submitted a shorter version and got a lot of helpful feedback from the
teachers. I added to it and came up with the following a week later (I haven’t
changed a word. Honest!):
Deanna unlocked the
door of the motel room, flipping the light switch as she entered. She threw her
purse down on the chair, sat on the edge of the lumpy bed, stood up, started
pacing. Waiting. Clearly agitated. She no longer noticed the holes in the
carpet, the cigarette burns on the formica nightstands as well as on the
foam-filled vinyl chair cushions, or the steady drip of the shower.
She had been meeting
her lover in the sleazy rooms of Marty’s Hideaway many times over the past
year, but this time was different. This time they would talk about the future
of their relationship, if indeed there was one.
The last time they
met, Deanna had hit him with the news that she was pregnant. He didn’t have
much to say, in fact he had lapsed into silence for an hour, a silence she
wasn’t able to break. Then he said he needed time to think, that he would call
her. He was distant.
He didn’t call for several
days. Deanna was sure he was going to bolt, that this was the end for them. After
a period of fretting, obsessing, and barely functioning, she started to accept
his desertion. But then he did call, said he wanted to see her, he’d done a lot
of reflecting, “agonizing” was how he put it, about their situation. He had
seemed rather excited on the phone, not like his usual subdued self. They
arranged a time to meet at “their” place.
So here she was, at
Marty’s Hideaway, waiting for him, for his decision. She vaguely resented that
he controlled the relationship, but didn’t feel up to addressing that issue
now. She knew she couldn’t express her needs, like marriage, family, living
happily ever after, etc. she paced some more, drank water from a plastic cup, felt
almost desperate enough to peruse the inevitable Gideon bible, a blasphemous
joke in this place where the clientele paid by the hour.
She jumped when she
heard the knock. As she ran to open the door, she put on a big smile, and tried
to pretend that she wasn’t nervous. She was greeted by an enormous bouquet of
red roses, so enormous that it totally obscured the face of its presenter. What
a nice surprise!—he wasn’t given to relationship niceties like flowers, and
this arrangement must have cost him a fortune. So maybe he had decided to take
the plunge, and make a commitment to her after all—maybe things were looking
up.
Then the bouquet fell
to the floor, the beautiful floral arrangement strewn over the ugly, threadbare
carpet. Deanna bent down to pick them up, but stopped, startled,
uncomprehending at what she saw before her. And she would never be able to
reveal what she did see in that moment just before her world went black.
I wish I still had the critique comments from the teachers
and the students. It’s not great writing but I don’t think it’s horrible,
especially for my first effort. And that’s coming from someone who’s highly
self-critical. What do you think? It won’t bother me if you think it’s unpublishable—I’ve
typed too many words since this first effort. But I’m toying with the idea of
doing something with it, perhaps a short story.
The important lesson for me and one I can pass on to other
aspiring writers: look at the first paragraph of this post where I told myself “I could do this.” Well, I am doing this.
This is my last post on Novelspaces
for a while, as we’re taking a hiatus for a year. But we’ll periodically select
the best posts from the past nine years.
 |
| Olive, my muse since 2012 |
Maggie King is the author of the Hazel Rose Book Group mysteries, including Murder at the Book Group and Murder at the Moonshine Inn. She has contributed stories to the Virginia is for Mysteries anthologies and to the 50 Shades of Cabernet anthology.
Maggie is a member of Sisters in Crime, James River Writers, and the American Association of University Women. She has worked as a software developer, retail sales manager, and customer service supervisor. Maggie graduated from Elizabeth Seton College and earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has called New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California home. These days she lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, Glen, and cats, Morris and Olive. She enjoys reading, walking, movies, traveling, theatre, and museums.
Website: http://www.maggieking.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaggieKingAuthr
Instagram: authormaggieking
Amazon author page: http://amzn.to/2Bj4uIL
7 comments:
Oh my: I'm in suspense.
You have to make this a short story. I'm dying to find out what she saw! Loved your first effort.
Thank you, Glen and Amy. I've put it on my TBW list.
It's good. I had the feeling early on that this woman was likely coming into danger. You didn't do an information-dump by giving us a detailed background. I assume the man is married, but you didn't say that and didn't need to at this point. He might not be, but there's a reason for the secrecy and she's bringing up what might prove to be a huge problem for him.
Linda, thanks for your feedback. Good insight! I'll miss your posts but look forward to your tome.
A great start! I can't wait to read the rest.
What a beautiful muse you have, Maggie! Adorable!
I enjoyed reading this! The suspense worked. I found myself wanting to keep reading because I wanted to know more. I also like the unanswered questions that are left hanging, like the one Linda mentioned.
There were a few mechanical errors -- one sentence that ran into another with no punctuation, a couple verb tense issues -- nothing that editing later drafts would not fix. The main issue to me was that it weighed heavily on the 'telling' side of narration, where 'showing' would improve the style. For example, instead of telling the reader that the character is agitated, I would show her agitation through the things she does: trembling hands, nervous tics, pacing... That sort of thing. I would omit modifiers like 'sleazy' because you have already shown very effectively that the room is sleazy via those important telling details like the cigarette burns, the vinyl-covered cushions, the holey carpet.
This is not bad at all for a first effort. (Trust me. I've seen lots of first efforts from writing students.) Writing craft is something we're constantly learning and improving, and I'm sure it was difficult to sit on your hands and not tweak it before posting. I read once about a famous author conducting a similar exercise years ago. He said he had to throw his pen across the room (it was back when writers used lots of pens and paper) to keep himself from improving on the old story that he was using to illustrate something.
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