Table Legs in the Garden

Sunday April 2012

The sun is attempting an end run around the clouds. Sitting in my garden at 7:30 a.m., I want to believe there will be sun today.

I’m in my garden most Sundays having a coffee and enjoying the view. Today I’m delighted by what has ‘popped’ especially in view of our early spring. Sitting in my garden always turns my thoughts to writing--gives me time to think through problems in a plot or character development. I don’t know why staring at weeds, dried out stalks from last season and new blooms struggling to break the cap of dead leaves, reminds me of writing but it does.

Today, I notice how crooked all the posts and shepherds’ crooks became over the winter. I haven’t yet brought out the wind chimes or the pots that hang from the crooks. I’ll have to boot up and stomp the metal bar at the bottom of the crook deeper into the ground. Now that reminds me of how I have to, in some stories, push down hard to develop a deeper level of engagement for the reader.  If I don’t secure the story with some strong groundwork, I could have to go back and straighten that premise after the story has grown and attached itself to it. Takes more work and you run the risk of breaking a beautiful stem or offshoot.

Last season, on a morning walk, I discovered five turned wooden table legs with balls for feet at someone’s curb. I carried two and drove back with the car for the remaining three legs. Don’t know what had become of the sixth leg. Maybe the table hand only five. More likely an earlier ‘picker’ needed only one.

I set them in the ground upside down with the ball at the top. They’re in all parts of the garden, highlighting a clump of plants, shoring up an old birdhouse post or just standing about.

They remind me of twists and clues. Do I need to firm up a ‘leg’before I can add a piece of business? Can I use a table leg to develop a clue, or theme, or a quirky McGuffin?

This is how my mind works in the garden. I’ve ‘plucked literary table legs’ from my discarded manuscripts and from fabulous stories I’ve absorbed. Sometimes they become an important bit of business and sometimes they’re just table legs in the garden.

Enjoy the garden on the ground and the one in your mind.

They remind me of twists and clues. Do I need to firm up a ‘leg’ before I can add a piece of business? Can I use a table leg to develop a clue, or theme, or a quirky McGuffin?

This is how my mind works in the garden. I’ve ‘plucked literary table legs’ from my discarded manuscripts and from fabulous stories I’ve absorbed. Sometimes they become an important bit of business and sometimes they’re just table legs in the garden.

KISS! KISS! or BANG! BANG!

When the time comes do you end your series with sweetness and light or with a high body count? How do you say ‘good-bye’ to your characters when a series ends?

Do you end the storyline in such a manner that you can never go back unless you tap the unsatisfying (in my opinion) ‘revivalist’ trick of a dream sequence, or mistaken identity or a miraculous recovery.

Do you end the series in a manner that leaves the possibility, as unlikely as it may be, that all or some or a few of the characters could return?

Do you choose an interesting secondary character and spin off a new series?

The decision to end my series became reality while I worked on the sixth book, The Innkeeper: An Unregistered Death. I am grateful for the advance notice that gave me the opportunity to start pulling in the nine book arc I’d thought the series could be. Knowing two years ahead of time gave me the distance I needed to begin to find what I hoped would be satisfying conclusions to the characters’ stories.

It was a gift and a curse. 

 

As I began to write this last book, I started by doing something I’d never done with the other books. I outlined. I outlined points I wanted to make, situations from earlier books that I wanted to wrap up, relationship resolutions. I had outlines for secondary characters even some tertiary characters.

Then, I experienced something that had never happened before with the earlier books…writer’s block. I sat paralyzed by the thought that I didn’t have the next book to expand a theme, develop a character, massage a plot twist or resolve a relationship. I sat dead in the water at my computer, fingers frozen over the keys while I reviewed my outlines. 

 

Who has struggled with this dilemma? I’d love to hear how you handled, The End.

If you haven't yet read all six of the previous Grace Marsden Mysteries, you can read the first chapter of each one and then purchase the ebooks for just $.99 each -- but only for a limited time -- at www.luisabuehler.com