“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”. Hemingway.
A bit harsh, but there are days in a writer’s life when this is absolutely how it feels. Hemingway knew.
“Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.” This also rings true for the Sherlock Holmes author, where Honor is practically another character in the story.
Writing is not a cozy activity like reading is. Writing transforms the author like intense physical training does the prima ballerina. Writing can involve flashes of brilliant ideas, yet as Picasso said, “Inspiration has to find one working.” A writer’s muscle comes through hard and consistent work. A writer’s strength comes through the dissection of their own life, and without anesthesia.
Some say that artists can sift the world through their talents and present it back to the world in a way that enlightens and wakes people up. Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Picasso’s Guernica, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now certainly did that. A talent very much needed today. Writers hone the ability to communicate on a scalpel edge every day we put pen to paper, our fingers on a keyboard, or capture our voices in a recording. Sometimes it is we who need that shake-up.
Writing The Keys of Death led me to re-experience the horror of surviving my husband’s sudden death. I followed the treacherous path through “the Valley of the Shadow of Death”. Like Dr Watson, I changed names, places, and even how he died. But I knew the gut-wrenching trauma and the landlady of No. 221B Baker Street carried it for me.
The book was an attempt to sketch out some of Mrs Hudson’s life, to give it form, to show how she fit into her family and her times. How did she meet Sherlock Holmes, and what was the basis for their enduring friendship?
As usual, I was told, “You can’t do that!” Since this was my third Sherlock Holmes novel, I took this criticism as confirmation I was on the right track. As a woman author of Sherlock Holmes, of course, I have a different perspective from those mostly men who write pastiche. I persisted and revised through the tough days and was led to research and awakenings, new plot themes, additional characters, and eventually a book that was worthy of the grand family of Sherlock Holmes readers.
About characterization Hemingway said, “Don’t let yourself slip and get any perfect characters… keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols.”
Harder to do when you’re writing about a man who is a legend. Yet, he comes out alright as long as I write Sherlock Holmes as a living, breathing man, like Arthur Conan Doyle writing about his teacher, the great Dr Joseph Bell.
“The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn…”
Quotes by Ernest Hemingway.
Gretchen Altabef is an award-winning author of new Sherlock Holmes stories. THESE SCATTERED HOUSES brings Holmes to New York during his ‘great hiatus’. REMARKABLE POWER OF STIMULUS follows in London. During the investigation of a gruesome murder, Sherlock seizes a second chance with the woman, and they marry in anarchist-ridden Paris. The trilogy continues with FIVE MILES OF COUNTRY. Holmes is called in by Thomas Edison to solve a murder in his premier film studio, and Mrs Irene Adler-Holmes triumphs on Broadway. THE KEYS OF DEATH is a genesis story of 221B Baker Street and its inhabitants, as told by Mrs Hudson. Sherlock Holmes FAR & WIDE, nine stories and one play, including the award-winning, “Sir Arthur and the Time Machine”.
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