Clicking Our Heels: Shadowing Any Writer - Dead or Alive!

Clicking Our Heels: Shadowing Any Writer – Dead or Alive!

The Stiletto Gang members admire each other, but for the fun of it, we all explained what writer (dead or alive) we’d want to shadow and why.

Judy Penz Sheluk: Truman Capote when he was researching In Cold Blood. It was a different time, before 24/7 news cycles, and he paved the way for true crime. I’ve seen the movie Capote a dozen times.

T.K. Thorne: Shakespeare, to plum the mysteries of his genius.

Bethany Maines: James Patterson maybe. Just to see his marketing machine work. But in general, writing is pretty dang boring. I think possibly “shadowing a writer” would turn out to be code for staring at them while they type.

Shari Randall: Agatha Christie, of course! I’d love to ask her for plotting tips and I imagine she’d always stop writing at tea time, just like I do.

A.B. Plum: Jane Austen strikes me as a woman who wrote despite the obstacles society put in her way. Her acerbic view of her society spurs me to write about family and place and love.

Dru Ann Love: Linda Castillo. She writes about a group of people that I would never think would be as evil and dangerous and she makes it believable.

Linda Rodriguez: Virginia Woolf would be my choice because she wrote groundbreaking novels, crystalline nonfiction, and wickedly funny letters and diaries and she knew all of the most fascinating people of the time (though she and her husband were the most fascinating of all of them).

J.M. Phillippe: Oooh. Probably Shakespeare so I can finally put the debate about if he was real (and really wrote everything he is attributed to writing) to rest.

Juliana Aragon Fatula: When I was a teenager, Pearl S. Buck made me fall in love with Asian Culture, people, land, language. I would love to tell her how much her writing inspired me and led me to believe a woman could write and be published.

Sparkle Abbey:

Mary Lee Woods: This question is so difficult! First, dead writers. I’d love to shadow Agatha Christie and I’d love to have a conversation with Mark Twain. Such unique views of the world and their views clearly influenced the stories they told. Secondly, living writers. I’d love to spend a day shadowing Nora Roberts. She seems to have so many stories in her head and works on multiple projects at one time. How does she do it? I have many stoires in my head, but the ability to work on them at the same time escapes me. I suspect it comes down to a brilliant brain, a love for storytelling, and a solid work ethic. But… if there’s a secret…I’d love to know what it is!

Anita Carter: That’s hard. Can I pick two? Lisa Gardner because I struggle with plotting. She’s a master at it, and I’d love to know her process. And Agatha Christie. From my understanding she’d start with the murder, then move to the suspects. It’s very similar to how I work, but I know there are ways I could improve my process.

Kay Kendall: Shakespeare. What a fertile mind he had.

Debra H. Goldstein: Anne George. Not only was she a wonderful humorous Agatha award winning mystery writer and the Alabama poet laureate, she wrote one of my favorite literary works, This One and Magic Life. She also was generous with her time bringing the beauty of words and writing to children.