Finsbury revisited.

You wait years to write Finsbury the Ferret's next appearance in the Swithin chronicles, and it's done in a day's work. (That's about the same anticipation-to-experience ratio as a ride at Disney World.) Of course, it'll be tweaked and refined many times, but the guts of the scene is substantially in place. The ferret was rude about Oliver's driving, too.

Unduly noted.

In the long run-up to actually writing the novel, I was making random notes of the thoughts and ideas that occurred to me. The single Word file containing these notes grew over the years to the length of a novella. Now, as I begin each chapter, I scour this file for facts or reminders or snippets of pre-written dialog that are going to be needed, and as I find them, I move them into the file for that new chapter. As you can imagine, for the first few chapters, that was quite a task. It's just about the one aspect that gets easier as you go on, because each time there are fewer notes remaining to be accommodated.

Of course, when I'm finished, there'll be stuff left over that will never be used: scenes I decided to drop, avenues I didn't explore, points that didn't fit in anywhere. And inevitably, there's some material that seems to have no relevance at all -- at least,  over the years, I've completely forgotten why I made the notes in the first place.

Pride of place at the moment goes to a list of U.S. states in which oral sex is still illegal. (I say "still," but that implies that some politician may yet find the nerve to modernize these archaic laws that are still on the books, when we all know such a move would clash with the necessary piety he or she needs to fake to win re-election. Keep your head down, as they say.)

I have no idea why I thought I'd need this information, but for those who want to avoid arrest, they're Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Washington D.C. (Odd that it didn't come up in Clinton's impeachment.)

However, according to my notes, even this pales beside some other state laws. Yes, state -- these aren't the peculiarities of some rural community, such as Connorsville, Wisconsin, where it's illegal for a man to shoot off a gun when his female partner is having an orgasm.

In Virginia. for example, it's against the law to have sex with the lights on. And if you want to make love in neighboring Washington, D.C. -- and who wouldn't? -- you can only do so legally if you adopt the so-called missionary position*. Lends a whole new meaning to "inside the Beltway." Capital.

*That's when two people sleep with a missionary between them. Joke.

Strangers in the night.

Okay, into Chapter 16 and I've come to the part that I love and dread -- the ritual appearance of Finsbury the Ferret.

My amateur detective, Oliver Swithin, is a children's book writer and, like Conan Doyle before him, he's created a fictional character that he's come to detest. Finsbury crept into Oliver's "Railway Mice" books by mistake, crapped, and refuse to creep out again or indeed clean up after himself. He's the embodiment of all that's vile, which is why he became so popular, among Oliver's adult readers as well. (He's also popular among my readers. Truly.)

Now I prefer to leave most of his evil ways to the readers' imagination. That's largely because anything I come up with is sure to leave them wanting -- I don't do despicable well, despite what my wife will tell you. But even this tip of the iceberg, this glimpse of the dark soul of the beast, is a challenge.

In previous books, Finsbury has appeared in brief extracts from Oliver's stories. This time, I have him popping up in a dream, telling his own creator a few home truths about his physique, his abilities as a lover . . . and conducting a Socratic dialogue about one key aspect of the mystery that Oliver's trying to solve.

I did this once before, and my editor at the time threw her hands up in horror, so it was cut. But I emphasize, this isn't supposed to be "woo-woo"; there's no supernatural delivery of new information. It's just an entertaining way to present Oliver's thought processes, as he belatedly makes connections between the clues that are already plainly on the table. And in this case, he has his reasons for being in denial while conscious.

They say as soon as you know you're dreaming, you wake up. My problem is, how long can you have a conversation with a pot-smoking, Blackberry-using, foul-mouthed talking ferret and not suspect that it's all a dream? (Go ask Alice.)

The (rather old) picture shows me at a book signing, with Diane Plumley's Houdini standing in for Finsbury.

A word from the Master.

Looking online to check Wodehouse's final score for the last entry, I found this superb quote, not from his fiction, but from the introduction to Summer Lightning:

A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained "all the old Wodehouse characters under different names." He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha; but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

(Incidentally, the picture is the cover of the audiobook -- as an interpreter of Wodehouse, Martin Jarvis is the ne plus ultra.)

The Birds.

One of the best books I ever read on writing -- and I know many people would agree -- is Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It gets its title from this anecdote, which I'm quoting in full from the jacket:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

Quite apart from the eerie relevance of this situation to Primus (project due tomorrow, barely touched), it does capture the plodding, slow-motion experience of getting the next book done. Getting any book done, I imagine. For too long, I had barely started, living with my copious notes and plans, but having less than a chapter of finished text, ducking that "when's the next book due out?" question -- even ducking the "are you writing?" question. Feeling like a fraud for even describing myself as a mystery writer, in fact. But you knuckle down. You have to. No short cuts. No quick fixes. No instant gratification or overnight success.

Words, paragraphs, pages are easy, but you still pat yourself on the back for those 3,000 word days (more for time management than creativity) even if you cut half of them during the next day's edit. Chapters, each one a new Word file in the folder, are more of a cause for celebration. Then you look up and realize that, bird by bird, you've finally got something to show for your ambitions -- I'm now about 80% into This Private Plot -- and like a great fractal, you're within reach of opening up not just a new file, but a new folder for the next book.

P.G.Wodehouse wrote 96 books. Ruth Rendell's nearly up to 70. This is my fourth. Sigh. Mind you, there was a time when even one seemed a bird as fabulous as a roc or a phoenix. As the saying goes, apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Hmm, maybe I'll give that advice to Primus -- he took the "bird by bird" story too personally.

Fifteen down.

Just finished Chapter 15. At about four o'clock in the morning. Past 95,000 words and rounding the curve before the 100,000 milestone. Salvaged a couple of good lines from the deleted encounter with the village policeman and used them for a different scene.

(I didn't start writing till late. The boys were up well past their bedtime, because my watch had stopped. Oddly, I didn't notice for several hours that time seemed to have paused at 6:45 p.m.)

Before eight o'clock this morning, Tertius wakes me to complain that there's no milk for his breakfast cereal. I suggest he ask his one of his brothers to fetch a new carton from the basement fridge and bury my head under the pillow. Thirty seconds later, he's back, wailing about their noncooperation. I guess I forgot to remind him to ask "nicely."

And so the day begins. . .

Black and white and read.

Talking of metaphors for black and white, for last year's "author's tea" at Midland Elementary, ten-year-old Primus wrote a description of the night. It contained a line that described the stars blazing like diamonds in a sky that was as black as coal.

And it occurred to him that both substances, diamond and coal, which he had selected because of their extreme contrasts of brightness and darkness, are actually variant forms of the same element, our prime constituent carbon.

Now I could probably reflect for hours on the deeper implications of that observation and its Manichean relevance to human nature and the cosmos and whatever lies beyond, but I have to go food shopping with all three boys in tow, because the mem-sahib has skipped town for the weekend. And anyway, it makes my head hurt. So feel free to take it and run with it.

Perfection. You can't beat it.

Back in Chapter 1 of the novel, I was scrabbling around for a metaphor for conspicuousness. I came across a great line (attribution lost in the mists of fame): "She stood out like a green tube top in Church."

And there was no point trying to invent anything better than that, because there is nothing better. There couldn't be.

Sometimes you meet perfect phrases like that. There was, and probably is, a punk rocker who took the name "Elvis Hitler." Best punk name ever. Best punk name possible.

And there was, and still is, a Mexican cafe (and "speakeasy") on Columbus Avenue called "Senor Swanky's." An unbeatable ironic nod to the lost night life of 40s and 50s Manhattan, when Ricky Ricardo might have been leading the band while Walter Winchell took notes at a nearby table.

So I eventually came up with something that stands out "like a polar bear in a nunnery." By no means the best paradigm for black and white, but I think there's some compensating humor, first in the sheer surrealism of the situation and then in the isolation of the color contrast, which in real life would be rather down the list of the priorities competing for the attention of the participants. (Boy, there's nothing so unfunny as trying to figure out what makes something funny.)

The Qualm Strikes Back.

That inner voice just told me the episode with the village policeman wasn't necessary. So that's 1,200 words out. He won't mind -- it gives him less to do.

The Curse of the Pushy Qualm.

I'm hearing voices in my head. It's my inner editor, who didn't like my idea for a funny scene.

I've discovered that if I have a qualm, it's fatal to ignore it or it comes back and bites me on the bottom. Appeasement doesn't work -- if part of my brain manages to shout louder than my smugness and tell me the idea sucks, I ignore it at my peril. So I had to dump my carefully prepared whimsy and come up with something better. Quite right, too.

Here's what we lost. I had Oliver doing some outdoor surveillance in the middle of the night. To protect his eyeglasses in case of attack, he's wearing a diver's face mask, and he's disguising his conspicuous blond hair with a dark wetsuit hood found with the mask. After a brief skirmish with another character, which he loses, he ends up sitting in a drainage ditch in two inches of water, clutching a snapped-off walking stick that could resemble a snorkel. Opportunity for the other character to make some finely-honed, hilarious, sarcastic comment, which I couldn't think of, about his choosing an odd time and place to practice skin-diving.

Yeah, too contrived. Thanks, qualm. I owe you.