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player ready...Author Sharon Fiffer knows the ideal writing process: Get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee, and then bang out relevant and dynamic prose for three hours.
On most days, her real writing process differs just a smidge.
“I will wander around the house aimlessly for hours – something is always distracting me,” Fiffer said. “When I do finally sit down to write, I will meander over the keys for a long time before getting three hours in.”
Fiffer, author of the eight-book Jane Wheel mystery series, will share information about her writing process and the characters in her books during a presentation at 2 p.m. Oct. 2 at the Eisenhower Public Library in Harwood Heights. Registration for Fiffer’s Oct. 2 program at the library can be completed on the Eisenhower Library home page, eisenhowerlibrary.org.
In “A Conversation with Mystery Writer Sharon Fiffer,” the author will discuss how her laid-off, separated, and heading-for-a-midlife-crisis main character stumbles upon dead bodies while making ends meet as a “picker,” foraging for antiques at suburban Chicago garage sales and flea markets.
While on a book project, Fiffer said, she tries to produce a “solid five pages” of copy per day.
“That’s a really good day,” she said. “Sometimes it’s three pages; sometimes it’s one page.”
The Evanston resident, whose first Jane Wheel book was published in 2001, said writing mysteries was not on her mind when she started thinking about writing her first book.
“I did not start out with a mystery,” Fiffer said. “I wanted to write about a woman having a midlife crisis, and then I added a dead body.”
Lots of dead bodies and eight books later, Fiffer said she does not have many critiques of her earlier works.
“I probably had one dead body too many in the first book.” Fiffer said.
A collector herself, Fiffer said there is a plenty of her in the Jane Wheel character. There are plenty of differences too though.
“I’ve never found a dead body,” Fiffer said.
Two characters in the books who have uncanny similarities to real life are Don and Nellie, owners of the EZ Way Inn in Kankakee. Fiffer’s parents, Don and Nellie, ran the EZ Way Inn in Kankakee. She said whenever she talks in Kankakee about the books, someone will always come up who knew her parents and talk to her about them.
Concerned that Nellie did not come off all that well in the first book, Fiffer nervously brought an advance copy to her mother, telling Nellie about the not-so-flattering portrayal.
“Oh, I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to read it anywhere,” Fiffer remembers her mother, who was not a reader, saying to her.
“People ask if I was crushed by that,” Fiffer said. “No, that was just who she was.”
Married to a non-fiction writer, Fiffer said she and husband Steve use each other as sounding boards for their work, as well as editors. They also teach writing workshops together.
Fiffer said she loves to go to events like the one planned at the Eisenhower Library.
“I love talking with people who have enjoyed the books and have questions about the novels,” Fiffer said.
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Kevin Beese is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.