Sydney Lockhart Historic Hotel Mystery Series

A Barn That Won’t Sag; A Story I Can’t Hear

Several years ago, I enrolled in a charcoal sketching class. I loved the simplicity of creating and bringing an image to life with shades of black and gray—seeing the face of a young girl staring back at me; a black-crowned night heron perched on a creek bank, waiting for a meal to swim by; a moored rowboat bobbing in the water.

Learning to project a 3-D image onto a 2-D sketch pad was challenging.

In time, I got the hang of using light and shadow to create a 3-D effect, but in detailed sketches, it didn’t always work for me. It was as if my brain were stuck in a 2-D world and refused to budge. The good thing about sketching with charcoal is that you can erase easily with a soft, kneaded eraser. So I would sketch, erase, sketch, erase, and hope something would happen.

I shared an atelier with my art teacher and several other artists.

After a couple of hours of sketching, we’d stop to evaluate each other’s work. But on occasion, I had the studio to myself, sometimes for an entire afternoon. I loved the solitude, but I often needed the other artists in the room to push me when I was stuck.

One day I tried unsuccessfully to draw the sagging roof of an old barn from a photo I’d taken. I’d sketched and erased so many times that I’d worn a hole in the paper. Something had gotten lost between my eyes and my hand. I placed a clean sheet on the easel and sketched the barn’s framework, but still couldn’t capture its sagging roof. Then I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I relied on my sense of sound, imagining the wind blowing through the rafters, rattling the loose shingles, and creaking the old hay loft door. I drew a few lines and imagined my hand pushing into the paper as if I were pushing the roof down.

The imaginary sounds grew more intense, and when I opened my eyes, the 3-D image I’d envisioned leaped off the paper, revealing a barn with a roof about to cave in.

That’s how it is with writing sometimes. I know what I want to write, but the words don’t always come. When they do, they feel flat and forced. I need them to jump off the page and become a 3-D image, or, in this case, a visual story. So I write, delete, write, delete. When nothing happens, I realize what I’m doing wrong. I’m not listening. I’m not letting my characters tell the story. Like hearing the old barn come alive in that quiet studio, I have to be quiet to hear my characters talking to me.

I have to remember that I’m writing their story, not mine.

I have to close my eyes, let go, and surrender to these imaginary people.

I have to trust that they will keep talking.

After fifteen published books, two on the way, and three more in the works, my main characters- Sydney Lockhart, Kate Caraway, PI Ted Kendrick, Inspector Wiggy, and Police Chief Toni Hejl- never let me down.

Kathleen Kaska writes three award-winning mystery series: the Sydney Lockhart Mystery Series, the Kate Caraway Animal-Rights Mystery Series, and the Classic Triviography Mystery Series. She wrote The Sherlock Holmes Quiz Book. She founded The Dogs in the Nighttime, the Sherlock Holmes Society of Anacortes, Washington, a scion of The Baker Street Irregulars. Her blog post, “Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town,” is on her website.