by Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

One of the duties of the Piedmont Laureate is to conduct workshops for other writers in the area. I’ll be doing just that in the months ahead as there are few things I love better than working with other writers and talking about writing. But with the world of writing in flux, and career trajectories no longer predictable, much less known, it’s time to look at exactly what these workshops should entail.

I’d like your help with that.

With that in mind, if you are a writer of any kind – fiction, non-fiction, short form or long – what kind of workshops centered around writing would you be most likely to attend? What would be most useful to you either personally or professionally? Is there a specific aspect about the craft of writing you would find most useful, or are you more interested in exploring outlets for your writing? While I do not conduct workshops on how to get published – that question is unanswerable at the present – any other aspect of writing is a possibility. Please use the Comments section below to share your thoughts.

In addition to your ideas, I have several themes in mind for potential workshops, but I am reluctant to propose any that would not find an audience. If you are a writer reading this, or even someone thinking of dipping their toe into writing, can you do me a favor and give me your thoughts or your thoughts on whether any of the following themes appeal to you? Any feedback would be much appreciated:

The Role of Writing in Your Life

Journaling, blogging, storytelling in business, the art of letters, and why writing matters to your life.

Why Do You Write?

A workshop to help writers understand what compels them to write, what they want to get out of their writing, and what writing genres and outlets are most suited for them, given their specific goals.

The Mysterious Appeal of Crime Fiction

Why do people love mysteries so much? Learn what elements go into commercial mysteries/crime fiction these days and join in a discussion in where we go from here.

People, Places & Plots

The elements of a ripping good tale and how to make them your own.

Feeding the Muse

How to find, tap into, and hold onto sources of inspiration in the modern world.

Structuring a Book for Today’s Readers

How to structure and outline a book that appeals to audiences raised on television and motion pictures.

Finding Your Voice

What makes your writing unique? How to discover and showcase your author’s voice.

Thanks for any input you can give! And if you want to be notified of available workshops once we create a final schedule, please sign up for Piedmont Laureate workshop notifications here. You will be asked to confirm your subscription using the email address you provide and your information will not be used for any other purpose. Thanks!

Katy

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

This past week, socked under by a killer virus that would not abate, I sought refuge in reading true crime in front of the fire. I do not read just any true crime book that hits the racks, mind you, and you should not either. A large percentage of them consist of breathless prose highlighting the more lurid aspects of a crime, much like the detective magazines of (not-so-) old. But I do read good true crime because of the amazing psychological insights into human behavior that thoughtful reporting on a case can provide. This means I primarily read (or re-read) Ann Rule, who, until her death last year, stood head and shoulders above all other true crime writers. I know of no one else who has even come close to Rule’s ability to illuminate the cause and effects of aberrant behavior, in part because times have changed. The need to rush a manuscript to market—and be the first to offer a book on a major crime already well-publicized by other media outlets—means that few publishers are willing to wait until the case has wound its way through the courts. Tracking a non-fiction story over years is also exhausting and life-consuming, which may have been why Rule switched to short-form crime reporting toward the end of her life. But at her best, Ann Rule had an amazing capacity to let the psychological themes of a case emerge as she examined a real life tragedy, traced its inception by backtracking to motive, then detailed what happened during the trial. She always made sure to report what happened to the victim’s families, gave investigators and prosecutors their due, and followed up in the years after the verdict to see whether the punishment imposed had changed the perpetrator (answer: rarely, if ever). Each of her in-depth books on a case represented a microcosm of human behavior, invariably showcasing the best and the worst in people.

This past week, I was rereading Everything She Ever Wanted, one of Rule’s best. This is a true story of a narcissist whose firm belief that she was the only one in the world that mattered ended up shattering the lives of those unfortunate enough to have been a part of hers. Whether it was her own child, her sibling, a spouse, or an in-law – no one’s needs mattered but her own and, for fifty years, she stopped at nothing to get exactly what she wanted. It’s the kind of story that would not be believed if put into a fiction book, the tale of a would-be Southern Belle unstoppable in her desires and adept at manipulating others to do her dirty work for her. But the amazing thing to me was that this woman almost always overreached and got caught—yet somehow managed to evade punishment and continue her path of destruction. By the time she was sent to prison and had essentially aged out of trading on looks and sexual promises, she had managed to orchestrate the deaths of her in-laws (by their own son), attempted to poison her grand in-laws, had robbed a series of old people blind while acting as their caretaker, and had poisoned both her daughter and, nearly certainly, even more elderly people put in her care. All this while blatantly piling lie on top of lie to all who encountered her each and every day of her life.

How is it possible that a woman could get away with such behavior for 50 years? Surely her family would have noticed and acknowledged her antisocial behavior at some point and taken steps to stop her? Yet they did not. Nor did the hundreds of other people who ran into her during the course of her life, many of whom suffered from her actions firsthand.

How is it possible to fail to see a person for who they are—evil and destructive—when they have left a swath of victims behind them everywhere they go? The answer is willful blindness. And it’s a powerful force in human behavior. Recent studies show that 86% of people admit they are guilty of willful blindness, which is the ability to ignore that which we do not want to see or hear.  Whether it’s a company poisoning its customers, a relative abusing younger family members, or a friend who regularly lies and manipulates others – it appears that human beings are wired to resist acknowledging predatory behavior. It’s as if we do not want to admit that someone so very like us might be capable of actions so unlike us. This kind of denial could well end up being our downfall. Consider a world in which people embrace a political candidate because they like one thing he says, and ignore all the other appalling positions he takes. Then know that such a world is here. In a consumeristic, media-saturated society, the line between the have’s and the have-not’s is pushed into our faces every day, enflaming the self-entitled avarice of narcissists who care about two things only: receiving attention and getting what they want. Expect narcissistic behavior to disrupt your life, if it hasn’t already. And fight the urge for willful blindness.

But what I worry about the most is that the world seems reluctant to even examine our capacity for willful blindness, much less admit that we must fight it. I see this in the difference between true crime and mystery fiction. Almost every true crime book you read features a perpetrator who gets away with evil deeds only because those surrounding him or her refuse to acknowledge that their friend or family member is capable of such behavior. Yet it is rare for a crime fiction book to depict characters in such a way. Mystery books tend to have good characters, bad characters, and a few who fall in between to serve as red herrings. In our willingness to obey the beloved conventions of mysteries, what our genre has failed to do is to examine whether our fictional characters really reflect those in real life as we now know it.

Should we not pass judgment on those who have tolerated destructive behavior, or willingly failed to see it, every bit as much as we pass judgment on the villain? Should we not acknowledge that it is all too true that, for evil to triumph, all that is required is for good people to do nothing?

At the moment, I can think of only one book that examines this issue. It is a remarkable novel called Defending Jacob by William Landay. It is haunting in its depiction of how painful it can be to let go of denial. Of course, there are more mysteries that take this issue on: if you know of any novels that deal with the inability of people to acknowledge evil, thus allowing it to continue, please share it in the comments section below. But we need even more mysteries examining this phenomenon of human behavior. If the mystery genre exists to help our species examine good versus evil, we need more books that address willful blindness. Because evil does not always come in the form of a man posed beneath a neon yellow headline, knife held high in hand. Evil often looks exactly like you and me.

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table….

These opening lines from T.S. Eliot’s iconic poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, have sparked many a debate among literary fans: is it a beautiful metaphor for twilight’s stupor… or could it be a metaphor for life itself?

As it turns out, it could very well be a metaphor for how T.S. Eliot felt when presented with a literary novel over one from his beloved detective genre. Yes, the undisputed arbitrator of literary genius was a huge detective fiction fan, a fact that the bastion of high brow writing, the New Yorker, revealed in this recent illuminating article. And not only was T.S. Eliot a devoted reader of the genre, he also wrote a number of anonymous reviews of detective novels and stories, defending the conventions of the genre with passion and advocating for some of its most notable authors in the time between the two great world wars.

Where was T.S. Eliot when I needed him? I have spent much of my career defending my decision to go into crime fiction as an author and remain as surprised as anyone that I have chosen to dwell there for decades and counting. But now that I know a man of unimpeachable authority in matters of literary judgment shares my passion, I have decided to stop mincing words when it comes to why I choose to write crime fiction over what some in the world might describe as more worthy novels. If J. Alfred Prufock can dare to eat a peach, then I can surely dare to point out the obvious in this endless debate:

• There are astonishing literary books that capable of changing your life, if not the entire world. They illuminate some corner of being human with such a pure light that you can suddenly feel connected to all the world and find both comfort and delight in being part of the human species. But there are also self-involved, snooze fests foisted on us regularly as “literary fiction” and all they are going to do is put you to sleep (if not etherize you upon a table).
• The exact same claims can be made about crime fiction. Some authors in the genre produce books that are evocative, poignant, and can change the very way you view life. Other authors are always chasing the market, pumping out derivative plots that are predictable in their unpredictability and feature characters who become parodies of themselves.
• Often, the only distinction between the two genres is a random marketing decision made by an editor, because let me tell you: plenty of literary successes have centered around a crime (too many to list), and plenty of crime fiction is beautiful from a “literary” standpoint (read early James Lee Burke and tell me I am wrong).

In fact, the only consistent difference between the two genres is structure: crime fiction demands that authors follow a much more rigid set of rules when it comes to plotting, pacing, and characterizations. Not that these rules can’t be broken, but, in general, you will, indeed, find an actual plot in a crime fiction book while all bets are off when it comes to literary fiction. Count on this counting more and more as the years pass: we generations raised on television and motion pictures do not tolerate stories that get bogged down in the minutiae of some free-associating inner journey toward a highly personalized realization of the mundane. We grew up on stories that move, quite literally. A book that stagnates is a book that gets closed. This journey toward self-absorption that too many writers equate with the “literary” is only likely to get more tedious as we are buried in a self-centered avalanche of Facebook posts, Twitters snipes, and Instagram posturings. In a world that’s “all about me,” what books can bring us is how it’s really all about “we”—and crime fiction makes those connections very, very well.

So perhaps it’s time to put a fork in it and accept the inevitable, just as T.S. Eliot did: a book that pulls you in and keeps you there, a book that doles out justice and follows a fair set of rules, is a welcome respite from real life. Let’s shift the debate to where it really counts: let’s talk about original books vs. copycats…. books with something to say, rather than books with nothing new to offer… and books that make the most of the written word rather than simply being descriptions of TV shows on paper.

Help me prove my point. Share some “literary” books that are actually centered around a crime and could just as easily have been pegged as crime fiction, or suggest crime books that shine from a literary standpoint and deserve to be read by more people. Let’s convert some new readers to my genre, shall we? I’d also love to hear from authors on why they choose to write in the crime fiction genre. Because that’s a whole other blog post and I’d like to know where I stand…

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

A good villain is essential to my genre (mystery or crime fiction). In fact, a good enough villain can make a writer’s career—just ask Thomas Harris about Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. But as memorable as Hannibal was, to me the most effective villains are neither obvious nor completely unredeemable. Their evil takes on a far more subtle form. They look and act just like you or me, or they evoke feelings of sympathy—forcing us to look at the world in a more nuanced way than we are allowed to otherwise. Maybe that is why I prefer the villain in Harris’s second book, Red Dragon. He embodied one of the most intriguing kinds of villains: one that is absolutely and completely lethal, yet one you cannot help but feel sorry for.

Unfortunately, such villains are endangered species in our current cultural climate, whether fictional or real. We live in a very polarized world and people are defensive about their worldviews. So many people today cling to the notion that their values and norms are the only acceptable way to live a life. To accept the notion that evil can look, talk, think, and act just like they do is to reject the very point of their lives. They want to be able to blame someone who looks or sounds different as the root of their troubles, or even as the root of all evil. They want a villain that looks like their version of a villain. They do not want to look into a mirror.

Ironic, isn’t it, when you consider the fact that we almost always kill our own kind? Or that the most dangerous villains, those capable of infiltrating and destroying your entire world, are smart enough to know that first they must fit into it?

Sympathetic villains are equally hard to find, both in real life and in literature. They force us to look inside ourselves for why we feel connected to them—and very few people are willing to admit that, perhaps, we all have the seeds of darkness within us. Sympathetic villains also force us to acknowledge that we as a species may have a hand in creating our villains by the way we treat one another or allow others to be treated.

To acknowledge that a villain is not entirely unlike us, or that their evil may have been prevented, is to admit that we are neither invincible nor on the right track as a society. So it’s just a whole lot easier to attribute a villain’s behavior to being born bad, or being born insane, or being born to insanely bad parents. Meanwhile, the truth, like a great fictional villain, is far, far more complicated.

Good and evil. Black and white. Truth and fiction. The lines get blurred. And good writers make the most of that ambiguity.

I have my favorite fictional villains. What I’d like to know is: who are yours? I’d love to hear about some of your favorite villains from books and movies you’ve seen and why you find them so memorable. Let me know and, in the meantime: don’t look behind you. You never know who might be standing there.

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

As I reviewed the 2016 Piedmont Laureate press release summarizing all the books I have written over the past 25 years, I began to wonder how in the world I had ever been able to publish 15 novels in the first place. Granted, I had grown up in a household literally surrounded by stacks of books brought home by my father, the News and Observer’s book reviewer for many years. In fact, there were days I had to read several books simply to clear a path to the front door so I could get out of the house and head to school. But why had I grown up to be a writer? I could just as easily have become a voracious reader. Why had I been audacious enough to believe anyone would ever want to read what I wrote?

As I thought more about it, the answer was simple: growing up in North Carolina made me a writer. This is a state that nurtures its writers. And it’s a good thing, too. As one of my writing teachers once told me, “You could walk from the mountains to the ocean on the backs of North Carolina’s writers, and the sad thing is that most of them would let you.”

I cannot speak to the self-esteem of all of NC’s writers, but I can say that I am lucky to have been raised here—which is why I think it’s only fitting I spend the next year passing on the love for writing I learned growing up in Raleigh. It is equally fitting for my first blog post as this year’s Piedmont Laureate to be one of thanks to all of the teachers who got me here. They go back a long way, understand—all the way back to Wiley Elementary and my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Gilliam, who did not hesitate to introduce Victor Hugo to 12-year-old savages and whose poems I can still recite by heart. All together now: “Be like the bird who, halting in his flight…” Soon after, at Daniels Junior High School, Mrs. Esping (or Esping-pong, as we liked to call her) exorcised the lazy out of me, at least when it came to writing, thanks to her insanely high standards. Meanwhile, her colleague, Mrs. Chambers, taught me something even more important. What a high it was to be sitting in her class, plodding through a text book, and hear her un-teacherlike giggles give way to helpless laughter until she looked over at me, held up an essay I had written for her class, and said: “I can’t help it—this is hysterical!”

I learned two things that fateful day in 9th grade social studies: 1) writing about underwear always makes people laugh, and 2) I could make people laugh with my writing.

After that, I was hooked and there was no stopping me. The chief trait required of my writing teachers henceforth was probably endurance rather than enthusiasm. How many pages I rained down on them during my years in the Wake County Public School System! Many of you will recognize the names I am about to evoke: Carol Carter, Phyllis Peacock, and Sally Smisson, all teachers at Broughton High School and the first human beings willing to wade through my endless stories while telling me I could be a writer. Other people during my years there fueled the flames: an art teacher named Mrs. Erlich who warned me that, while I did many things well, I would have to focus on just one if I hoped to be really good at it, advice that proved crucial to my future sanity… my journalism teacher, Mrs. Keith, who stoked my lifelong joy in word count output and thoughtfully punished the entire class, rather than me alone, that time I went off the rails from overwork and painted Hitler mustaches, cowlicks, and furry eyebrows on my friends in the High Times photos while reviewing the proofs at the printers. (Yes, that was me. I can only pray the statute of limitations has run out.)

This environment of constant encouragement and time for literary exploration was all it took to send me to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where fabled names awaited me in the creative writing department there. I will always love Daphne Athas for teaching me that words have color, sounds, and even taste. She taught me to take joy in sentence construction as well as in the rhythm and cadence of words. I learned the art of the story arc from Max Steele, along with a warning to look out for the competitive urges of other writers and keep my ideas quiet until they were made real. Lewis Rubin taught me that life is too short to spend time pretending bad writing is good. Sure, he was intimidating—but he also believed passionately in the traditions of the southern novel and opened a whole new world of reading for me. Marianne Gingher taught me that there is a huge difference between having the potential to be a writer and being willing to work on the skills that elevate you to professional status. I took her class during her very first year as a professor in UNC’s creative writing department and am astonished that so many years have now passed that she has since retired as its head. And I would be remiss if I did not mention Bill Hardy of UNC’s Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures department. Bill taught me to respect my creativity, showed me how it could actually pay the bills, and introduced me to the thrill of watching your writing come alive. I will never forget a teleplay of mine that he produced, not only because I ended up with lifelong friends out of the process but because it taught me that writing is interactive—you never truly know what you have written until others have read it and brought their own experiences to it.

These are the people that sent me to New York, confident in my ability to write, and it was their memory that brought me back home to North Carolina 16 years later in search of a world filled with people just like them. I am so proud to be from a state that treasures the literary arts as a reflection of who we are as a society. I am so proud to be from a state that has committed its resources, for generations now, to ensuring that its young people have the chance to fall in love with writing in the first place, and then actually learn the craft that allows them to be part of that world and to let their voices be heard. I can only hope that future generations will be able to say the same. I can only hope that the great state I am proud to call home continues to support the literary arts as it has done throughout its history.

So when you hear me speak, attend one of my workshops, or read something of mine in the year ahead—and I truly hope you will do all of these things—know that I am here, representing all writers, only because I was lucky enough to be raised in North Carolina.