Not easy to do.

Twice a month I write a newsletter about police reports. If you think about that for, say, three seconds, you’ll soon realize that it is a near-impossible task. Twenty-four times a year I have to come up with a bunch of things to say about a very structured task that never changes. And I have to make it interesting enough for subscribers to read and (a less obvious but equally important task) for me to keep it going.

What do I find to say about police reports twice a month?

What I’ve been doing is to incorporate three features into every newsletter. One is a timely article about something going on in law enforcement right now. Since I’m a staff writer for a law enforcement website, I just repost those articles on my own newsletter.

Another feature is a short usage quiz. I enjoy doing those, and I keep a chart so that I don’t repeat a topic (-ed endings, lose/loose, coordinating conjunctions) too often.

The most challenging task is coming up with a PowerPoint or activity that goes into a writing issue in some depth. Yesterday’s choice was objectivity.

On one level that was no problem. I had a number of things to say that would be helpful to an officer who’s still learning how to write reports. I even had a couple of pointers that an experienced officer might benefit from.

But how would I make it INTERESTING?

I found a solution. Police reports have one counterintuitive feature: Officers aren’t allowed to showcase their experience or reasoning skills. They can’t discuss hunches, thinking processes, or conclusions. They can’t even say that a suspect seemed confused, dishonest, manipulative…you get the idea.

Just the facts, Ma’am.

And so I started my PowerPoint with a picture of a brain scan, pointing out that cops have highly developed thinking processes – which they can never refer to in a report.

You can view the PowerPoint at this link: http://www.slideshare.net/ballroom16/objectivity-in-police-reports

This morning I’m tapping away at my computer keyboard. Last night I was tapping away at a Christmas show.

I guess I should explain that I’m taking a beginners’ tap class.

I am constantly discovering connections between writing and dancing. A big one is that both require my stomach to activate and engage with what I’m doing. In dancing, a strong stomach stabilizes my whole top line and sets the stage for magic to happen.

In writing, a steady hum in my stomach signifies that I’m interested in what I’m doing. Readers are likely to be interested too. When my stomach doesn’t turn on, I hit the delete key and look for another topic. (It happens depressingly often. Am I really that boring?)

It’s the eternal question of where ideas come from.

In dance, the music generates many of the ideas. Get yourself a good piece of music, and you can’t miss.

Writing is more problematical. Having a terrific topic and great ideas is only the beginning.

Years ago I wrote a doctoral dissertation about Bernard Shaw that thrilled my dissertation committee. Breakthrough stuff, they said. Publish it!

But I couldn’t. Because it was a learn-as-I-go project (probably most dissertations are), the ideas didn’t hang together.

I spent several futile years trying to find a way to make it work. Total failure. (Well, not totally. I kept researching and learned a lot more about Shaw.)

And then one day a student of mine said something about Shaw’s Pygmalion that set off fireworks in my brain. “It’s a play about language,” she said.

Eureka. I was off and running.

Back to my earlier point. Ideas aren’t enough. You need what used to be called “an occasion for writing” – a jumping-off point. I find this hard to do sometimes even in a letter to family or friends. I have all kinds of things to say about what’s been going on in my life. But how do I make the connection to the person who’s going to read my letter? It’s wonderful if I can say something like “I was thinking about you yesterday when XYZ happened” – but sometimes there isn’t any XYZ connection.

The other requirement (at least for professional writing) is a unifying idea. Again, that can be tough. Life is messy. Rarely is an experience unmitigated joy or a ghastly disaster. (I was in an automobile accident a couple of weeks ago. My beloved PT Cruiser wasn’t worth fixing, and the bruising on my arm was a problem with the sleeveless dresses I wore at a dance competition a week later. But the EMTs were nice, the emergency room was interesting, and my insurance company was wonderful.)

I’m rambling! Witness the real-world writing process at work. (Can you tell that my stomach was humming the whole time?)

A friend and I are collaborating on a report writing book for code enforcement inspectors. After months of emails (we’ve never met), the book is finished. We’re waiting for an endorsement from one of his colleagues to put on the cover, and then it will be published.

Earlier this evening some mysterious impulse drove me to take another look at the manuscript. While admiring our work and reveling in our success, I found…seven errors.

Ye gods and little fishes. After going over the book a zillion times (or so it seems), there were still corrections to be made.

How does that happen? How can an experienced and (if I may say so) meticulous writer allow so many mistakes to slip through after endless passes through the manuscript?

Let me explain. Better yet – let me give you a real-life, up-to-the-minute example.

Scroll up this post to the paragraph that begins “Ye gods and little fishes.” Read both sentences there.

Notice anything?

There’s a dangling modifier! Did you spot it?

After going over the book a zillion times (or so it seems), there were still corrections to be made.

Words that end in –ing are dangerous if they’re placed at or near the beginning of a sentence. You have to say who was going over the book. I neglected to do that.

Here’s a corrected version of the sentence:

After I went over the book a zillion times (or so it seems), there were still corrections to be made.  CORRECT

Or I could have done this to fix it:

After going over the book a zillion times (or so it seems),I still had to make corrections.  CORRECT

Here’s my point: Almost any time I (or you) – write something, mistakes are going to creep in. My experience today (despite the teeth-grinding that went with it) was a good reminder about the importance of proofreading.

Why do writers like to write? Part of the appeal has to be that it’s a totally self-centered activity. Pick up a pen, or sit down at a keyboard, and you can go on and on about whatever interests you at the moment.

Or you think you can.

More and more I’m coming to think that writing isn’t about I: It’s about you. The first requirement of good writing is figuring out what will entertain, amuse, or enlighten your readers. Often you have to take a familiar experience, idea, or feeling and transform it into something new and unfamiliar.

Not easy to do. Welcome to staring-at-a-sheet-of-paper-or-a-blank-computer-screen.

My current project is writing material for a continuing-education module on police report writing. Looked at one way, it’s an easy task: I know the content, and it’s easy to organize and write develop.

But there’s a problem. My future readers are experienced police officers who have been writing reports (probably good ones) for years. How am I going to hold their interest?

Aye, there’s the rub.

So what I’m doing is looking for “potholes” – issues that officers might not think about during a typical shift. I’m also seeking practices that have changed or need to change. Traps and pitfalls. And some stories about police reports gone wrong…or right.

Remember the Navy Yard shooting? Turns out that several months earlier, a Connecticut police officer had interviewed the shooter about his claim that aliens were pursuing him. What seemed like an ordinary police call turned out to have national significance.

Solid gold.

My husband and I have just discovered the TV show Castle. If you’re more out of touch with popular culture than we are (unlikely) I should explain that it’s a TV crime show starring a best-selling mystery writer named Richard Castle. He has partnered with an attractive New York City detective named Kate Beckett to solve a large number of bizarre homicides.

Thanks to reruns on TNT and a DVR, we are watching all of the old shows at the rate of two a day. I am officially no longer a workaholic.

The shows are entertaining, well written, and well acted, and we both enjoy them immensely. There’s just one thing about the show that keeps nagging at me.

When does Castle get any writing done?

Murders don’t happen on a tidy 8-to-5 schedule. Castle is constantly taking calls from Kate Beckett and racing off to be one of the first to show up at a homicide.

When does he write? Heck – how does he get anything done?

I consider myself a serious and productive writer. Rare is the day when I don’t sit down at the computer to do a blog entry or tackle one of my current writing projects: a book about writing, appropriately enough; a book about code-enforcement reports I’m co-writing with another author; an article for the law-enforcement website that uses me as a staff writer; material for my twice-monthly newsletter.

Lately I have been struggling. In addition to my regular dance lessons and classes, I’ve been having lunch with friends, I took a short trip to New York last week, I’ve been invited to give a talk next week, and I have two consultant jobs to prepare for.

Not to worry: I’ve been on this planet long enough to know how to get things done. Next week’s presentation – about my book Gretel’s Story – has eaten up tons of time. But it’s finished, and I think it’s going to go over well.

As for the other projects – luckily I enjoy writing, and I love sitting at a computer keyboard. No kidding. I get up in the morning, eat breakfast, and head straight for my home office. Procrastination isn’t a problem, at least when it comes to writing.

But I’d still love to know how Rick Castle pulls it off.

Sometimes one word can change the way you think.

The word I’ve been thinking a lot about is “backstory” – the events that happen before a novel (or short story, TV show, play, or movie) begins.

I suspect that many would-be authors have difficulty with this concept. In fact I know they have difficulty with it, because I’ve read their manuscripts. The hopeful writer (often a friend or a friend-of-a-friend) has visions of bestseller status and fat royalty checks arriving in the mail.

And then I deliver the bad news: Nobody is going to publish your book.

Often the first page signals that a manuscript is unpublishable. Here’s the giveaway: Inexperienced writers usually start a book at the beginning of the story. A man and a woman meet at a bar. Or a wife dies. Or a man loses his job.

Slowly, like a train departing from a station, the story builds up speed and power. And during that slow build-up, readers lose interest and go on to something else.

If you’re a novice writer, it may never have occurred to you to start your book later in the story. And then you hear the term “backstory,” and you start thinking about it. And suddenly you’ve taken a giant step towards becoming a professional author.

Experienced writers choose a starting point that reveals character, relates to their theme, or starts the action moving. Or – better yet – does all three. Background information (the “backstory”) gets introduced later, after readers are hooked.

Little Women is a great example. The famous opening line (“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug) doesn’t explain who Jo is, who’s there with her, or why there won’t be any presents this year. What it does – very effectively – is pull you into the room where the four sisters are thinking about the bleak prospects for this year’s December festivities.

Think how different the book would be if Louisa May Alcott had begun it this way: “Jo March was born in 1838, the second of four girls, to a loving New England family beset with chronic financial problems.”

I can’t recall every being taught about backstory in a writing class – or ever talking about it myself when I used to teach literature. But it’s an intriguing concept, as well as a counterintuitive one.

Common sense tells you that books should never confuse their readers. The plot, characters, setting, and theme have to be crystal clear if you want to sell your book. You can’t let too much time go by before you explain what’s going on.

And therein lies a paradox. If you pause to introduce your characters and explain what’s happening and why, readers won’t bother to turn to the next page. Back goes the book onto the bookshelf, never to be opened again.

The trick is to work your backstory into your opening pages so skillfully that the story never slows down – not even for a second.

How can you learn how to do that? Simple. Go to your bookcase, pull out five or six novels you’ve enjoyed, and read the first page of each one with an eye to backstory. How did the author pull it off? Look and learn.

And then try it yourself.