Years ago, I took a fiction writing class with
author/teacher, Joyce Thompson at Lewis and Clark College here in Portland,
Oregon. On the first day of class, the
twelve of us settled around a big table, eager to begin. Joyce introduced herself, then proceeded to
take a deck of cards from her briefcase.
She passed a card to each of us.
They were Tarot cards. She said,
“Take a good look at your card, see what the image brings up for you, then
write something. You’ve got twenty
minutes.” Most of us sat there looking
dumbfounded. Write something? About what?
At the end of allotted our twenty minutes, a few of
us had managed to write a page, others a paragraph or sentence or two. We took turns reading aloud what we had come
up with.
The following week, Joyce began the class by saying,
“I’m going to give you three words. They
are: Ring. Unhappy.
Winter. Write something using
these words. You have fifteen minutes.”
On the third week, we gathered again at the
table. She said, “Today, I will give
nothing. No Tarot card, no words, no
prompts. You have ten minutes. Write something.”
Again, we went at it. At the end of this exercise, she explained
that the purpose of these assignments was simple. They were designed to get us to the point of
being able to sit down at anytime, anywhere and write something without waiting
for inspiration, the right mood, or the Muse to drop by. “You must learn to write spontaneously, without
preconceived ideas, without hesitation.
When you have mastered the ability to do this, you will become a
writer.”
While many years have gone by, I have never
forgotten this experience. She was right.
To be able to sit down, pull up a chair and start writing is the ticket.
Guest Blogger Bio
I was
raised in the small rural town of Amelia, Ohio, about twenty five miles out of
Cincinnati. My younger brother and sister and I had a pony, a horse, many great
dogs and a couple of motorcycles. We raised a lot of hell. My father served in
The Big One at 17 and, after riding a motorcycle around Europe,
became a lawyer and later a judge. My mother worked as a homemaker and nurse, a
skill she had to use a lot with all of the injuries my siblings and I subjected
ourselves and one another to.
I
wrote my first mystery story when I was in the fourth grade. It was about a kid a
lot like me who heard strange noises coming from the attic and became convinced
that the attic was haunted. Eventually, the mystery was solved when she
investigated and found a squirrel eating nuts in a dark corner. It wasn't a
terribly exciting conclusion, but my teacher gave me an A anyway.
As a
teenager I worked at a lot of different jobs. I worked at a gift shop in
Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which is a frequent locale in my books. I was a swimming
instructor and a lifeguard where my primary goal was to never get wet. I did a
stint in a stuffed animal gift shop at the Kings Island amusement park where I
actually sort of met the Partridge Family when they shot an episode there.
After graduating from high school, I went on to attend Maryville College in
Maryville, Tennessee, a stone's throw from the Great Smoky Mountains. There was
some more hell raising at college and I made some very good friends and
occasionally we have our own private reunions.
In
high school and college, I played basketball and I graduated from Maryville
College with a degree in Phys Ed. I went on to teach at Amelia Junior High, the
same junior high that I had attended. There was something a little weird about
passing by my old school locker every day when I walked down the hall as a
teacher. Plus, some of the teachers I'd had back when I was in junior high were
still working when I started to teach. Some of them had been none too fond of
me as a student and I don't think they were much fonder of me as a teacher! I
coached the girls' basketball and volleyball teams which was the best part of
my job.
In my
late 20's, I moved to the West Coast to get a broader perspective on life or
something like that. I ended up working in retail security, or loss prevention,
as it is now known, at an upscale Northwest retailer. I kept getting promoted
and with each promotion, the job became less and less fun. It was a lot more
fun catching shoplifters than sitting in endless meetings and crunching
budgets. After ten years of that, I quit to try my hand at some serious
writing. I wrote two books of fiction (not mysteries), Benny's World and
Kippo's World, as well as a book of not-especially-reverent poetry called A
Girl's Guide to God and numerous short stories, articles and poems which have
appeared in The Sonora Review, The Quarterly, Word of Mouth, Blue Stocking and
8-Track Mind.
After
that, it was time to go back to work. I got my private investigator's license
and hung out my shingle. At first, I took a lot of the cheaters cases. It
seemed to me that if a guy thought his woman was cheating, he was usually
wrong. On the other hand, if a woman thought her guy was cheating, she was
almost always right. Eventually, I moved on to take mostly criminal defense
investigation work which often involved trying to figure out what the client
did and didn't do and then minimize the damage of what they usually did do.
There were so many crazy ways that people could get themselves in trouble. In
one case, the attorney I was working for represented a wife who had gotten so
enraged about all of the time and affection her husband lavished on his pet
iguana that she shot the poor iguana and killed it. The husband was furious and
wanted the district attorney to press charges. The wife was eventually charged
with reckless endangerment and took a pretty sweet deal because even the DA
felt sorry for the fact that she was married to such a schmuck.
It was
an interesting ten years. Somewhere in this time period, I began to write the
Kim Claypoole Mystery Series, which was a great distraction and a lot of fun. I
liked the idea of having many of the same characters appear in each book. So
here I am now, working on the fifth book in the series. I hope you’ll come
along for the adventures of Kim Claypoole.
Website: www.jeanerhardt.com/
Book:
Fascinating interview, Jean. I bet that all of your interesting and unusual life experiences enriched your novel. Thanks for sharing!
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