joyce simons

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!

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

November 14, 2017 By Joyce Simons

Does Where You Write Influence What You Write?

I used to work for a boss who told me that she could put me in the middle of a minefield and it wouldn’t keep me from doing my job. But not everyone is as insensitive to their surroundings as I used to be. In fact, I’ve become quite sensitive to them. Right now, there’s a thunderstorm brewing outside my window and though it’s still daytime, it looks like night out there. I can hear the rataplan of raindrops being beaten against my window by the same high winds that just toppled my rose arbor. It’s the perfect climate for killing someone on the page. And since my surroundings are cozy, I’ll be carrying out that activity in a manner consistent with cozy mysteries (no graphic sex or violence).

But what if I were in a different setting? If I were sitting in room piled high with Victoriana, might I be writing about dropping arsenic in a teacup? Would a beach house with an ocean view inspire me to introduce a man-eating shark into my story? Would some dark and dank corner of a concrete jungle entice me to stick a hypodermic needle in someone’s arm?

In other words, does where we write influence what we write?

According to an article on TheAtlantic.com, it took F. Scott Fitzgerald nearly a decade to finish Tender Is the Night, in part because his peripatetic lifestyle kept him bouncing around continents. When he finally settled in one place, he wrote in “dark, disheveled rooms with a bottle of gin in a nearby drawer.” That could easily explain why his novel is so bleak. The Wikipedia article about it claims the bleakness reflects the darkest years of the author’s life. But it could also be argued that it reflects the darkness of his surroundings as well.

The article on TheAtlantic.com cites various papers and studies that examine the effects of one’s surroundings on one’s creativity. Here’s a quick recap of the elements that can stimulate your creativity:

Darkness
Plentiful noise
Plentiful booze
Dim lighting
A messy desk
No desk
Disorder
Ambient noise similar to what you’d hear at your local Starbucks
Rooms with high ceilings

The article also suggests that writing by hand, taking a walk, and getting a little drunk can promote abstract thinking, which is so critical to creativity, especially if your starting point is “What if?”

Of course, your environment can’t make you creative if you’re not creative in the first place—all it can do is inspire and enhance. As Fitzgerald wrote, “You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.”

So I vote yes, where we write influences what we write. But you be the judge. Check out this amusing compilation of famous authors’ bedrooms and decide which decorative style inspires you most:

https://www.homeadvisor.com/r/literary-home-decor-ideas-from-8-famous-writers-bedrooms/

Thanks this week go to the wonderful folks who run the Writers’ Studio at Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network (BARN). It’s always a pleasure to pop in for a workshop, panel discussion, or writer’s salon. And it’s the folks at BARN who first introduced me to the floor plans of famous writers’ bedrooms. Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I did!

September 16, 2017 By Joyce Simons

Why Teachers Make Great Sleuths

I love teachers. If I didn’t have champagne taste, I might have been a teacher myself. Teachers hold a whole lot of information in their heads, and they give it away. When they don’t know an answer to a question, they research the topic because, chances are, they love the challenge of learning something themselves.

It’s said that “Knowledge is power.” It’s a quote attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, though there’s no known evidence of him having actually said or written this maxim. Personally, I prefer the pithier “Knowledge is good,” which was intended as a joke in the film Animal House, because it’s sublime in its simplicity.

Knowledge is Good still from Animal House

But knowledge in and of itself isn’t all that useful unless you put it to work for you.

I’m no expert at what it takes to be a teacher. But I think it’s safe to say that it takes a decent amount of intestinal fortitude to be one in a world where they’re overworked and underpaid, are sometimes expected to substitute-parent their students, and often spend their own money on school supplies when budget cuts get in the way. Something else they give vs. take.

Which adds up to a pretty good start for being an amateur sleuth who isn’t motivated by a big payday. But let’s review some specific criteria for being a modern-day Nancy Drew and see how teachers stack up:

Have a good personality and never think too highly of yourself.
I don’t know about the second part of that sentence, but I wouldn’t want to be sitting in a classroom led by someone with a bad personality. In high school, I had a history teacher with a caustic personality and I can’t recall learning a single thing from him, except how not to treat others. Misanthropes should steer clear of the profession, imho.
Have a backpack or adventure purse to put all of your gadgets in.
I love this criterion! Often teachers have to lug around more than just books and pens. As it happens, the protagonist of THE KNITTING DETECTIVE series carries a “sacoche,” which is the French version of a man-purse. It could easily do double-duty as an “adventure purse.”
Always wear something comfortable.
Check. Grandpa cardigans, elbow patches, shoes with the necessary arch support, et al. In the case of my protagonist, French professor Maxime Martin, even a leather motorcycle jacket qualifies as “comfortable.”
Always have a keen eye.
This is important for so many reasons — catching students cheating on exams, for one. But also knowing when a student is struggling and needs to be engaged in a different way or to a greater extent.
Make friends easily and have a good personality.
See #1.
Never jump to conclusions and always have evidence.
Very important! Did the dog really eat a student’s homework? Highly unlikely, especially if the student doesn’t have a dog.
Always stay calm and be brave.
Well, that goes without saying. If you’re leading an unruly class, it won’t help if you lose your cool and jump into the fray. And that doesn’t even begin to address the amount of courage that teachers in many inner-city schools have to summon up each day.
Always make sure that during a mystery you never give up on a clue.
This goes hand-in-hand with #6. Some clues are easy to dismiss. Have you ever noticed how many sleuths solve crimes only after revisiting clues they initially dismissed?
Make sure everything is in its place, otherwise your evidence will be confusing.
Never mind evidence for a moment. Anyone in authority who comes into contact with children had better have their ducks in a row.
Watch what you say to people: it could make them suspicious of you.
See #9.

So there you have it. I’ve been blessed to study under some great teachers who made me a better storyteller and launched me on a career as a screenwriter first, and then as a novelist. But teachers of all subjects around the world earn my gratitude because where would humankind be without them?

I don’t know if every teacher has a backpack or adventure purse, but if they do, here’s wishing life fills it up with only good things.

September 2, 2017 By Joyce Simons

We’re All in This Together

This morning I woke up at the crack of dawn and zipped to the Seattle ferry terminal to avoid delays at the start of this busy Labor Day weekend. Crossing Elliott Bay by ferry is a wonderful experience, especially on a beautiful day like today. But once in a while, you encounter someone who doesn’t realize—or just doesn’t care— that, like it or not, we’re all on this journey together.

Washington State Ferry

Like this morning, for instance. By the time I arrived, the Seattle holding area was already reaching capacity. Cars were sitting in the first dozen or so vehicle lanes waiting to board the ferry. New arrivals like me were proceeding to empty lanes waiting to fill up. And then the driver of the little red Kia in front of me decided that, rather than proceed to lane 13 or 14, she’d just pull into lane 3 with her tail sticking out so far that none of the cars behind her could pass her. I was dumbstruck. For a nanosecond, I calculated whether I could pass her without scratching her car or mine. Not a chance. So I beeped at her. She rolled down the window and, with a look of innocence that made me want to nominate her for an Oscar, asked, “What?”

Well, she asked so I told her what. “You’re cutting the line,” I said patiently. No reaction. Then I pointed out that when the ferry worker who monitors the holding area arrived, he’d more than likely ask her to back out and go to the end of the line, which might not fit onto the next ferry. And then an amazing thing happened. Not only did she apologize, back up, and proceed to lane 13 or 14, but so did another car that had cut the line by squeezing its arse into lane 2.

Taking a journey of any kind doesn’t mean we have to share the experience with our fellow travelers. You can sit in your car and I can sit in mine, and we never have to interact. But if I do my part and you do yours, then chances are we’ll both arrive without a scratch. So what does any of this have to do with writing mystery novels?

Quite simply, it’s this: “No man is an island,” as John Donne wrote, even if we’re riding a ferry to one. We’re all “a part of the main.” Next week I’ll be heading to the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, where I hope to find a literary agent who will believe in me and my work, and offer to shepherd my novel to the best possible publishing deal. But I’m not planning to sit in my car with the windows rolled up while he or she does this alone. We’ll be in this together. When it comes time to promote and market my novel, I expect to play an active part, even though it’s in my nature to let the experts do their bit while I focus on writing the sequel(s).

To improve my luck when opportunity knocks, I’ve been preparing for this next step in the journey by reading piles of books about marketing your work if you’re an author. My favorite book of this type so far is Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday because he takes an holistic approach to the creative process, positioning your work, marketing it, and building a platform. In it, he writes, “If the first step in the process is coming to terms with the fact that no one is coming to save you—there’s no one to take this thing off your hands and champion it the rest of the way home—then the second is realizing that the person who is going to need to step up is you.”

I’ve completed the fun and agonizing work of getting my manuscript to the point where it’s ready to be submitted to literary agents. Now I’m gearing up for the fun and agonizing work of getting it “the rest of the way home” which, to me, means securing representation and a publishing deal in order to get my book on store shelves, in public and private libraries, on Amazon and other online retailers, and more generally, in the consciousness of the book-buying public.

But it all starts with an appreciation for the fact that I may have started out on this journey by myself but I’m not continuing it alone. It’s something that the lady in the little red Kia might not have considered when she snuck into lane 3, but hopefully she’ll remember it on the ferry ride home.

I can’t wait to meet my fellow travelers at Book Passage next week. So until then, I’d like to thank Ryan Holiday for his wisdom. But most importantly, I’d like to thank someone who I’ve waited to thank since I started this blog: my editor, Diane O’Connell of Write to Sell Your Book. I’ve spent my entire career working with editors, so I know a good one when I see it. And Diane is the best, hands down. I decided to shoot for the stars when I went looking for an editor, and I got my wish. Diane gets me, she gets my work, and she makes it better. Best of all, during our very first conversation when I told her I was looking for a top-notch editor who would be as invested in my success as I am, she made it clear that she wouldn’t have it any other way. Who wouldn’t want a companion like that along for the ride?