Plan B

by Betty Hechtman

Even though SILENCE OF THE LAMB’S WOOL is the eleventh book I’ve written, I still hit the same wall.  There I was sitting down at my computer, synopsis in hand, expecting to start banging away at the keys and have the book pour out.  Not exactly.  I’d type a few words and stop.  Maybe a whole paragraph even and then backspace it all out.  I tried again and again, but every sentence seemed to turn into a dead end street.  Eternity seemed to pass as I sat there willing myself to come up with the beginning.

And then panic ensued.  If I couldn’t even do the first page, how could I write a whole book?  I always seem to forget that this happened before, like with almost every book.  Luckily I did remember I had a Plan B.

It called for me to abandon the computer and head for the kitchen with a yellow legal pad and my favorite kind of pen, a Sharpie fine point. A cup of coffee helps too.  Suddenly there was no pressure.  No blank screen staring at me.  And then as if by magic the words started to come and I began to hand write them all down.  There were stops and starts and lots of arrows pointing to where things continue, and scribbles in the margins, but I turned out a lot of pages.  Could it be there is a special connection between my imagination and my right hand?  I don’t know, but all I can say is thank heavens it works.

It might come from a practice I started a long time ago.  In the early 90s THE creative advice book was The Artist’s Way.  One of the exercises was doing something called morning pages.  I think it was supposed to be three pages and you were just supposed to write more or less a stream of consciousness without any inner editor telling you that what you were writing might stink.  Not one to follow rules, I changed it to become sort of a mixture of a diary, an inner conversation, notes on dreams, story ideas and whatever else was on my mind.  Writing three pages was easy, stopping at three pages was hard.  I have boxes and boxes of assorted notebooks of all those pages.

It has become a habit and I still do it first thing every morning.

But back to the yellow legal pad and pen.  It worked like it has before.  I had a whole pad filled before I went back to the computer.  Of course, since my pen tends to race over the page, my handwriting suffers i.e. a lot of it was unreadable even to me the person who wrote it.  It doesn’t really matter because I have found that while I bring the pad full of pages back to the computer.  I almost never look at them.  By then it is all in my head.

I don’t even notice the blank screen anymore.  I am too lost in the story.

Finally, finally as I’m starting another book I think I have figured it out.  Don’t wast time trying to start out on the computer.  Let Plan B become Plan A.  Try it.  It might work for you.

About the Author:

SILENCE OF THE LAMB’S WOOL is the second book in the national bestselling Yarn Retreat series that features dessert chef Casey Feldstein who puts on yarn retreats at a slightly sinister hotel and conference center on California’s Monterey peninsula.  Betty Hechtman also writes the national bestselling Crochet mystery series.  All books in both series include patterns and recipes. She says it is like a dream come true to be able mix her love of mystery with her love of making things.  She grew up in Chicago and has a degree in Fine Art.  In addition she has studied everything from improv comedy to magic.  She has written newspaper and magazine pieces, short stories and scripts.  She lives in Southern California and Chicago and has yarn stashes in both cities.

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Dessert chef Casey Feldstein has learned one end of a knitting needle from the other after inheriting her aunt’s yarn retreat business, but a murder threatens to unravel her latest event . . .

Casey’s running a new retreat called “From Sheep to Shawl” at a resort on the atmospheric Monterey Peninsula. Participants will learn about sheepshearing, fixing up the fleece, and spinning, and will eventually knit a lovely shawl.

Nicole Welton has been hired to teach the fleece-to-fiber portion of the retreat. She’s an expert spinner, and her small shop in Cadbury by the Sea houses a beautiful assortment of spinning wheels and drop spindles. But when the new teacher fails to show up for class and is found lying dead on the boardwalk, it leaves everyone’s nerves frayed.

Now Casey has to knit together clues faster than she can count stitches before someone else at the retreat gets dropped . . .

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Jennifer’s Review of Silence of the Lamb’s Wool

Review (4.25 Stars): Casey Feldstein runs Yarn2Go, a business that holds idyllic retreats for knitters in the beautiful town of Cadbury by the Sea.  In the second installment of the series, Casey is holding a bigger retreat for guests focusing on taking wool from a sheep and following the process of making it into a shawl.  The teacher that is supposed to help Casey with this retreat is found dead of an apparent suicide and Casey is stuck trying to figure out what to do for her 20 guests.  When things don’t start to add up for the teacher’s death, Casey decides to use her investigating skills again to find out whether it was actually suicide or murder.

Silence of the Lamb’s Wool is a great little mystery where the secondary characters are just as fun as the main character.  Casey is slowly finding her way in organizing yarn retreats after inheriting her aunt’s business and I love that she doesn’t have everything together like some characters.  She is very sweet and has no idea what she wants to do with her life and that is one of the reasons I like this character.  I also like the members of her yarn retreats, that we first met in Yarn to Go.  We spend more time with these characters in this book, I love each of their personalities.  The mystery in Silence of the Lamb’s Wool is very entertaining and I like that we learn more about knitting as the book progresses.  I’m not a knitter but after reading Casey’s adventures in the world of knitting, I want to pick up a couple of knitting needles and give it a try.  This is a great series and I’m looking forward to reading more adventures with Casey and her knitting group in the future.