Ah, summer. Relaxing days, time to get lots of writing done, right? Well, not if you're a mom. June is a string of field trips, end of school year sports days and parties and Mom has to be there at most of them. Then school's over and the kids are home. So, Mom isn't getting a whole lot done.

I'm taking a break from blogging and our monthly author chats for the summer so I can fit a little work in there. But I plan to be back at 'er come September with a forum on juggling parenthood and writing. One of my guests on that forum will be Cori Howard. Cori, a Vancouver based journalist, writer and editor, has started up a series of writing courses for moms who are, as Cori puts it, "interested in learning how to translate their personal experience with motherhood into words." The classes are held at coffee shops in Vancouver and Toronto, and will also be offered online this fall.

"What I've found most interesting is the level of emotion in the classes," Cori told me. "There are a lot of tears and my students have told me repeatedly how therapeutic they find writing about their experiences. So in addition to fostering a daily (or weekly) writing practise that many moms can't figure out how to start on their own, the classes really help mothers feel less isolated and alone."

It's a terrific idea. For more on this program, check out www.themomoirproject.com.

This year's Symposium on the Book at SFU is titled "From Thrillers to True Crime: Inside the Art and Craft of Crime Writing" and tackles the differences in approach between writing literary and writing thriller/crime fiction.

Suspense/thriller writer Susanna Kearsley (The Winter Sea) was my guest on my forum Gail's Kitchen in May to talk about just this issue. Here's part of our conversation:

Gail: How close do you stick to the classic five act mystery/suspense/thriller structure? From what you told us during the conversation at the UBC forum, your approach to writing seems “literary” in the sense that the project evolves for you and your process is less structured than much of the advice you find in writing guides. I found this a bit of a relief as, though I do plan and outline, my own writing process is “organic.” I wonder if you could talk a little about your approach to planning out plot. How much is planned? How much is surprise for you?

Susanna: When I'm starting a new book I start with a binder (which probably has more to do with my being an engineer's daughter than anything else) and I put down the date that I start, and I have a sort of "writing log" that I fill in each day to keep my honest -- it's easy sometimes to let things slip and go a few days without writing, but the log won't lie! It also helps to give me a sense of progress, even if I've only done a paragraph or two that day because the kids were sick, or I was tired or on tour.

In the binder I also have a section for characters, but that stays mostly empty except for their names. I've never been good at writing character studies. I tend to meet my characters like strangers at a party, and I learn about them as I go along. They do their own thing, for the most part, and that makes the writing fun.

I also have a section I call "Plotting", but again this isn't very structured. It's where I keep all those scenes and stray ideas that I have when I'm on trains or in the bathtub! I'm not sure where they'll fit in, or if they will at all, but at least in the binder they don't get lost.

And I have a place to write down things I need to check, and things that change as I am writing that I'll have to fix in second draft.

The rest of the binder is where I keep pages of research, and notes.

And that's it.

I just sit down and start, and the characters move, and I see what they do and I hear what they say, like I'm watching a movie. And then I just write it all down. Sometimes I have a sense of where I'd like to move them, or of what scene might come next, but mostly I just try to let them go.

For example, in the book I'm writing now, I know the ending that I want, but I have no idea how I'm going to get there. I'll just have to wait and see.

*******

For more of our conversation, go to: Gail's Kitchen

For more on Susanna and her new book The Winter Sea, go to: http://www.susannakearsley.com

For more on The Symposium on the Book, go to: www.ccsp.sfu.ca/pubworks/symposium+book.html