Month: January 2018

Holidays are over, winter us upon us, along with Hollywood awards season. What are you watching? To me, part of enjoying a movie is seeing it with the right person (and that may mean alone). Recently I saw The Greatest Showman with my parents, knowing they would enjoy the musical aspect. My husband is not on the musical movies guest list – ever since during the opening scene of Les Miserables he whispered, Are they going to keep singing? Graciously, I let him leave.  Last week I saw All the Money in the World, which was supposed to be a short writing break one afternoon. Instead, I spent too much time online, obsessively looking up details about the Getty family, trying to separate movie fact from fiction. What I learned – they’ve learned how to live privately. Good for them! (Favorite part of that movie – seeing Christopher Plummer. And the part where Getty shows his model for the Getty Villa in Malibu. This is an amazing place, even more so after the renovation.) I have plans to see The Post (which has strangely been absent from my local theater) and Molly’s Game (I love Jessica Chastain). Twice (TWICE!) my husband and I went to the theater to see The Darkest Hour. The first time it was the day before it came out (small online calendars can be tricky); second time, the theater was so full there were only two seats left, right under the screen. We declined. Still haven’t seen it. What movies have you seen? New favorites, old ones? PAULA: When I need a break from the book world, I watch movies and visit museums. With all the family complications this new year has brought, both good and bad, I won’t be visiting any museums any time soon, so I’m counting on Netflix to get me through. Starting with the second season of The Crown.  TRACEE: We have to add television to the list. So many good shows, there’s no reason to leave the house in the dark of winter. ALISON: The Crown was so wonderful. I think I went through a period of mourning when I finished it. ROBIN:  I went through that feeling of loss after binge-watching Mind Hunter. I’ve heard enough good things about The Crown that it’s in my queue now. CATE: I don’t have any movie plans, unfortunately. Though I watched Hidden Figures on a plane recently and cried tears of joy and frustration for the duration, annoying the person flying next to me (who was, fortunately, my husband and so didn’t request a seat change).   ROBIN:  Friends of mine throw a great Oscar party so I’ve been seeing movies I suspect will be nominated. I LOVED Get Out. If you haven’t seen it, drop everything and do it now. Jordan Peele is a genius. By the time this blog is posted I’ll have seen The Post. I just saw Darkest Hour and Gary Oldman is phenomenal. Aside from the Oscar buzz, I’ve worked with a couple of Getty wives in the past and was really curious about the fast-switch between Kevin Spacey and Christopher Plummer so I saw All The Money In The World the weekend it opened. There’s only one scene where you can tell it was shot after the fact and I’m not going to ruin it for anyone by telling you which scene. Molly’s Game is on my to-be-seen list – I love Jessica Chastain, too. ALEXIA: I can’t remember the last movie I saw in a theater. I know I saw Star Wars:The Force Awakens,  Fences, and Hidden Figures but I don’t think I’ve been since then. A combination of expense, inconvenience, movies leaving before I realize they were even out (didn’t movies used to stay in theaters longer before Netflix and RedBox?), and not making time to take care of myself. I prefer to see movies alone. I don’t enjoy a movie unless I can lose myself in the story and I find other people distracting. (Why do people always seem to want to chat during the show?) One of my 2018 goals is to make me a priority. That includes making time for first run films on the big screen. I have a movie wish list: Black Panther, Star Wars, Lady Bird, Murder on the Orient Express, The Greatest Showman, Molly’s Game, All the Money in the World, The Shape of Water, The Post, Roman J. Israel, Esq.  TRACEE: We would make good movie partners. I have no desire to talk and have a “two people watching alone” attitude toward movies in a theater. There’s plenty of time to discuss afterward. Anything on television you’re watching? ALEXIA: My Netflix queue is so long, there’s no way I’ll make it to the end before I did if I live to be 112. I also have an AcornTV queue and an MHz Choice queue. (And a Google Play library and a VuDu wishlist and a Sling TV favorites list…) I just watched Bright and loved it. I want to start the new season of Black Mirror but I know I can’t watch just one episode so I’m waiting until I have a block of binge watching time. Same for Stranger Things. I watched the first few episodes of season 1 of The Crown and liked it more than I thought I would so I’ll get back to watching the rest of it, eventually. I’ve got to catch up with the new season of The Brokenwood Mysteries on AcornTV. I’m always on the lookout for a good true crime documentary and I’m waiting impatiently for the next Hinterland series. I also discovered podcasts and have become a Small Town Murders junkie and am at risk of becoming the same with Two Girls and a Ghost. But since I only need my ears for podcasts, instead of my ears and eyes, I can multitask while I listen. Podcasts remind me of old time radio shows. ROBIN:  I have another movie to mention.  Lady Bird is fantastic. Greta Gerwig nailed the suburban teenager experience along with the mother-daughter thing. That’s another one to rush out to see. Best Original Screenplay is going to be an interesting race to watch in the Academy Awards. If Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig aren’t nominated, there’s something wrong with the world. SUSAN: I just watched Battle of the Sexes (on a plane) and liked it more than I expected. Billie Jean King is very inspiring, and I lately I find myself seeking out inspiring people. I have to put in a plug here for my son, Tom, who hosts a podcast about movies and New Haven, and there are more connections to movies and New Haven than you would think. I listen to it every week and always learn something new. deepfocusradio.com. ALISON: I’m terrible when it comes to movies. I’m a serious Star Wars fan, so I do see that on release day (or the night before), but most other movies I wait for until they come out in some format I can watch at home. Most recently, I’ve been loving Planet Earth 2. Not sure if that counts. I can watch The Princess Bride over and over. The same goes for almost all of the James Bond movies. Now, when it comes to popcorn… MICHELE:  I’m traveling so I am not watching movies at all. I’m having trouble streaming news here, so I haven’t considered doing movies. I really wanted to see The Post but it didn’t come out until after I left. I am reading and writing up a storm while in Mexico. I actually packed ten hardcovers from my towering TBR pile. It feels more homey with books around me.  Before my life became so mobile (I am not complaining about that one bit!), my husband and I liked to go to the Dedham Community theater where they show the movies not everyone is talking about. They have great popcorn topped with honest-to-goodness real butter. You can even buy beer and wine. I do miss that.  TRACEE: Michele, I like the idea of nothing to distract from reading. What a joy! And I’m going to have to tune into Susan’s son’s blog. What about everyone else? Stop by the MissDemeanors on Facebook and share your current watch list. 

I saw a few minutes of an interview with writer/director Nancy Meyers and she said she struggles with ideas. I have the opposite problem, too little time for all my ideas. My inspirations are my career as a cyber criminal profiler and snippets of overhead conversations while commuting, wandering around San Francisco, etc. My question, dear Miss Demeanors, is a 2-parter: do you have trouble with ideas, and where do your ideas come from? Tracee: I don’t have trouble with ideas, they come from things I’ve overheard, experienced or seen. Often I’m inspired by a place – recently, sitting riverside in Porto a character jumped into my mind. I could see her as clearly as if she’d sat in a nearby chair. What she was doing, what happened to her (and it was a WOW! happening), everything about a story came to me. My problem is deciding which to use. For the Agnes Luthi mysteries, place is very often the inspiration: in A Well-Timed Murder it was the famous watch and jewelry show in Basel, but I have ideas for ski lodges, hiking trails, villages that produce cheese, thermal bath resorts. Place place place. My twist on location location location.  Cate: Hey, I wrote a book about where I, and I think all writers, get ideas: Lies She Told. I think they form from some crazy mix of overheard conversations, people who make impressions, friends, family members, news articles, BOOKs, forgotten memories, malignant traumas, etc. Alexia: I also have the too many ideas problem. Ideas for the “best story ever” are constantly popping into my head. I overhear a conversation, I turn it into a plot. I read an article in the paper or see something on the news, I turn it into a plot. Some random factoid lands in my Facebook feed or turns up in a Google search for something unrelated–I turn it into a plot. I see a movie or TV show or read a book that I like, I start writing fanfic in my head. My trouble is choosing one plot to develop into a novel-length story (or realizing there’s not enough to work with and setting the idea aside) without getting distracted by all of the other stories begging to be written. I’ve no problem writing for entertainment. I choose fiction, whether TV, movie, or book, for entertainment and escape. I know the real world is (too) often a hard, cruel place where people (too) often don’t care what happens to other people and the bad guy (too) often gets away with it. I don’t enjoy reading or watching things that reinforce my (admittedly cynical) view. I look for fiction that shows me what’s possible, what could be, what we can hope for, what should be. I don’t necessarily need rainbows and roses but I had enough of the angsty hero slogging through a dark and dreary world back in the 1990s. I write books that, I hope, let readers forget their woes for a little while. I don’t consciously attempt to write about something BIG or an issue-with-a-capital-I. I hope I provide readers with a mental break from misery and pain and anxiety so they can recharge and refresh and gear up to go on fighting the good fight IRL. If my books were a phase in the Hero’s Journey, they’d be the Road Back. Alison: Hmmm. I don’t think I have trouble coming up with ideas, but I honestly don’t know where they come from. Blessed be the Wicked will be the first in a series of Mormon murder mysteries. The ideas for these books have been bouncing around my head ever since I was the least favorite kid in Sunday school. (I’m convinced that the Sunday school teacher who drew the shortest straw had to teach my class.) When I was about eight or nine, there was a woman running around Utah public libraries putting band-aids across the “naughty bits” in books depicting ancient Roman and Greek statues. I was the little girl who raised her hand in church and asked why, if Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden, the statues were bad?  I’d say, for this series, my ideas come from the religion I was born into: baptism for the dead, blood atonement, eternal family bonds, penalty oaths, polygamy, belief in ongoing revelation…the list is pretty long for interesting twists and characters who might take things a little too far.  Beyond that, I second what all of you have said. I think writers, by nature, are observers. 
 Paula: Ideas are everywhere. The trick is to recognize the germ of one when you see it. I rely on process to help me do that: reading, research, brainstorming, walking, yoga, meditation. All of which amounts to paying attention.  When I am paying attention, ideas happen. Serendipity happens. Synchronicity happens. Story happens.
 Michele: I get my ideas from all sorts of places. They come in a steady stream, not that all are worthy of a book or even a paragraph. For me, the key is to stay tuned in. That means listening and watching all of the time, or as we yogis say, being present. I see stories everywhere. For example, on my plane trip to Puerto Vallarta on Tuesday, I watched a young mother with her little boy, who seemed to be about 8, waiting for their plane. She was so nervous, her legs were shaking. He was so in tune with her, he stretched over in a hug of sorts to stop them. We happened to sit behind them on the plane. There was a simpatico between them, a silent understanding of what each needed and expected from the other. They were Mexican, he with a head of hair so full and black, I wanted to touch it. She was tired looking, with hair that needed a shampoo. Where were they going, I wanted to know. Who was waiting for them? Were they returning or starting anew? Next my imagination kicks in, inventing all sorts of answers to these questions. And I’m off to creating a story, which becomes my story, not theirs. 

Writers get a lot of unsolicited, conflicting advice on the road to publication: Write what you know. Research, research, research. Talk about your work in progress. Don’t say a word to anyone. You need an agent. You don’t need an agent. Self-publish. Don’t self-publish. Write like your heroes. Find your voice. Write 1500 words a day. Write one sentence a day. Take days off. Never take days off.Small wonder the most oft-repeated bon mot is “write drunk, edit sober.” All the advice is enough to drive anyone to drink. The best advice I’ve gotten? You do you. Whatever it is that drives you to that chair, that notebook, that laptop, that’s what you should do. Do you need to learn craft? Yes, if you want to write for the commercial market. Every genre has its rules and you need to adhere to them as a debut author. The rest is up to you. What works for me may not be right for you. What works for you may not be right for me. And that’s okay. Find what fits your lifestyle, your experience, and the stories you want to tell the way you want to tell them. Experiment. Play. You do you. 

It’s that time of year again. Time to start syncing our calendars with this year’s conference schedule. Every year I attend at least 3 writing conferences, often more. I’m lucky to live in a region ripe with opportunities to meet, mingle, learn, and teach among peers and pros. This year I’ve decided to attend writerly shindigs I’ve missed in the past. High on my list for 2018 are Left Coast Crime, Thrillerfest, and Bouchercon. I’m also planning to attend my local Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America events, of course. Any can’t-miss conferences on your list? Join the conversation on our Facebook page! 

I love revising. For me, the first draft is hard. It’s the chicken wire and popsicle stick framework for the final sculpture. Its only job is to make the clay stick. Revising is when I get to do the buildup and shaping. I get so impatient to get to the revisions I sometimes start tinkering with the first chapters while I’m still finishing the first draft. On my current work-in-progress, around the halfway point of completion I decided the beginning was actually the third chapter which meant I had a bit of backstory to work in later in the book. After noting that, I caught myself starting to revise which, ultimately, slowed down the process. In order to stop myself from doing this, I maintained a “notes” file to keep all the great ideas (and some not so great) on character quirks, plot foils, twists, etc. Keeping a running notes file is something I do during research. It’s where I stash the interesting bits that may or may not work their way onto the final pages. This go-around on a new book, I’ve found it’s also a helpful strategy to get myself to put off revising the first chapters and focus on the task at hand: Finish. The. Book. Happy to report I completed the draft last week. Now I’m on the fun part. Watch out for flying clay.
 

A lot of writers I know work on MacBooks. A lot of industry pros work on Microsoft systems. I know this because agents and editors typically ask for manuscripts in the .doc/.docx Word format. Does this mean Mac users need to buy a subscription to Word? Good news – the answer is no. Under the “File” menu there’s an “Export” option. This opens a sub-menu that allows you to save Pages documents in other formats, including Word, PDF and even .epub.
  This means Pages can also open files saved in these formats, making it easy to work on edits and revisions sent back and forth between you and your agent or editor. How about you? Do you write on Mac or Windows? Hop on over to our Facebook page to join the conversation.