Musings about authors

I once knew a man involved with books who delighted in telling you about all the famous writers he'd met--well, actually I've known several of those. But this one seemed to always say, "When I rode in an elevator with . . . . " and name someone famous. (I actually once rode in an elevator with James Garner, told him I was a fan, and he shook my hand and said, "Well, bless your heart." I also once rode in an elevator with Tom Sellick, but it was early morning and he looked pretty forbidding, so I didn' speak--neither did anyone else.) But this is sort of that kind of column--a couple of authors I've encountered one way or another, and a comment on authors.
A couple of years ago J. A. Jance was in town for an evening program. At the time she was probably my favorite mystery writer (she does the J. P. Beaumont series set in Seattle and the Joanna Brady series set in Arizona, and among other things I admire her ability to go from one to the other--but both are great reading.) The host of the evening, knowing I was a fan, invited me to meet her for a glass of tea in the late afternoon--he was giving her an early Mexican dinner. I tried not to gush, just to say I admired her work a lot, and I was trying to wrote mysteries and did she have any advice. She said something to the effect of, "Well, we all know how you do that. You put yourself in that chair in front of the keyboard and you stay there." I felt dismissed, insignificant, stupid--you name it. Later at the performance I learned that her son-in-law was dying half a continent away while I sat there blathering like an idiot about wanting to write. And in spite her family situation she gave a witty, charming interview onstage that night. So I don't hold it against her at all, and I still love her books.
But her quick comment was all wrong. Some people can sit at the computer all day every day and never turn out a publishable work. I've known that since I taught freshman English--some people can write, others can't. And mysteries are a whole different thing. In the not quite a year that I've belonged to Sisters in Crime I've learned an incredible amount about plotting mysteries, character, marketing, selling to an agent, a thousand different aspects that I never learned when I had an agent happily marketing western historical fiction for me. There are women in the Guppies (Going to be Published) group who have four, five, and six unpublished manuscripts, have been working on them for years. They obviously put their butts in the chair and the hands on the keyboard a lot but so far to no avail. I don't know that I have that patience. I want to sell the one I've completed. That will encourage me to move on to others. But I'm so impressed with the helpful spirit, the willingness to offer advice and to cheer for victories, commiserate over rejections, of Sisters in Crime and its sub-groups.
I've never met Sara Paretsky, another of my mystery writer heroes and a founder of Sisters in Crime. Her heroine, V. I. Warshawski, is a pretty hard-boiled p.i. in Chicago, so the setting appeals to me. Maybe a year ago I read Paretsky's nonfiction Writing in an Age of Silence and was so impressed by parts of it that I tracked her down on the internet and sent an email--and got back the most gracious personal reply. Paretsky contributes to a blog that I follow--The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Mystery Writers--and once when she posted something about Chicago's South Side, I left a comment about how it resonated with me as a child of the South Side (though V. I.'s South Side is Calumet City, far south of where I grew up). Once again, I got a graciou response.
So I guess my point here is that in general seasoned successful writers aren't territorial, afraid of competition. They're more than willing to reach out and help beginners, to encoruage, to give advice. And that's comforting. I'd like to meet J. A. Jance again, under better circumstances.
Meanwhile, tonight I'm not going to put my fingers to the keyboard. It's Friday night, and I've been working frantically all week, and I'm going to read a good mystery.