Last night, J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, and John Irving held a live reading at New York’s Radio City Music Hall to benefit The Haven Foundation (established by King to support disabled, uninsured artists — no web site seems to exist as yet to promote this foundation) and Doctors Without Borders (a group — providing emergency assistance where needed in over 70 countries — supported by Rowling). This was Rowling’s first visit to the U.S. in nearly 6 years. The two-night event, billed as “An Evening with Harry, Carrie, and Garp,” wraps up tonight and hopes to raise a quarter-million dollars for each charity.

Now, of course all news sources large and small are clinging to every whispered syllable that Rowling shares publicly (which is why King said he felt like he and Irving were just warm-up acts to the “big show,” a.k.a. Rowling); they are anxious to glean any new clue to who will perish in the final book. Will Harry die? (Both King and Irving pleaded with Rowling to “do the right thing” and let him live) Who will be the two who don’t make it?

Rowling did little to share any new info, much to their disappointment. What she did share, however, was thrilling to me as a writer and a teacher of writing.

The anonymous AP reporter, in her/his article syndicated nationally to papers like Baltimore’s Sun, writes: “In talking about the writing process, both Irving and Rowling said they worked their plots out in advance so that they knew going into the writing whether they would be killing off characters, something which made writing the death scenes somewhat easier.” Said Rowling, as reported by the author of the article: “I don’t always enjoy killing my characters. I didn’t enjoy killing the character who died at the end of book 6. . . .But I had been planning that for years, so it wasn’t quite as poignant as you might imagine.”

How I love to see writers discussing process. I think it’s a good idea to do this for many writing projects, and she is right; in the pieces of writing that I have done when a character has died, my advance planning has allowed me the opportunity to reflect on that death so that my writing can serve the needs of my audience a little less dramatically — at least from my point of view. It allows you, as the writer, to focus on what your reader needs and not necessarily what you are feeling at the moment you are writing the scene or chapter.

With that said, there’s a particular scene in my latest book that took me by such surprise that it totally derailed my entire outline and forced me to turn the story over to the characters to see where they were going to take the plot and resolve the conflict. That book, The Journey to Cold Rock (still in revision), was written in one month during NanoWriMo last November, and there was no time to think about whether this new direction was good or bad for the story. I’m glad that I trusted the process, as i think this novel is the best piece of writing I’ve ever produced.

Does that mean I’ve abandoned the outline? Absolutely not. Another story of mine that is still in draft stage, Fourth Strike, is so complex that it requires a strong outline to keep the storyline from straying in any direction. In that thriller, I already know the outcome, all of the twists, turns, and surprises that, hopefully, will leave my readers turning the pages faster than they can read them.

That’s what makes the writing process such a beautiful thing. There are countless strategies that you can select from with each new writing project. All you have to do is consider your goals and the needs of your audience.

Oh–and to write the damned thing once you pick a strategy!

Relevance is a powerful thing.

I just finished reading a Solomons Island article in the Sun by Rona Kobell. It’s well written, and I think Kobell does a fine job of capturing the way of life on Solomons. To a reader who has never been there, I believe s/he will leave the story feeling a little sad for this small community that has lost two of its friends earlier this spring to fire.

But for me, as a local to Solomons Island for several years in the early nineties, it means so much more to me. Reading her piece brings backthe breeze off of the Patuxent, leaving the heavy, brackish scents of the bay in my hair. I replay the Polaroids of sunsets over the bridge, the walking along the shores kicking up sharks’ teeth during low tide, the pairs of pileated woodpeckers around my wooded cabin when I would return home from a good day of teaching.

Mostly, though, Kobell’s article makes me mourn the loss of the Bowen Inn and the Lighthouse Inn, both destroyed by fire on the Ides of March. It makes me grieve a little more in regret that I had not returned to the Island more after I left, and it makes me look a little more critically at how I spend my days now, not seeing friends and family as often as I want or should. I know, unfortunately, how I might feel should tragedy take them as well, especially after so many missed opportunities to just visit, drop a card in the mail, find them online, or give them a call.

Those were peaceful days in Solomons, and I believe we are given those times in our lives to help us through the tougher challenges we often face. It’s that peace that got me through last night’s workout. I was approaching mile three on the elliptical, and I felt as if I just couldn’t go on. How easy it would be to just stop pedaling and be happy with what I had already accomplished. But in my mind, I visualized that peace, that beauty, and the strength of those images helped carry me to my goal and hit the three-mile mark.

Pull your strength from such peaceful days from your past and use that energy in a strong, positive light…I believe the results we receive will become our new peaceful days for tougher times ahead…

A journalist always has an obligation to her audience to deliver the news truthfully. Even when elements of creative nonfiction are used to craft an article, it’s never a good idea to be misleading for dramatic effect, especially when the piece is about a random murder that happened just a few days ago.

Yet, the Sun finds no problem in breaking almost every rule in publishing such a piece in their Saturday morning edition. “He Was the First and Closest Target” is about the death of –no, that’s not it. It’s about the family suffering –uh-uh. Not that either. Let’s see….It’s about where the shooter lived, the fact that an ironing board in an unblinded window prompted a neighbor to speak up about issues of privacy, and that a .357 can fire off five shots.

Yeah. I think that’s right.

Maybe.

The writers of this piece (that’s right; it took two writers with two others contributing) open with a misleading headline, with no explanatory subhead following. I was drawn into this piece because I thought these were the killer’s words, and so I thought, well, looks like they scored an interview with the suspect, or, at the very least, captured a statement or confession that he’s made already.

No such truth there.

The headline quote is from the police spokesperson who, in a press conference, said that the shooting was completely random and the suspect was simply the “first and closest target.” We learn this in paragraph 22 of the story. In the Internet post of the story, this falls on page two.
Why mislead? The shooting is already relevant enough that tricks like this are not necessary to lure readers into the piece. We all go to movies, right? When we learned of this senseless killing, we all thought, even if briefly, that could have been me–or worse, that could be me the next time I go see a movie.

By giving us a misleading lead, you set us up for disappointment, and breed mistrust. It’s a cheap shot that offends in this piece; we are obviously sympathetic to the wife and her family for the tragedy that has changed their lives forever. The Sun alienates itself, and the writers of this piece make the paper look insensitive and cheap.

The article gets worse. For some reason, the writers meander on to a side story of the 1.6 million dollar home of the shooter, and the small details of wealthy neighbors being peeved that they took long to put up blinds (they could see the ironing board through the open window, for goodness sake; “it was very bothersome,” said one neighbor).

Only four paragraphs toward the end of the article are about the victim. The article ends with the wife describing how, at 1:30 a.m., she drove to the theater to see her husband’s car among several police cruisers. She discovered that her husband had been murdered when she approached one of the officers and said that the Chevy Malibu was her husband’s car.

The officer’s response, “You must be Mrs. Schrum,” ends the article.

Now, if we are going for dramatic effect, this is a great way to end a chapter of a book, whether it is fiction or creative nonfiction. You are driven to turn the page and read on. Of course, you can’t do that here. And besides, you feel sick to want to do that in the first place. You’ve been mislead by a headline quote, you’re scratching your head about the significance of blinds and ironing boards, and now you’re wanting to be entertained by a story that is much too fresh to be told in this dramatic and random fashion.

Bottom line: The bigger the subject, the less you use to convey your point.

And in this case, it’s best to know your point before you even begin. Otherwise, you end up writing (and in this case, unfortunately publishing) a piece that offends not only the family that has been struck by this tragedy, but your readers as well.