Writing Rule to Ignore #1: Don’t switch points of view (POV, in the trade) except between chapters.

Right now, I’m deep in the bowels of a mystery novel I’m working on, working to stay focused on getting to “The End” in a few weeks. As other writers will recognize, that’s precisely the time that my mind wanders to the other projects I’d much rather be writing. I’m holding them all at bay until I’ve conquered the muddles in this book, but I am letting myself think in odd moments about the ones I’d rather be writing.

It’s one of those that has me thinking about multiple points of view. The conventional wisdom is it’s too hard for readers to follow changes in whose perspectives they’re hearing. Best to stick with a protagonist, the character the reader has come to know, and whose reactions are at least somewhat predictable.

The problems with that are that telling a story in only one voice, or one voice for long, formally defined sections can hamper the telling, restrict the color, and make the whole thing too…well, predictable.

I just read and recommend a charming Jane Austen homage of a novel, The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine, that cheerfully thumbs its nose at the POV rule much as Jane herself would have if it had been articulated in her day. Not only that, but the narrator comments throughout on the characters’ foibles. The author sometimes carries out this sleight of hand within a single sentence, as if the all-knowing storyteller was spinning around the room, reading minds, feeling reactions, overhearing murmurs, and passing them along to us so we’d have a deeply multi-dimensional and illuminating experience.

I didn’t get lost or confused for a minute. I, who grew up on Jane Austen and have a novel by Anthony Trollope on my desk right now, am wiggling in my chair with the need to try my hand at it for my next book.

I just spent a perfect few days in Manhattan. I was born in Manhattan and grew up on the East Coast. California’s a wonderful place and I have too many wonderful relatives and friends here to be thinking about a move back to my old haunts. But my visit reminded me of things I love:

The sudden bursting of new life in late April or early May when the winter has been cold, and snow and ice have put plants into hibernation. When higher temperatures do arrive to stay, all this pent-up energy explodes into tender green shoots and leaves, fruit blossoms, azaleas, daffodils and tulips, flowering bushes and tiny ground covers.  It’s much more dramatic than my experience of northern California, where the flowering plants unfold in an orderly progression over a longer stretch of time.

The staggering amount of art that entices me into museums, galleries, and special events. I have a favorite Rembrandt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a self-portrait from middle age, the lips curled in self-disgust, bags under the eyes, receding hair. The eyes have that uncanny trick of following you wherever you are in the gallery. I remember it from my early childhood, and it speaks to me like a (disillusioned) family member. I stop by to tell him to cheer up – after all, he’s famous! – every time I’m in the city.

The public transit system. I lived in New York during the decline in the late 1960s, when the subway cars were filthy, the buses decrepit, Central Park dangerous. Several mayors helped pull the city out of its slump. One vast improvement was the subway. They traded up to shiny metal cars that couldn’t be tagged, insides that could be hosed (or something), and washed the cars at the end of the runs. Today, the cars are clean, well-lit, and well-marked as to destinations. The buses I took were in good condition, plied the streets with good grace and ran often and on time. Central Park was filled with walkers, runners, bicyclists, strollers, pedi-cabs and horse-drawn carriages, everyone relishing the coming of spring. The Park itself was groomed and green.

The theater district, also cleaned up from its rather scruffy days and maybe too commercial, but still…and the palpable excitement at 7:30 as theatergoers converge on the cross streets in the district to go to plays at venerable old theaters.

Does this have anything to do with writing, you might be asking? Most definitely. My second Dani O’Rourke mystery takes place partly in Manhattan, and my third in a New England college town at this time of year.

I was packing for a trip recently and began picking through the piles of books I’ve bought at book events, or on the recommendation of reviewers, or because another writer I respect said the author nailed some particular aspect of fiction writing. The stacks and shelves of unread books are getting larger, I realize, and my reading time is shrinking.

As I weighed which books to stuff into my bag, I wondered why that was. Several answers come to mind. The first echoes something Dennis Lehane, I think, said in an interview in The Strand. When we’re in the middle of writing our own book, we are wary of unconsciously mimicing the voice of another writer. For me, that means modern, female voices, independent women with (I hope) some wit. But I could also seize another contemporary author’s clever plot point as the solution to a problem and be reluctant to abandon it in favor of doing my own hard work, I guess. I haven’t yet been tempted, but the mind under stress has been known to fool itself, and I’d just as soon not chance it.

A second reason is that inside me lives a snotty alter ego, what a therapist friend calls “the critic,” who would be happy to point out, when I’m at a low point, that whatever writer I’m reading is a hell of a lot better, more successful, critically accepted than I am or ever will be. And that is not much of a motivator. Best to wear blinders while I’m bashing away at my computer, and avoid insidious comparisons with some of the fabulous authors on my TBR stacks.

The third reason I am reading less is the simplest: I’m writing more. My goal is to write six days a week, and to push myself to three or four pages of decent material at a time. When I get lazy, I remind myself I quit a perfectly good day job that paid quite well for a much simpler lifestyle and the luxury of taking on this third career.

So, when I packed my bag, being in the midst of the third Dani novel, I brought along British author Michael Jeck’s medieval mystery The Tournament of Blood, Mark Mills’ WWII thriller, The Information Officer, and The Truth-Teller’s Lie, a psychological thriller by another Brit, Sophie Hannah. Until Dani puts on a wimple and turns into a spy or a psychopath, I won’t be distracted.