Guest Post: Failing Up

I’m uncertain when I first met Sandra Murphy, but I am certain that we’d crossed paths online for many years before we met in person at the Dallas Bouchercon in 2019. Before we met in person, though, our writing careers intersected in an unexpected way: I posted a smart-alecky remark on Facebook that I wanted to become the James Patterson of short story writers by collaborating with other writers to increase my productivity. Sandra called my bluff and offered to give it a shot. Since then, we’ve finished and sold five short stories, have one in progress that shows great potential, and have a few more that, while not actually dead, are clearly on life-support. Here she explains how her non-writing failures have led to her writing successes. 

— Michael Bracken

Failing Up

By Sandra Murphy

Sandra’s love of learning new things—in this
case learning to create things with mixed
media—has inspired many of her stories.

I speak Spanish and Chinese. I love to dance. As a kid, I signed up for all kinds of after school lessons—swimming, piano, ballet, tap, and baton twirling. In adult education classes, I learned to make a meringue Christmas tree, spinach quiche, and the paper frills that go on a crown rib roast. Such a variety of skills and yet, they all have one thing in common.

I am astonishingly bad at all of them.

Four years of high school Spanish and I can ask what’s your name, how much does this cost, and what is the location of the bathroom. In Chinese, I can let you know, I am tall. There is no doubt that these are not my native languages. To my credit, I never harmed anyone with a misguided baton toss. There was an incident with that quiche and too much Tabasco sauce which apparently reaches fiery levels after baking.

As for as dancing, I have no rhythm and cannot hear the beat except when the Bee Gees are singing. So far, I’ve not harmed anyone on the dance floor either. There’s still time.

I was reminded, double-digit years ago, how much I enjoy the written word. It was also pointed out, I wasn’t limited to reading. I could write as well. Rather than writing well, I scribbled an untold number of articles and stories that will never see the light of publication. As soon as an editor could stop laughing at my pompous attempt to sound like my idea of a writer, an instant rejection would have followed.

I kept writing. There was a short romance story where my main character was deemed to be a stalker rather than a nice guy, chatting up a nice gal. My mystery had no hook, dragged along at a pace compared to that of a snail with a limp. I wrote descriptions of weather, scenery, and characters, just to see if I could.

Surrounded by other writers, I got better. And I began to notice how often my fictitious alter ego used my real-life experiences to tell her stories.

Despite not being able to roll my r’s or sing a tune, I do speak fluent Dog. After years of pet sitting for dogs as small as a three-pound Pom and as large as a 250-pound mastiff, I’ve learned to not just listen to the canine voice but to respond in kind. I shouldn’t have been surprised when a cocky, some might say conceited, Jack Russell Terrier turned up as a drug sniffer in an early story, titled “Arthur.” A mama cat and her litter of four kittens made their debut during Hurricane Harvey, in “Lucy’s Tree.” Denali, a large, rowdy pup of indeterminant parentage, introduced a lonely woman to a shy man. When her ex assumed he was welcome to return, Denali showed him the door, literally. “Denali” is in the Dogs and Dragons anthology. Dogs just run full tilt into my stories, skid to a stop, and refuse to leave. Good dogs!

Cooking bloopers were brought to light in “The Chicken Pot Pie Fiasco,” “The Tater Tot Caper,” and “Bananas Foster.” I swear, I’ve never set anyone on fire with a flaming dessert in real life. I’ve been more into nuking than cooking from scratch since that Tabasco incident.

My unintentionally non-profit business of creating jewelry for drag queens meant time in their dressing room before a performance. Details of those eye-opening visits turned into scenes in “The Exterminator.”

When the words become rowdy and uncooperative or worse, go on break, I resort to playing online gin rummy with avatar Bill, who I suspect cheats. If a couple of games doesn’t set my creativity free, I move on to YouTube videos. My favorites of late are mixed media demos. The artists use paint, junk mail, and expired credit cards to make art. I can’t say I understand it but watching them layer odd bits into a finished piece makes me think of how words on the page, in the right order, layered with emotion, bring a story to life.

In “The Mixed Media Mess,” published in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, issue #13, one of the main characters is a mixed media artist, the other a writer who has a Corgi in her book. Once again, my life oozed into my writing.

I may never hear the beat in music, but reading a story aloud at writers group, I hear the cadence of my words.

In one instance at least, I got rhythm.

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In St. Louis, Sandra’s enthusiasm and love for bright colors, textures, and shapes, far outweighs her talent for mixed media. Raised by a mother who could turn canned biscuits into hockey pucks, Sandra managed to win the Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year award in her senior year of high school. Luckily, it was a written exam.

She’s editor of Peace, Love, and Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the ’60s (Untreed Reads), and her story “The Mixed Media Mess” appears in the just-published Black Cat Mystery Magazine #13.