by Kitty Felde

I know what I should be working on. The deadline is Thursday next. But the new dining room carpet was just delivered and I need to see if the shade of sea glass green matches the wallpaper or figure out how to ship it back. And I need to find a sub for me at church next week if I want to invite people over for the Memorial Day Concert. I’m cold and should put on a sweater.

Stop. Focus. Write.

I think about all the stories I want to write. Worry about how long it will take to write them. Worry that my brain or body will give out before I get to them all. And if I’m that worried, why am I avoiding sitting down right now to create them?

The dishwasher needs to be unloaded. I need to get a stamp for that renewal envelope for the husband’s subscription of Track and Field news. The cat wants breakfast. Now. There are leaves on the patio that should be picked up before somebody steps on them and drags pieces into the house. Is the mini vacuum plugged in? I should cook the salmon today. I’ll have to walk over to the community garden to steal some parsley. Does anyone still have lemons on their tree? I need a nap. Or more tea. I’m cold. I should get up and zap the tea in the microwave. I have another zoom at one. I should be writing.

Did Sara agree to a phone call this afternoon? Why were the cherries at the farmer’s market $12 a pound? Will those tiny green tomatoes really ripen on the windowsill? Why did I forget the artichokes on the stove and burn them?

I’m cold. In May. Why am I cold?

That little amaryllis flower looks so happy. I guess I should go spray the roses. Again. Oh, yeah. I need orchid food. And some new hand towels. Maybe I’ll walk up to Target. Wish I’d changed the sheets before the husband made the bed.

What was it I was supposed to be doing?

Oh, yeah. Writing.

Kitty Felde writes the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of middle grade novels. The Spanish version “Estado de la Unión” will be released August 1st.

by Kitty Felde

Some say the greatest joy of writing is that feeling of being in the flow, creating that first draft. Words fly across the page, almost by magic. Characters come to life, dialogue sparkles, telling details come instantly to mind.

And then you’re left with a mess.

I’ve been wrestling with the third book in my Fina Mendoza Mysteries series called “Snake in the Grass.” It’s about partisanship on Capitol Hill, as seen through the eyes of the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman. I pounded out 207 pages, printed it out, and stared at a catastrophe. There was no structure, entire plot lines were missing, I had no ending. Catastrophe.

After a few weeks of hanging my head, I was brave enough to face the other half of writing: editing. It’s the chance to fix what once went wrong.

But how?

Writers have lots of techniques.

Some use color-coded index cards that they can shuffle around.

One memoir scribbler is a big believer in post-it notes. She covers an entire wall in her office with post-its in pink and white and blue and every other color under the sun. She creates a notebook with smaller post-its that’s a duplicate of her plot wall. And then she moves things around.

I’ve tried index cards. They’re just not my thing. Post-it notes? No, thank you. Number one, I don’t have a large enough blank wall. Number two, I’d live in fear that a gust of wind would turn my carefully crafted plot into an even more jumbled mess than it is now.

Some writers edit in Scrivner. But those little pretend index cards are too small for my bad eyes to read.

Some playwrights read the manuscript aloud, or invite a roomful of actors to informally read the play. It’s a great way to catch sentences that don’t sing or missing words or clunky dialogue. I find that it doesn’t work as well with prose – work with less dialogue and more description.

Some brave souls edit directly onto the manuscript, uploaded into the G drive. This panics me for a different reason: what if I accidentally delete a scene? Or change my mind about an edit I made yesterday. What if I fail to label it properly and end up re-editing an earlier version? Or, as was the case yesterday, can’t find it at all?

I’m a paper person. With apologies to the trees, I think better when there’s a printed copy of my manuscript in front of me. I love using a red pen. (Or, in the case of a second pass through, a blue pen.) Somehow, seeing those scribbled pages is tangible proof to myself that I have indeed been working on my book. And like hearing it aloud, you perceive your work differently than when it’s on a computer screen.

But that’s just my first step. A stack of scribbled up printed pages doesn’t solve my plot problems.

I’ve settled on using a legal pad, making a list of the scenes in the order I have now. I can move them around with just my pen, drawing a long, curved arrow to indicate that scene five now should reside after scene seven. I can draw a line through scene 21, which has always been a problem child.

Next, it’s back to the original document to make the changes, print it out, and start all over again.

That’s where I am today with this project, round two. I suppose I’m paying the price for all of that creative joy I felt at the beginning of the project.

I bribe myself to go on and finish the darned thing by dangling a very nice carrot out in front of my nose: as soon as I’m done, I can start a new project and return to that magic time when words fly across the page and characters have some very definite things to say.

How do you edit?

Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright and author of the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books and podcasts, designed to introduce civics education to kids.

by Kitty Felde

If you’ve attended as many book marketing webinars as I have, you’ve heard the same advice: you need a newsletter.

The reason is simple: if the rest of social media goes the way of Twitter, er, X, you need a way to stay in touch with your theatre contacts, publishers, and fans in a format that you can control.
So as a veteran of writing hundreds of newsletters, here’s a few thoughts.

WHAT SHOULD I PUT IN A NEWSLETTER?

I’ve always thought of newsletters as a bit self-indulgent. Who would want to read anything about my life, my thoughts on climate change or politics, or pictures of my cat? And then I remembered that my husband and I have put out a Christmas newsletter for more than a decade that does just that. I apologize to my friends and family and tell them they can just toss it in the trash or ask me to take them off the mailing list. On the contrary, they say, they look forward to this annual missive. Go figure.

The truth is that we long for personal connections – even those that show up in a newsletter once and a while. Your contacts want to know more about YOU, the writer yourself. You don’t have to disclose utterly personal information. Instead, address the questions most people ask: Why do you write? How do you write? What are you working on? What does your desk look like? Who’s your favorite playwright? Why?

OTHER IDEAS

Readers and theatre goers and fans also like a peek behind the curtain. How do you cast a play? Do the actors hired for your work look like the ones you imagined when you were creating them? Who’s your favorite director? Why? What was the best (and worst) production of any of your work? (Leave out specific identification of the offending theatre…it’s a small town.) Write about an amazing production of someone else’s play or recount a memory of a play you saw years and years ago that still sticks with you. Ask your readers to tell you about their favorite production of any play and put that in a future newsletter. Ask them which play they wish someone would write. Put together a survey. In other words, get your fans to interact with you, otherwise known as that horrid word “engagement.”

Ask yourself what your newsletter subscribers NEED. A calendar of upcoming shows you think they’d enjoy? A monologue or scene that got cut from one of your plays? A really wonderful – or really awful – review of a previous production of one of your plays? Information about upcoming productions or publications or interviews?

MY NEWSLETTERS

Currently, I write two professional newsletters with a combined 4,000 subscribers. I began writing them in 2015.

For my Book Club for Kids podcast, I didn’t want the newsletter to be about ME. I wanted to give subscribers something that was useful. I knew that my audience of teachers, parents, and librarians needed help getting reluctant readers to pick up a book. So every month, I send a reading tip from a librarian or an education specialist. The newsletter also includes promotional material: information about the latest episode, an invitation to check out my other podcast The Fina Mendoza Mysteries, and an invitation to contact me if they want to bring the podcast to their school.

For my Fina Mendoza Mysteries civics series, I write a Facts Behind the Fiction newsletter where I expand on some Congressional fact mentioned in the books or podcast. The newsletter also includes links to research material, as well as links to the audio and to bookstores where the audience can buy the book.

Then I REPURPOSE the newsletter content in a blog on my website. And if I’m a good girl, I post links to it on social. That way, I get a three for one hit on my written material.

HOW OFTEN DO I SEND A NEWSLETTER?

It’s up to you. But once a month or every six months is plenty. Unless your audience asks for more.

HOW TO BUILD A MAILING LIST

Start with your friends, family, professional colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested in your work. Or in you. Include a signup link on your website. Include it in social posts from time to time. Do a “newsletter swap” – you write a post that a fellow playwright sends to her mailing list and she writes one for your newsletter. Include that signup link! Hopefully, her fans will sign up for your newsletter and become your fans as well. You’ll be surprised at how fast your audience grows.

MAILCHIMP, MAILERLITE, CONSTANT CONTACT, ETC.

Don’t send mass email blasts from your Gmail account. You will be punished. Instead, start with a free subscription from one of the usual suspects. I’ve used both Mailchimp and MailerLite and they’re easy, pretty much drag and drop. One warning: there’s a success tax. If your mailing list goes over a set threshold, you’ll have to pay for hosting.

STILL UNCERTAIN?

Subscribe to a few OTHER writer’s mailing lists. You can always unsubscribe. See what they are writing about, how they are providing value to the reader.

Newsletters are purely optional for writers, but as a control freak myself, they are an important part of my professional presence in the world.

Kitty

PS: You can subscribe to the Book Club for Kids podcast here. Or the Fina Mendoza Mysteries podcast here.

Kitty Felde is the author of numerous plays and the Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books and podcasts, designed to introduce civics to elementary school readers. Her novella Losing is Democratic: How to Talk to Kids About January 6th will be released by Chesapeake Press this month.

by Kitty Felde

It sounded so idylic: ten days on Nantucket, and then two and a half weeks in Maine. All that time devoted to one thing: revision.

I’m working on my first adult novel, a mystery set in Theodore Roosevelt’s White House. The first draft is too long – 368 pages and still lacking a last scene. It’s a mess.

This year has been full of chaos with running a tiny publishing company, producing a pair of podcasts, and then five family members developed health issues. It’s been difficult to concentrate.

But I had those two trips to look forward to, away from the many fires that demand immediate attention, and I would use them to whip my novel into shape.

I was afraid to look at the pages. I’d written the first draft a year ago. What if it was awful? What if I couldn’t figure out how to fix it? Should I just burn the darned thing and eat lobster and enjoy myself?

After talking myself off the ledge, I remembered how I edit. And that’s what I’ll share with you.

PRINT IT OUT

A play or novel looks completely different in other formats.

I write on my laptop, but edit on paper. (I know, I know. I’ve sacrificed trees for this book. All the more reason to make the editing count.)

You see things differently when a book is on the screen vs on a piece of paper. It’s tactile. There is something satisfying about crossing out duplicate words with a red pen or watching a stack of pages dwindle as you read and reread and edit. (The only downside: my carryon bag was particularly heavy since I insisted on dragging my printed copy with me on the plane.)

READ THE DAMN THING

I write in short spurts. A scene here, a chapter there. I don’t make a habit of going back over my work again and again and again.

But editing begins with looking at the project as a whole. Does it make sense? What’s missing? Are there duplicate scenes?

I don’t immediately fix these problems, just note them in a separate notebook. I just keep reading.

WHAT’S IT REALLY ABOUT?

I knew that underneath the mystery, the book is really about a daughter’s lifelong effort to get her father’s attention and approval. Upon re-reading my manuscript, I was satisfied with the emotional underpinnings of the story. What I was lacking was a plot that made sense.

I started making lists, outlining the various murder plots, the actual clues and the red herrings. I followed main characters through the story – their locations, their motivations. I found holes and noted them in my notebook. More things to fix.

FIX THE BIG STUFF FIRST…OR NOT

After looking at plot holes, I had a good idea of what needed fixing and decided to tackle that first. Rereading the entire work made it clear what was important and what was not. I eagerly picked up my red pen and got to work.

But there were other problems that had no immediate solution. I needed to sleep on it or take a long walk or a swim, distract myself long enough for my brain to figure out a solution.

In the meantime, I tackled the small stuff I’d listed in my notebook. How many children DID Mrs. Caldwell have? Was it eight or nine? What was the name of the bank owned by Mr. Johnston? What was the rank of that police officer? It was just as satisfying fixing little things as it was solving big problems. And fixing the small stuff gave me courage to attack the big stuff.

KILL YOUR FAVORITES

Writers are always telling us to be brutal in editing, to not be afraid to kill our darlings.
I’m not that brave. I marked up my paper copy. But when I have reliable internet and make those changes in the master script on my laptop, I will save all those edited scenes in my Leftover file. I’m braver about making changes if I know that I can always go back and put that scene back in the main manuscript. Or use it in another book.

BETA READERS

I’m a member of THREE writing groups. I also regularly swap drafts with yet another set of writers. It’s invaluable to have another set of eyes on our work. There are just some things we are blind to, things we skip over. They tell us when they don’t understand a plot point or the physical action in an action scene or the motivations of a character. They tell us when things are dragging, when a line is funny, whether the ending is satisfying.

KNOW WHEN TO STOP

At some point, we have to admit to ourselves that our work will never be perfect. We have to share it with the world and take the consequences. What’s the worst that can happen? An agent will reject us. Or three. Or a hundred. We decide to self-publish and get a one star review on Amazon. (At least someone took the time to read the darned book!) None of our siblings will buy the book and never ask about it at Thanksgiving. (Good. They’ll never know we named the villain after them.)

Be brave. Write your cover letter and your synopsis. Polish them. And send out your baby into the world. It’s time.

Kitty’s many plays have been produced around the world. Two are available in print. These days, she writes The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books and podcast for kids.

by Kitty Felde

Is launch day for a book the same as opening night for a new play?

Yes and no.

On Monday, my middle grade mystery novel Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza comes out in English and Spanish. It’s the story of the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman from Los Angeles who moves to D.C. and solves mysteries inside the U.S. Capitol. I’ve been nervous and excited and had to remind myself that I’ve had opening nights for years.

But it made me think about what book launches and opening nights have in common.

Some things are the same.

As a playwright, you’re sending out emails to all your friends and family, begging them to buy tickets for opening night. You’re posting on social. You might even go ‘old school’ and send out postcards to that agent you’re hoping to snag, or that friend of a show runner you met at a party. You’re hoping for good reviews in the handful of places that actually still review plays. You offer ticket discounts. You post some more on social… You get the idea.

As a book writer, you’re also emailing your friends and family, begging them to buy your book. You’re posting on social. Instead of postcards, you’re printing bookmarks, handing them out like candy at book festivals and library conventions. You’ve sent your book out to Kirkus and other review sites and posted the manuscript on NetGalley, (a free service free to readers, but a few hundred dollars for writers,) hoping for reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Instead of discounting tickets, you’re discounting book sales. You post some more on social…

Sound familiar?

For writers, book events are our opening nights. There is often champagne and cakes decorated with the cover of your book. The difference is that plays are what one pal described as ephemeral. A production disappears after its run. Books are tangible evidence of our writing. Sure, they may gather dust on library shelves and on the bedside table of your best friend who promises to read it one of these days.

There is one difference between writing for the page and writing for the stage: the community of theatre. As a book writer, you often do get to collaborate with a designer (for the cover instead of the set) and an editor (similar to a director.) What you don’t get writing books is the joy of the rehearsal room, the hours you get to spend with actors who bring your characters to life, the collaboration that leads to genius stage business and laughs you didn’t know where there.

But writing is writing, whether it’s plays or books. And after the stage lights are turned off or the bookstore locks the door, we all head back to the laptop or yellow pad or dictation app and start all over again.

LAFPI readers can get an autographed copy of Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza or Bienvenida a Washington Fina Mendoza by clicking here.

Kitty Felde is a playwright currently working on Snake in the Grass, the third book in her Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of middle grade novels.

by Kitty Felde

I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of research. Dangerous, I know, because researching is a great excuse for not writing. But often you find unexpected treasures that can sometimes become an essential part of your play.

I’ve been using the vast newspaper records available online at the Library of Congress. Chronicling America, a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a free, searchable database of American newspapers from 1777 to 1963. If you’re writing about an era before or after that, the LOC has a secondary collection of newspapers from 1690 to today.

There’s a map where you can discover ethnic newspapers across the country. Who knew there was a German newspaper in San Diego and a Finnish one in Washington state? There were dozens of African-American newspapers from Butte, Montana to Miami, Florida.

I fumbled around at first, but found absolute gold in the digital pages of Chronicling America.

Currently, I’m working on a murder mystery set in the White House era of Theodore Roosevelt. The plot takes us all over the Washington, D.C. of 1902. I had so many questions.

How did police get around town. Did they ride horses? Drive motor cars? Bicycles? Who were they? A profile of “Well Known Men of the Metropolitan Police Force” in the Washington Times helped me create my policemen characters – including one who was active in the temperance movement.

What happened at an inquest of the era? The Evening Star had a full report of one particular proceeding. Though I admit I was distracted by the ad for furniture on the same page that featured a $22 “Polished Mahogany-Finished Toilet Table.” A what?

I needed a place for a body to be discovered. The Washington Times reported on a years-long battle to either fill in or fence the James Creek Canal. Little more than a sewer, neighbors labeled it a “death trap” where five bodies a month were pulled from the mud.

For one scene, I needed the name of a stationary store where my amateur detective could find a blank book to record her clues. I searched “stationary supplies” and found an advertisement at the top of the page in the Evening Star.

My favorite gem didn’t happen in Washington at all. The Washington Times, like papers and TV news today, reprint sensational or odd stories from around the world. This one involved a pair of guinea pigs at a temperance meeting in Paris, as written up in a newspaper in Liverpool. The experiment was designed to demonstrate the destructive power of alcohol. Guess which one got sick. One animal was given water, the other alcohol.

There were challenges. I was overwhelmed. I wanted to read everything. (Anything to avoid staring at a blank screen and actually have to write. But my lousy eyesight made it difficult to see an entire page on a 13” laptop. I wasn’t sure how to find what I needed. And when I found a juicy tidbit, what was the best way to keep track of it? Was saving links the best way to capture the information?

I am no research genius, but let me save you the learning curve and share my tips:

SEARCHING

o Narrow down your search parameters. If your play is set in 1939, look for newspapers from that year. If it’s set in Pittsburgh, narrow your search to just papers from Pennsylvania.
o Try various search terms. If you get too many hits with “police,” try “detective.”
o You’ll soon discover which newspapers go with the sensational, which have the most advertisements. Ads are great to help you describe clothing of the era or which stores or restaurants were frequented by your characters.)

READING

o If you’re using Microsoft Word, use the snipping tool. You can isolate the articles you want to keep, and save images for future reference or inspiration. And for those of us who are visually challenged, you can save it IN A LARGER SIZE.
o Images are also helpful while you’re writing. I often drop an image into the manuscript if there’s a quote I want to use or a detail that’s perfect for the scene. (And then I delete the image.)

ORGANIZATION

o DO keep track of your links. It will save going back and searching all over again. Note the source and date of the article, just in case you do have to go back and search.
o I’m sure your graduate school training will have given you a better way to organize your research. Me? I keep a simple Word or Google doc where I list topics I’ve researched. Sometimes I drop in a line or two, sometimes an image, but always a link. (At first, I kept a numbered “footnote” file at the bottom of the document, but since I’m not including my research in my notes, I gave up on that.)

PERMISSIONS

o If you’re considering including images in your book, take note of the copyright and who owns it. You might want to start asking for permission now to use the material later, long before you’re done with the book. If the answer is “no,” that gives you time to find an alternate image.

Good luck! And happy reading.

Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright currently working on her third book. Her Fina Mendoza Mysteries series of books are also available as a podcast. She is also Executive Producer of the Book Club for Kids podcast.

by Kitty Felde

I haven’t been inside a theatre for two years. And I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable enough to return. Does this mean the death of live theatre? Does it mean the end of playwriting? At least for me.

It’s a question I’ve had to ask myself. Why spend my life writing something that no one will see?

Oh, sure. There are alternatives to a black box theatre experience. I myself have written a play that should be performed in a National Park. And I’ve written audio dramas for the Fina Mendoza Mysteries podcast series – plays that are performed inside your head. Others have created plays for Zoom and Instagram and YouTube.

Culture Clash turned its epic drama Chavez Ravine into a video project. Antaeus Theatre Company asked its playwrights to write audio plays about Los Angeles neighborhoods. They were turned into a podcast called The Zip Code Plays. Ellen Struve, a most creative playwright in Nebraska, wrote and produced what she calls Picture Window Puppet Theatre, a shadow play performed from her living room window for all of her Omaha neighbors.

The pandemic has indeed forced us to be creative. But it’s also challenged us to think about theatre itself. What’s the point? How important is it for us to gather together to share an experience? Is theatre just an elitist exercise?

I wanted to be an actor from my earliest days of watching television as a child. I spent most of high school backstage, either performing or running the sound board. I changed majors from Social Ecology to Theatre after one week of college, braving the censure of my mother who always wanted me to be a lawyer. (She surprised me by telling me to go for it!)

I spent my 20’s living on $40 a week plus board at a melodrama company near Pismo Beach, driving to commercial auditions where occasionally I’d get hired to extoll the virtues of peanut butter or play the rear end of a horse, performing plays and improv in tiny theatres where the performers usually outnumbered the patrons. I co-founded a theatre, Theatre of NOTE, where I served as Managing Director for more than half a decade. I rejoiced when I earned my Equity card and performed at South Coast Rep. I wrote dozens of plays, some published and performed around the world. One was even performed in the nude.

But that feels like another lifetime. I was another person.

A few years ago, Stanford political science professor Frank Fukuyama wrote that we had come to the end of history. Have we come to the end of theatre?

Of course, Fukuyama was wrong. A lot of history has happened since 1995. And since theatre has been around since human beings started telling stories around the fire, it’s unlikely the end of theatre.

But for me, for now, that shared experience of sitting together for an evening of theatre is over. And so is writing for that mythical place that filled so much of my life.

I’ll still write stories. Books and podcast dramas and who knows what next. But at least for now, and for the foreseeable future, my life in the theatre has come to an end.

Farewell, theatre.