One of my favorite musicians is Iris DeMent whose songs range from folk to country to gospel.  Of her songs, top on my list is one about … well … writing music.  It goes like this:

Sweet is the melody, so hard to come by,

So hard to make every note blend just right.

You lay down the hours without a trace

’Til a tune for the dancing is there in its place.

Laying down the hours without a trace?  That’s what writing music is all about, but it’s also true for writing books.  I started writing Before the Trail Goes Cold sometime back in May when it was just barely spring here in Seattle.  On Saturday at 9:06 PM, I completed a solid week of doing a word-for-word read-through of the manuscript and sent it to my editor.

In the process, I found a lot things that needed fixing.  I caught all kinds of echoes (verbal repetitions) but I’m sure there are plenty of those still standing and waiting for someone else, namely a sharp-eyed editor, to find and fix.  At the point in the book where my combination Name/Time File vanished, there was a fracture in the story.  I gave a character one name and then later on in the story she appeared with a completely different one.  I fixed that problem, too.  Toward the end of the book, I repeated a chapter number, which automatically threw all the other ones into disarray.  Those are now all properly numbered

Yesterday, Sunday, I was officially done with the book, so my daughter and I actually went to a play.  Much to my surprise, when it was time to go outside, I needed a sweater!  While I was working on the book, summer had come and gone, and I had missed it. 

On the way home, we stopped by Brick and Mortar for me to sign the books people ordered from them.  Those were almost all The Girl From Devil’s Lake, Joanna #21, but my mind had been so buried in Joanna #22 for so long, that a couple of times I miswrote and had to correct some random 22s that leaked out of my red pen.  So if you’re someone who ordered one of those and happens to find a crossed-out #22, you’ll know why.  Please accept my apologies.

Now interviews and signings are fast approaching for Beaumont # 27—The Taken Ones.  It’s time to wipe out the details from the book I just finished writing enough so that I can speak sensibly about the one I finished months ago.  Good luck with that!

According to my count, Before the Trail Goes Cold will be J.A. Jance novel # 71. That’s a lot of books.  With each book including 100,000 words, give or take, that’s also a lot of words.  Not bad for a girl who, in 1964, wasn’t allowed in the Creative Writing class at the University of Arizona on account of her being a girl.  If I include the two books that are written but not yet published, I’ve been writing at a rate of 1.67 books per year for 43 years!

All that adds up to meaning I’ve written A LOT of books. (Please pardon the echoes in the last two paragraphs.) But also that brings us to the P-word—PROLIFIC!  When used in regard to literary undertakings, that suggests that the person involved writes his or her books with virtually no thought or effort and that they come into existence in much the same way toast pops out of a toaster—you press a button and viola, next thing you know you have a book! When literary critics use that dismissive sneer word, it implies that the author’s works is both voluminous and meaningless.

Over the course of the next few months when I’m doing interviews and events, I have no doubt that some unsuspecting master of ceremonies or interviewer will, in passing, refer to me with the cringe-worthy word prolific. That always hits me from the standpoint of being an author, but there’s also a personal connection.

Back in the fifties a new minister and his wife arrived at our church in Bisbee. Shortly thereafter, my older teenaged sister, pregnant and unmarried, took her boyfriend in for bit of pre-marital counseling prior to their shotgun wedding.  During the course of the session and knowing there were seven kids in the Busk family, the minister’s wife turned my sister and said, “You mother is very prolific.  Hasn’t she ever heard of birth control?”

Whoa!  So when an unwitting host or hostess calls me prolific in public, I have to unpack a whole bunch of emotional baggage, both professional and personal, before I can step up to the microphone and begin speaking. 

In other words, in regards to me or any other author for that matter, just DON’T USE IT!  It’s an insult.

As for that minister’s wife?  If she’d had nerve enough to pose that question to Evie herself instead of aiming it at my sister, our mother would have been happy to tell her exactly which failed birth-control device accounted for each of us!