Spotlight Profile
November 2002
Think Judge Judy without all the yelling. Our December Spotlight, Susan Kaye, is a county court commissioner in Sheboygan, Wisconsin handling small claims trials, felony bail hearings, search warrants, domestic violence and harassment restraining orders, traffic tickets and divorce cases. Susan has married upwards of four hundred couples.
Before taking the bench, Susan was the chief staff research attorney for the Milwaukee County court system and a criminal defense attorney.
With all that fodder, she is well equipped to be writing her current manuscript, a police procedural, adapted from a screenplay she wrote in the UCLA Writer’s Program.
Welcome to the Spotlight, Susan Kaye!
IC
Working within a court system must give you lots of story ideas.
Susan
Yes, my work provides an endless stream of ideas. I like to write about police work and I'm literally surrounded by police officers, prosecutors and defense lawyers throughout the day.
I hear some very interesting stories and have fabulous research sources through my work. I read quite a bit, both for work and for pleasure. Much of the continuing legal education that I'm required to attend revolves around forensics, DNA technology, and current trends in criminal activity. Sometimes, I get a little too excited about what I've learned and share it with my rather shocked friends. Imagine someone who isn't interested in forensic entomology or blood spatter patterns!
IC
How long have you been writing?
Susan
Almost as long as I could hold a pencil. I wrote my first five page horror story in the first grade. While I was still in grade school, my father watched me write story after story long hand. One day, he brought home my first typewriter. I still have it. I look at that typewriter as my parents' seal of approval on my journey to be a writer.
IC
You’re currently working on a police procedural. Have you written anything else?
Susan
The police procedural is my first book, based on a screenplay I wrote for the UCLA Writer’s Program. I’ve written other screenplays in the program as well. Before that, I was a reporter and Arts editor on my college newspaper; most of those assignments were interviews and feature articles about actors, musicians and artists. And I have written far too may legal documents to calculate - but I don’t count them as writing. Courts tend to frown on dialogue and clever plotting in motion papers.
IC
What techniques do you draw upon to develop plots and characters?
Susan
First, the characters pop into my head and introduce themselves. All of my creative writing starts with the characters. I live with them for a while and "observe" their behavior. When I find something interesting in the character's behavior or background, I start asking questions. For example, what would happen if a character, who may be obsessed with perfectionism, makes a serious mistake at work? What if that mistake costs someone their life? Who's the victim? How does the character deal with her shattered self-image? How would she overcome her feelings and try to set things right? Did she really make the mistake or did someone else set her up?
I keep narrowing the questions down until a story starts to form. At that point, I'll come up with a bullet outline of a crime or mystery that is very straight forward - who did what to whom, a time line of events, a checklist of necessary clues. After I have the basics, I let my imagination go to work on the outline. As my imagination runs wild, I add complications, conflicts and twists to take the concept from bullet outline to treatment form.
If I have the time, I like to put the story into screenplay format. Because screenplays are very structured and limited to 110 to 120 pages, with a lot of white space on each page, I'm forced to think about what is really important to the story and what can be cut or revised. The screenplay becomes a "living" outline, with the characters speaking for themselves in the draft, rather than a dry list of bullet points or paragraphs "about" what's happening in the story. Since a screenplay is always written in a present, active voice, it helps me to "see" the story developing in front of me. From that draft, I can flesh the story out without a lot of clutter that would be edited out later.
IC
What is the hardest part of writing for you?
Susan
I edit as I go along in my first draft. Although light editing is good, I sometimes hold the first draft up to the same standard that a published work should be held. I get overly critical and then lose the desire to write that day.
However, I’ve recently received help for my problem. In February, I took a workshop on mystery writing at UCLA. Jan Burke was a speaker in the class. She talked about Bones. It's a terrific book and it deserved the awards and praise that it received. When I read it, I couldn’t put it down. Everything about it - characters, dialogue, plot - is just superb.
Initially, Ms. Burke said that the first draft of Bones was unpublishable. She then corrected herself, saying it was almost unreadable. It really struck a cord with everyone there. It gave us permission to write and make mistakes in the first draft, yet not lose confidence that the story itself was still worth the effort. When I get to overly critical, I think about what Jan Burke said and keep writing.
IC
What frustrates you the most when writing?
Susan
I tend to "see" a story in my head, like a movie. I watch it first, then the words come. I get really frustrated when I know what I want to say, but can’t find the right words to do it justice. Seeing the perfect scene in my head and not being able to describe it in an inspiring way drives me nuts.
IC
With those frustrations, how ever do you manage your inner voice?
Susan
Ooohhh, she's a brutal little witch. She compares me constantly to other writers and always lets me know how inferior I am in comparison. She keeps reminding me that my plots have been written before. She tells my characters that they’re boring people. She never lets up.
Thanks to yoga and mediation, my inner cheerleader has been set free. To be blunt, she pops up and tells my inner witch where she can go and what she can do with herself. My cheerleader reminds me of all the little successes and compliments I've gotten along the way and she drives me on.
All kidding aside, yoga, along with meditation, does bring peace to a chaotic day. It helps the creative ideas flow and stills negativity in the mind.
IC
How do you get in the mood to write?
Susan
Many times, it's someone else who will inspire me. If I read a really great piece of writing, or if I see a brilliant script on film, I just want to sit down and tell my own story. When someone else's story really touches me, it's an inspiration to let my own imagination soar.
Alternatively, when my wrist gets tired from playing every video game demo stored on my computer, I conclude that I better get something on the page before the day is a total waste...
IC
How did you decide you wanted pursue a writing career?
Susan
I don't think that I ever made that decision. I've been telling stories about princesses who save princes, Super Kids and child detectives ever for as long as I remember - a genetic trait which seems to have been passed on to my godson. When I learned how to write, I put the stories down on paper (much to the joy of my parents and their tired ears) and I just haven't stopped.
IC
Who or what was the greatest influence on your career?
Susan
My parents, first and foremost, are my greatest influence. They've always encouraged me, supported me, and been my greatest cheerleaders.
As for learning my craft, I've been blessed with wonderful teachers. No prima donnas, all very talented. The teacher who had the most influence on my writing is Steve Duncan. He's a professor at Loyola in Los Angeles and on-line at UCLA. Steve believed in both me and my work when I lost my faith. He also knew when to give me a swift kick in the butt when I needed it. Although I haven't taken any classes with him in quite a while, we’ve become friends and he's still a great inspiration to me.
IC
At what point did you start calling yourself a writer?
Susan
I was a victim of childhood labeling. If you have children, or if you remember back to grade school, teachers give out paper with ruled lines about half to three-quarters of an inch wide with a broken line down the middle to help children learn to write in cursive script. Ms. Audrey, my first grade teacher, gave everyone in my class two sheets of that paper and told us write a story for story time the next day.
I went home, took several more pages out of a regular notebook and wrote a detailed story about a haunted house. At the next parent/teacher conference, Ms. Audrey pulled out that story and showed it to my parents saying, "This girl is going to be a writer." Since Ms. Audrey was never wrong, I believed her and carried on accordingly.
IC
What if anything have you had to give up in order to pursue your writing?
Susan
Nothing, actually. I think writing added a great deal to my life. I've met some wonderful people through writer's groups and conferences. It keeps my imagination alive. It brings me joy. For those of you who are Joseph Campbell fans - it's my way to bliss. There are days when I can only write a few paragraphs at one in the morning and there are days when I can spend a whole day working on a project. I just make sure that I squeeze some writing in during the day for my sanity’s sake.
IC
What hobbies or interests do you pursue?
Susan
I run three or four times a week. I practice yoga and participate in group classes weekly. I like to travel whenever I can. I love seeing new places and meeting different people. I read constantly and try to vary my subjects. I love mysteries, but also enjoy history, biographies, political and spiritual works. Much to the horror of my friends who don't aspire to mystery writing, I also have quite a few books on criminal investigation, psychology and forensics.
But then there's my deep, dark secret...
Hello, my name is Susan and I'm a television addict. I can't stop watching Law and Order, CSI, Smallville, Buffy. There's a new addiction of choice every season. I tape a lot of shows and watch them while I'm doing other things around the house.
IC
What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Susan
"Stop whining! Get your ass back in that chair and write!" Steve Duncan said that to me when I was going through one of my tortured artist phases.
All though I've condensed it, it was a good piece of advice. Instead of killing myself thinking about the perfect solution to my story problem and not writing a word until I found it, Steve told me to keep putting words on the page. If they didn't work, erase them and come up with new words. Doing that got me used to writing and editing on a regular basis (even when I didn't feel like it). It also trained me to experiment with new ideas, even when I thought my outline was an exact map of the story I wanted to write. Practice makes perfect - or at least better.
IC
How do you define "success"?
Susan
It’s the feeling that I got at the end of my first on-line screenplay course. I was working on a mystery/thriller script. We shared our work in an e-classroom and received private notes from the teacher and each other later. Only 30 pages were required to complete the course, but the teacher encouraged us to finish the draft if possible. I only made it to page 100 by the final day of class.
In days after the class was finished, I got e-mails from classmates asking for the last few pages. One e-mail was particularly clear - "Don't you dare leave me hanging!"
That was success. It was a story that got people excited. I touched someone with my words. My classmates, through their reaction, inspired me to go on. I enjoy writing and I'm thrilled when someone else gets hooked reading what I wrote. That's what it’s all about for me.
IC
Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to leave us with?
Susan
"Only those who dare to go too far, know how far they can go." Unfortunately, I have no idea who said that. It was on a poster in the classroom of a very progressive nun who encouraged us to follow our dreams and use the talents we’ve been given.
IC
Thank you, Susan Kaye, for agreeing to be in the Spotlight. Your siblings in crime certainly wish you all the success in the world and look forward to reading your mysteries for years to come.
This interview was conducted during the month of September 2002 for SinC-IC
by Ellen Westphal.
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