My 2004 resolutions are embarrassingly mundane – eat better, drink more water, listen to the “inner peace” stuff during yoga – the usual.  I made a more ambitious resolution almost two years ago – I was late that year, not getting around to self-improvement until April.  But in April 2002, I resolved finally to revisit the dusty half-finished manuscript that I had begun in 1999 when I left the District Attorney’s Office in Portland.  By summer, I had completed Judgment Calls. 

     Twenty-one short months later, I have just finished the final edits on the second Samantha Kincaid mystery, Missing Justice, and am ready to begin a third.  I’m still learning the writing ropes but thought I’d pass along some tips that helped me . . . just in case some of you have your own writing-related resolutions for 2004.

1] The first tip is one you’ve no doubt heard before, but it’s a keeper: Write what you know.  When a writer works within a world that is natural for her, the ease shows in the writing.  For me, that meant maximizing my knowledge about the inner workings of courthouse politics, police investigations, and criminal trials.  It meant that Samantha Kincaid loved golf, cocktails, and French bulldogs.  I would have little to say, on the other hand, about an arson investigator who lived for NASCAR and French poetry.  To fill the pages, the temptations of cliché and formula would have been overwhelming.  What if I don’t know anything? you ask.  Maybe this year’s resolution should be to live, observe, question, learn, and then start writing.

2] A second tip is to think of yourself as a writer.  Now, that might sound as frustratingly glib as the supposed cure for shyness – “pretend you’re outgoing!” – but what I’m talking about is how you treat yourself in tangible ways.  Establish a quiet workspace that belongs only to you and your writing.  Get a decent printer to go with that computer; what good is text if you can’t see it on a page?  Keep a pen and notebook with you at all times, ready to record those fleeting story ideas and dialogue snippets before your tormenting memory pushes them cruelly aside, making room for the latest Bennifer headline or Britney lyric.  And, for Pete’s sake, buy yourself a decent chair.  You are, after all, a writer.

3] Finally, and this is the hard part, once you think of yourself as a writer, WRITE!  The process of writing came together for me only when I dedicated myself to a life of writing everyday.  Because I try my hardest to write every single day, I generally write six days a week and rarely miss two consecutive days.  Some of those days, I may only have time for a paragraph.  But to write that paragraph, I have to stop and think about the previous two pages, the plot, and the characters, their motivations, and their voices.  In other words, I have to stay inside my book.  Stay inside of your book, and it will stay (and grow) inside of you.  At least, that’s how the process works for me.

     Those, for what they’re worth, are my new year writing tips.  Whatever your dreams, I hope they come true in 2004.

 For past Have You Heard Interviews, Click Here