Blog – Page 2

July 1, 2018 By Joyce Simons

Art and the Rewrite

A few weeks ago, I received feedback on my novel from from several readers, including one high-powered literary agent. And after taking the time to weigh and synthesize their feedback, I decided to tweak my novel for two reasons. First, I want it to reflect my best work. And second, I want to make it as easy as possible for an agent to sell.

But now that I’m deep in the tweaks, they’re taking longer than I expected. The process reminds me of what it’s like to knit something intricate, and discover after a few rows— or worse, a few feet— that you made a mistake. There’s nothing quite as agonizing as pulling out row upon row of knitting. I once spent an entire afternoon unraveling and reknitting a pattern only to discover than I had missed an even earlier mistake.

The challenge with rewriting a mystery is that it’s quite the little tapestry. You have to plant clues without calling attention to them, and introduce red herrings without making it obvious that you’re trying to send your reader down the garden path. It’s sort of like baking a cake only to realize you left out an egg. I wouldn’t know how to fix that cake. But tweaking my novel is feeling a lot like baking a soufflé because it’s one delicate operation.

The good news is that we’re talking about tweaks, not major surgery, because I took the time to get my plot (mostly) right. If I hadn’t, I’d be reliving a tough lesson I learned when I was about 16. I was taking a life drawing class at the Brooklyn Museum of Art with my friend Suzy. I never thought of either Suzy or myself as artists. But she was a dancer, so she had a deeper understanding of the human body than I did. Our instructor, Chuck (his name is still seared into my memory because I had a painful lesson to learn), had us do a five-minute sketch of a young woman. I drew an outline but something didn’t feel quite right. So I used every artistic technique I knew at the time to improve it. When I glanced over at Suzy’s sketch, it seemed overly simple. Poor Suzy. I hoped she could stand up to Chuck’s critique.

Thankfully, Chuck told us not to sign our drawings. We pinned them all up on a wall and one by one, he pointed out everything that was wrong with them. When he got to Suzy’s, I braced myself. I didn’t want to see her decimated right there on the spot. He said something along the lines of, “The torso is a bit too long, but that’s alright. This artist is off to a decent start.”

Phew! Crisis averted! Bullet dodged!

When he got to mine, I tried to act as cool as a cucumber. I didn’t want to incur the jealousy of my classmates for my impressive execution of chiaroscuro. I hoped Chuck wouldn’t lay on the praise too thickly, though I secretly wished he would gush just a little. Here’s what he said:

“I feel really bad for whoever drew this.”

Wait, what?!

“This artist drew a torso that’s much too short and they tried to cover it up with all this fancy shading. The only thing they can do is start over.”

OMG. Talk about wishing a hole would open up in the floor and swallow me. Right then and there, I learned the hazards of putting lipstick on a pig. And I’ve been a little paranoid about repeating that mistake ever since.

The funny thing is that if you didn’t learn a lesson completely the first time, it’ll resurface in a new guise. A few years ago, I wrote a screenplay that wasn’t quite working but I couldn’t put my finger on why. So I showed it to my friend Brian McDonald, one of the best teachers I’ve ever studied with. Brian is a passionate proponent of getting your armature right because it will dictate and support every dramatic choice we as writers make. I remember sitting next to him on a park bench in Capitol Hill as he read my script. I think I even whipped out a pad and pen to take notes. But I could have fit his assessment inside a fortune cookie:

“You have the wrong theme.”

Good grief. There it was: the answer to the mystery. I changed the theme, wrote another few drafts of the screenplay, and reached the quarterfinals of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting (a career milestone for new or even experienced screenwriters).

Thankfully, I did due diligence on my novel’s armature and outline before drafting pages. I didn’t get it 100% right but I certainly don’t have to start completely over. So back I go to the proverbial drawing board to unravel some of the tapestry I wove and put it back together in a way that’s just as beautiful but more solid.

Thanks this week go to Chuck for teaching me a hard-learned lesson. I have no idea what became of him or whether he was a successful artist in his own right. But thanks to what he taught me, I plan to persevere in my rewrite without chiaroscuro, without lipstick, and with just enough paranoia to make sure my theme supports my plot, my plot supports my story, and my readers are thrilled with the result.

May 12, 2018 By Joyce Simons

A Nerd’s Take on Feedback

A few years ago, I decided to change careers. The only problem was that I had no idea which career to pursue next. I tried to think my way to the answer. Whatever I was meant to do in this lifetime must be something that came naturally to me, I reasoned. But I was a little too close to the subject (i.e., me) to be objective. And besides, if you want to know what your passion is, it’s best to feel—not think— your way to the answer.

So I turned to my friends. I asked them to list the things they felt I was really good at. I collected their responses, put them in an Excel spreadsheet, and normalized their answers. (For instance, I considered “running” and “jogging” to be essentially the same activity for the purposes of this experiment, though none of my friends listed either activity— or any other sporty activity for that matter). Then I sorted the activities by frequency (how often they appeared).

I was blown away by the unanimity of my friends’ answers. Storytelling topped the list. Drawing relationships between things came second. I had no idea at the time that writing novels about someone who pieces together seemingly unrelated clues would hit the mark.

Fast forward to the present day, and I’ve created several spreadsheets to track my progress as a novelist. You might consider it a nerdy way to manage my second career but, as I always say, there’s a lot of comfort to be found in nerdiness. Nerds are reliable. So is data. Try as you might, you cannot argue with data.

One spreadsheet tracks responses from agents I queried. I wish I received more personalized rejections but I understand the time constraints of people who are inundated with query letters and sample chapters. Unfortunately, they offer no meaningful data to explain why I received more “not a great fit” responses than “please send me the full manuscript” (though I’ve received several of the latter— yippee!).

So, in search of meaningful feedback by avid mystery readers, I entered a competition. Several judges read and scored my work, and most of them were kind enough to write comments to substantiate their numerical ratings. Normalizing those comments was a lot trickier than normalizing activities I’m good at. But the end result was just as clear-cut. The writing was “excellent” and “evocative.” What was lacking was “more dialog,” which struck me as ironic because my background is in screenwriting. Other comments confirmed some niggling concerns I had about other aspects of my novel. But, as I wrote earlier, you can’t argue with data. It turns out I wasn’t alone in identifying those areas (which, thankfully, are not plentiful). As one judge wrote, “with just a few small tweaks, you’ll have something really special.” And other judges echoed that sentiment using different-but-similar noun-verb-modifier combinations.

In the end, after I recovered from the disappointment of not having won the competition, my experience turned out to be immensely rewarding. I’m not yet ready to go back to my manuscript and tweak it on the advice of a handful of anonymous judges. It’s already in the hands of several literary agents. But when I have an agent and publisher, I’ll happily use this data to inform any revisions that will render my novel more successful. For now, I have already begun using it to draft my next novel. And who knows? Maybe this sequel will be recognized instantly as “something really special” without the spreadsheets to back it up.

Thanks this week go to judges 735, 613, 740, and 724 in the Daphne du Maurier Award competition. Some of your comments made me cringe (because I should have caught those issues myself), and some made me laugh out loud (especially the ones about my protagonist’s peculiarities). But all of them provided valid— and valuable— data that I’m putting to good use!

April 10, 2018 By Joyce Simons

There’s More to France Than Just Paris

A year or so ago I wandered into a travel store and asked to be directed to books about France. The saleslady was delighted to escort me to an entire bookcase full of guides, cookbooks, and novels set in Europe. But the books about France were limited to those about Paris. And though there are some outstanding books about Paris, and Paris always has been and will be one of my favorite cities in the world, its dominance of the travel store’s bookshelves made me wonder whether the rest of France might be one of Europe’s best-kept secrets.

I just returned to the U.S. from a visit to Lyon and several other French cities. But these days, Lyon is what’s top-of-mind for me because it’s where I’ll be setting my next mystery novel. So let’s begin my homage to France’s third largest city (after Paris and Marseille), which I tend to think of as a smaller version of Paris because it has all the charm of Paris without all the hustle and bustle.

What I love most about Lyon is the preservation of its history, which dates all the way back to its founding in 43 BC as an Ancient Roman settlement called Lugdunum. During the Renaissance, its development grew along with the silk trade. Lyon’s Old Town is not only a UNESCO World Heritage site, but it’s also the largest Renaissance district in the world after Florence, Italy.

Lyon is teeming with museums, promenades, stunning architecture, ornamental parks, bridges spanning its two rivers (the Rhone and the Saone), festivals galore (including a Festival of Lights each December and a festival of crime fiction each April), and of course, food. It’s often referred to as France’s capital of gastronomy so no visit would be complete without a meal at one of its famous bouchons. Bouchons are where silk workers used to “restore” their energy (hence the etymology of the work restaurant). And if you like meat and meat by-products, then a bouchon is a meat-eater’s paradise. This visit, I followed in the footsteps of celebu-chef Anthony Bourdain and dined at Café Comptoir Abel, one of Lyon’s most authentic bourgeois bistros.

There’s typically no better deal at a French bistro than the formule that serves up a two- or three-course meal as an affordable alternative to ordering à la carte. So, not being much of a carnivore, I decided to start with something light, like a Salade Lyonnaise. How naive I was! There’s nothing “light” about this salad because a bed of crispy greens is almost smothered under a mountain of bacon, croutons, and at least one egg. But it made me realize that there’s more to bouchons than just meat and heavy cream sauces.

To see just why silk workers, called canuts, needed so much sustenance, it’s worth visiting one of the city’s many silk ateliers and La Maison Des Canuts in particular. It’s where you can see a demonstration of the famous Jacquard loom that automated the intricate process of reproducing patterns. It’s also where you can shop for beautiful silk scarves (though there’s no shortage of places to shop for silk, including the boutique of my favorite silk designer, Sophie Guyot).

If you’re wondering what else Lyon has to offer, you’re sure to find it on the city’s tourism website. In addition to an impressive array of guided tours about everything from Lyonnais cuisine to the city’s hidden mysteries, you can request a specialized tour from a City Greeter. City Greeters are volunteers who are fiercely proud of their city and eager to share their knowledge for free. I requested a tour of Lyon’s secret passages and was treated to a morning with a retired Philosophy professor who guided me through the Croix-Rousse district. In its heyday, the Croix-Rousse was home to silk weavers who carried their woven silk through these passages to riverside traders to avoid exposing it to the elements. And it’s these same passages where the WW II Resistance used to meet in secret to elude their would-be captors.

*La Cour des Voraces*, a *traboule* in the Croix-Rousse

Upon leaving Lyon, I took the train to Versailles, where another City Greeter was waiting to show me some of its hidden gems. What many tourists don’t know is that there’s more to Versailles than just a chateau. But more about Versailles in a future blog post. For now let me just reiterate that, to quote Rick Blaine in Casablanca, we’ll always have Paris. So why not head east and explore the wonders of Lyon?

To help inspire you, here’s a smattering of articles and blog posts that, imho, do the city justice:

48 Hours In: Lyon
This article on The Independent website offers handy-dandy travel essentials, an overview of the city, and a two-day itinerary with advice on where to stay and where to eat. Two travel essentials it doesn’t mention are: (1) Lyon is only two hours from Paris via TGV; and (2) within Lyon, you can get around by metro, bus, tram, or Uber.
An introduction to Lyon, France (in photos!)
I don’t know Anna, the author of the Slightly Astray blog. But boy, does she post some magnificent photos of Lyon. Evidently, she’s an Anthony Bourdain fan too.
What to do in Lyon – besides eat
I don’t know Carol Perehudoff, author of the Wandering Carol luxury travel blog, either. But she has done a fine job of mapping out a food-free itinerary of Lyon, complete with historical factoids, practical information, and a link to her foodie blog.
My best Lyonnais blogs and all about Lyon. So this is how I discover Lyon!
Aga, a Polish woman who blogs as “jadorelyon,” has assembled an entertaining list of her favorite blogs that you’ll find useful to research a visit that suits your needs— for instance, if you’re on a budget, you’re traveling with kids, you’re a beer lover, you speak French, you don’t speak French, etc.

Thanks this week go to the federation of City Greeters who need only 48 hours’ notice to organize the visit you request and who offer this service for free. Special thanks to Paul Moreau, the City Greeter who led me through the traboules and hidden gardens of Lyon. Merci pour une belle balade, Paul!

March 8, 2018 By Joyce Simons

10 Questions about Knitting with Marielle Snyder

If you enjoyed my interview with master knitter Catherine Smegal a few weeks ago, here’s another interview with an extraordinarily talented knitter. I first met Marielle Snyder on safari in Africa, which sounds a lot more hoity toity than it was. I soon learned that she does a remarkable number of things remarkably well: gourmet cooking, sewing, weaving tapestries, creating mosaic sculptures, and of course, knitting. Oh, and she’s also fluent in French. As if it isn’t unfair enough that all those gifts should belong to one person, Marielle is one of the most generous people I know.

Thinking about her made me wonder whether there’s a link between people who knit and that degree of generosity. After a little googling, I found this quotation in Mindful Knitting: Inviting Contemplative Practice to the Craft by Tara Jon Manning:

As knitters know, so much of ourselves is knit into the structure of the fabric, and here that sense of warmth can literally be shared with a loved one or with an appreciative stranger. In this way, you can explore your own capacity for kindness, allowing you to share this kindness more freely.

If you read Marielle’s answers to my ten questions below, that kindness comes across loud and clear. And so does her artistic insight into knitting, knitters, and how the things they knit reveal more about them than they might realize.

Q: Why do you knit?
A: I’ve always enjoyed it. I knitted as a young child, I knitted as a young mother, and now I knit as a grandmother. Knitters are great communities. They’re helpful, we learn from each other, we exchange opinions with each other. Knitters aren’t as judgmental as other people. And it’s relaxing. I like doing it at nighttime watching TV because it relaxes me and it’s creative. Sometimes it doesn’t take a long time to finish a project, especially with children’s garments. We knit a lot of garments for charities, like hats for sailors, blankets for the elderly, etc. We’re always making things and giving them away. I make these really cute sweaters and I’d rather give them to a young mother who can’t afford to get something nice for her kids. That makes me happy. I’d rather do that than sell my stuff.

Q: According to Churchmouse Yarns & Teas (my favorite shop on Bainbridge Island), project knitters focus on the destination; process knitters focus on the journey. Which type of knitter are you, and what kind of project fulfills both needs?
A: I focus on the journey because I’ve had the experience of making these beautiful sweaters for my grandkids and seeing them on the floor of the car. You have to learn to let go. I do it for the enjoyment of doing it. Once I finish that project, I start another project. You give it away and you don’t look back.

Q: Can you give me an example of a challenge or problem in your life that was assuaged by knitting?
A: Knitting has been an escape for me. I would have loved to have knit when I was recovering recently from a broken wrist and broken finger. It puts you in a different frame of mind. You’re grounding yourself to Mother Earth in some ways. You’re holding the yarn, it comes from a sheep, you’re counting your stitches, and it makes you stop thinking of your problems because you’re concentrating on your project, even if you have to rip it out. It’s getting away from whatever worries you have at the time.

Q: What are your favorite things to knit?
A: Children’s sweaters and socks. Kids clothes are really fast to make (1-2 weeks) and you get the satisfaction of finishing the job. I can finish a pair of socks in a week.

Q: What knitting project are you proudest of and why?
A: One of the nicest things I ever did—and I had to do it twice because someone threw it in the wash and it shrank—was a ladybug sweater I knit it for my granddaughter. It was an intarsia pattern. It was gorgeous, it took a lot of time, and it had 6-7 different colors. I almost wanted to make one for myself.

Q: What, in your opinion, is the pinnacle of knitting? (That is, what project do you aspire to?)
A: I want to do one of those Norwegian sweaters because it has all those patterns and colors in it and it would drive you crazy to make.

Q: If you met a handsome, 39-year-old man who was an avid knitter, what assumptions might you make about him?
A: I would think he was extremely creative and probably created his own patterns. They’d be something worth looking at. I’d think of Stephen West. (See his simple, clean designs and innovative colorwork at http://westknits.com/.) This man would be interesting to talk to. He’d probably look at life a little differently. It all would depend on what kind of colors he uses. It would tell a lot about his personality and what’s going on in his life. For instance, if he knit all in white I’d think he was very direct and straightforward, and something was missing in his life. Content but not happy.

Q: What is your biggest frustration about knitting?
A: Anytime I’m doing a pattern and I’m off the pattern and I have to rip it out and do it again. Or I use the wrong color of yarn and have to rip it out. It’s frustrating but it’s all part of the learning curve. Another big frustration is when you get a British pattern and you can’t figure it out worth beans because the terminology is different from American English.

Q: What is the biggest misconception you think people have about knitters?
A: That they’re introverts, they’re solitary, and they close themselves off.

Q: What does knitting do for you that you can’t get any other way?
A: It gives me satisfaction. I accomplish something. I do something worthwhile. It makes me feel good inside. It’s very artistic. If I don’t do something artistic, I get depressed.

Thanks this week go to Marielle for her wisdom, her beautiful photos, and the pumpkin hat she knit for me a few years ago. When I wear it, I sometimes worry that I look like an overgrown child with a Jack-o’-lantern on my head. And then I dismiss that worry and decide that everyone should be so lucky to have a handcrafted pumpkin hat because it isn’t just made out of yarn; it’s also made out of kindness.

February 16, 2018 By Joyce Simons

Men Who Knit

In the days before #MeToo and Times Up, I used to bristle whenever I heard a sexist remark. For example, a man at my gym once gushed, “You can leg-press over 300 pounds? Not bad for a girl!” Never mind that he bulked up his biceps at the expense of working on his knitting-needle legs. Qualifying a compliment with a little sexist flourish is more than I’m now willing to brush aside.

But sexism works both ways. Men make sexist comments about women, and women make them about men. What has changed for me is that my ability to recognize a remark as sexist has skyrocketed while my ability to ignore it has plummeted. So I practically gave myself a case of whiplash the other day while shaking my head in disbelief over this comment from a female literary agent:

“If your protagonist knits, shouldn’t he be a woman?”

Shepherd knitting

The answer is an unqualified no.

But on second thought, allow me to qualify my no. As I like to say, every interaction is an opportunity to learn something new. So here we go.

If you’ve been watching the Winter Olympics, you may have caught a glimpse of Finnish snowboarding coach Antti Koskinen knitting at the top of the course. He took a break just long enough to give his Finnish snowboarder Roope Tonteri a fist pump and then returned to his knitting. If Mr. Koskinen knits, should he be a woman? I don’t think so. Kudos to him for not just knitting on the slopes, but also for doing it during a globally televised event!

Antti Koskinen knitting

If you think that Mr. Koskinen is a highly evolved 21^st century male, then you might be surprised to learn that men have dominated the history of knitting through the ages.

Two thousand years ago, men invented fishing nets by knitting them, and began to wear woven clothes — also by knitting them. Fast forward a millennium, plus or minus a couple centuries, and knitting guilds came into existence — and were populated exclusively by men.

Knitting guild

It wasn’t until the 16^th century when a man invented a knitting machine that many men stopped knitting because it was more efficient to produce machine-made textiles. Although in Colonial America, boys who didn’t have access to this knitting machine still knit socks and other sundries. Which is not to say that only male colonists knit. But it is to say that not all colonists must have been women because they knit.

The same goes for knitters during the two World Wars— yes, British and American women knit things (socks, mittens, helmet liners) for soldiers but so did schoolboys. (Read more about “bros and rows” on HuffPost.com.)

Knit Your Bit poster

Today, men who knit may seem like an anomaly, perhaps because we’ve become accustomed to the image of Miss Marple or our own grandmothers knitting shawls and tea cozies. But here’s just a smattering of living celebrity men who knit, according to knitcrate.com:

Ashton Kutcher
Christopher Walken
David Arquette
George Lucas
Keifer Sutherland
Russell Crowe
Ryan Gosling

In fact, according to CBS News, “a lot of guys are taking up knitting, especially as the hobby surges in popularity on college campuses, in coffee shops and at the many yarn stores that are sprouting up in cities across the country.”

As the saying goes, everything old is new again. Knitters used to be exclusively men, now they’re predominantly women. But men who knit are on the rise! And I like to think that women as well as men might prefer reading about a seductive Frenchman who has mastered the art of knitting to reading about a Miss Marple clone.

Thanks this week go to the folks at HuffPost, CBS News, and NBC Sports who are giving men who knit their well-earned place in the spotlight. Vive le tricoteur !

Christopher Walken knitting