Today some friends will come over to visit, munch on cookies, drink tea and coffee and listen thoughtfully to words woven together to create what we hope is a pleasing pattern. Jane writes fiction for children and also poetry. Nancy writes inspirational stories based on experience, and I am the one of the mysterious mind. Peg listens creatively and gives us her insight as a person who has read widely and knows a good story when she hears it. So we gather and offer gentle critiques.
Words are what make our world go around; spoken or written, words shape our lives. Words can make the difference between whether our day is gloomy or bright; whether we lift someone’s load or add to it; they can even mean life or death in the mouths of lawyers and judges. Framers of our Constitution wrote beautiful words that guarantee and protect our freedom. Words in the Bible tell of the Beginning and the Ending and offer eternal life and also warn of eternal damnation. Words.
Meaningful words are not empty phrases or hollow shells. We writers strive to paint a picture with words, pictures to which our readers can relate. We want the reader to understand, empathize and feel that he/she is right there with the character, seeing the things she sees, hearing and feeling as she does. I don’t think my mysteries, although they are listed as “cozy” are good bedtime stories. Hopefully, they are the kind that keep a person up at night. When Darcy and Flora hid from their pursuers behind a sumac thicket in The Cemetery Club, I wanted the reader to feel their fear as they saw brown, water-stained leather boots stop a few feet from their cover. When a noise woke Darcy in Grave Shift and she eased down stairs, fearing that an intruder was inside the house, I hoped the words I used caused the reader to feel and see all that she did. And now in Best Left Buried, Darcy and her mother are in trouble again and about to face more. How will they get out of it this time? How indeed. I’m going to have to think of some mighty cagey words.
But in today’s critique, I won’t read about Darcy and Flora. I’ll read from a new story I’m writing with a different protagonist. This young lady has inherited a Victorian house but in order to claim it as her own, the will stipulates she has to live there. And therein lies the problem. And a mystery.
Words can be a ticket to faraway places via a good book. Words are the tools a writer uses to shape an imaginary world; the threads that, when woven together, create a picture. Out of a plethora of words, we have to choose the right ones . Sometimes another person can find that elusive word that fits perfectly in my creation. And that’s where the gentle critique comes in.
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