Have a Word With Yourself

Two writers inhabit the office where I’m sitting right now. If one of us is having a bad day, the other can’t help but notice. It doesn’t take long before the other occupant gets an earful. On one of those days, I asked my wife to pause in her exasperated recitation. I rooted around in our stash of stationery and produced a piece of textured card stock. I handed it to her, and urged her to write something in this format:

Dear (your name):

You did a great job yesterday writing (short description of the thing you wrote or edited yesterday).

Today you’re going to work on (short description of today’s goal). And you know what? It’s going to be awesome. Have a great day.

I love you,

(sign your name here)

She looked at me like I was nuts but she did it. And for weeks after, whenever I sensed or heard from her that she felt bad about the way the current project was going, I’d either present her with a card in person or leave it on her desk so she’d see it when she next sat down.

She originally thought it was a woo-woo idea, but she now has a little stack of these cards that she has written out. (I do too, because I couldn’t very well let myself off the hook when I was foisting this on her.) I bought two old-timey mail spikes so we could lend some order to our individual piles.

One day, when she resisted doing the exercise because it felt weird, she said, “Where did you even get this stupid idea?”

I did what any husband would do in such a circumstance. I blamed Lawrence Block.

Yes, fellow mystery scribes, that Lawrence Block. The MWA Grand Master. The author of the Matthew Scudder novels, the Bernie Rhodenbarr capers, the Ehrengraf stories… (Oh you don’t know them? You probably should. Very funny.) Block has written tons of books, including what his website calls “midcentury” erotica.

You can’t say this about many fiction writers, but I like Block just as much when he’s writing nonfiction. His advice books for writers, in particular, radiate a very gentle, conversational authority.
In the mid-eighties, Block attended one of those seminars that promised to change your life. He liked what he learned and thought it might even be useful for writers, except that no one had created such material. So Block created a group of exercises and a PowerPoint presentation. Then he booked ads, rented hotel conference rooms, and embarked on road trips with his wife to teach writers how to get in their right mind.

For instance, he had students pair up with another writer, sit across from each other, and recite a list of fears they have about their writing. While one person read off their list of fears, the other person’s job was to simply listen and respond as follows.

“A fear I have about my writing is that it’s all a big waste.”

“Thank you.”

“Another fear I have about my writing is that it’s not any good.”

“Thank you.”

“Another fear I have about my writing is that editors will reject it as soon as they see how bad it really is.”

“Thank you.”

Block’s logic is that fear and negativity are chickenshit. They run aground when they are exposed.
The technique reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting when the shrink character played by Robin Williams demolishes Matt Damon’s tough guy persona by repeating one phrase over and over again—“It’s Not Your Fault”—until Will’s subconscious finally accepts the truth about his miserable childhood.

Block and his wife presented these in-person seminars for two years. Attendees paid $100 for the one-day course. Hitting the road every weekend for three months at a time quickly got old for the Blocks. Little mistakes here and there often left them at the break-even point financially. Block hung up his spurs and got back to his writing.

But he did hear from former students who felt that the class had helped them enormously. Well, he thought, maybe I should write it all down in a book. The first book version of the Write for Your Life course ran about 60,000 words, 20 chapters, 175 pages. Back in the eighties, in the days before print-on-demand, the only way you could make a book was to order a full press run. Block printed 5,000 books hoping he wasn’t going to lose his shirt.

Far from it. He sold all but 25 via mail order. After 4,975 copies disappeared in the mail, Block allowed the book to slip from his mind. Those copies took on a life of their own, with vendors eventually hawking them online at astronomical prices. In 2013, Block says, an assistant of his found the 25 leftover books tucked in a storage facility somewhere. They slapped them up on eBay and alerted fans in an e-blast. The books sold out in three hours.

Block finally capitulated, making the text available as an ebook and a print-on-demand paperback. Though many of the exercises were originally designed to be conducted in a setting with other writers, you can easily adapt them. (Hence the subtitle The Home Seminar for Writers.) I reread the book to write this piece, and I discovered many exercises that I refused to do upon first reading it years ago, such as:

• I never got around to meditating at several points during the day: as a prelude to writing, after I had finished my writing for the day, or when I was stuck…
• I never got around to practicing automatic writing—putting down on paper anything that pops into my head—for 10 minutes…
• I never got around to compiling a list of all the eduction, expertise, life experiences, and references that I have accumulated that I might draw upon for my writing…
• I never got around to assembling a list of actions I can take to add to that “bank” of experiences…
• I never got around to decorating my home or office with positive affirmations that I can see on a regular basis…

I’ll stop there, but the book offers at least another 15 different exercises that I—haha—never got around to doing. Because I apparently was too busy not living up to my potential.

Oh—it turned out that the exercise I asked my wife to do is not in Block’s book. The closest is an exercise in which Block asks you to sign and date a letter to yourself in which you state that you no longer need to believe the aforementioned negative thoughts about your writing.

So it turns out that I, Joe D’Agnese, am also a self-help author!

You wouldn’t know it to look at me. I am not alone in buying such books and then not taking their advice. The entire self-help genre would die tomorrow if people did. At one point in the course’s history, Block realized writers so hate saying affirmations that he created and sold audiotapes where the affirmations were spoken aloud and you merely had to listen to them.

For me, what has become interesting about the “love letters to yourself” technique is noticing the negative reactions I have while doing it. I tell myself it’s stupid. I feel uncomfortable, almost sick, at the prospect of praising myself. In fact, I have already judged writing this very column about my experience to be a worthless and egotistical endeavor.

To which I can only respond: Thank you, Joe. Thank you very much.

But what does that mean for you?

Well, some morning soon, I hope you will rise, look yourself in the mirror, and say, “You know what, INSERT NAME HERE? You done good.”

If even thinking about such a thing makes you feel icky or weird, interrogate the feeling. That’s all I’m asking. And if it does make you icky, maybe you ought to check out Block’s book to see if it’s for you. Think about getting a paper copy so you can dog-ear pages or mark your progress as you work through the exercises.

Oh…and while you were looking at yourself in the mirror just now, I left this card on your desk. 

I use these Avery postcards
because they offer nice texture at decent price.

You know what to do with it. If following the instructions makes you feel weird, ask yourself why. Carry that question around with you for a few days as you go about your other projects and errands.

Not because it’s a big deal. Not because it’s supposed to change your life. Do it for yourself. Because it’s worth getting to know an interesting, creative person who builds such marvelous worlds.

* * * 

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

Plot Holes as Big as a Buick

We've all read a book, or watched a movie, one which we actually enjoyed, but later went...  "Wait a second.  What about???"  

And I 'm not talking about tropes, which are everywhere, ranging from "meet cute" to "discussing highly confidential secrets while an evil person is standing right outside the door listening" to "the supervillain who is always one step ahead of the detective, spy, superhero*" to "the genius detective who is never wrong."  You can either stand them or not, and it's usually based on who's playing the part.  

BTW, Allan Rickman could play either the supervillain or the romantic hero and I was always all in for it.  

No, I'm talking about plot holes, the size of my father's 1955 pink and white Buick, where you just shake your head.  And again, you either accept it or you don't...

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins has two plot holes, but I still love it with a passion.  It has tremendous suspense, one of the great villains of all time (Count Fosco), secret illegitimacy, faked deaths, mental asylums, an evil mother (Mrs. Catherick), an innocent heroine cruelly treated (Laura Fairlie), an even more innocent victim who dies (or is killed?), a dauntless hero, a dauntless heroine (Laura's half sister, Marian Halcombe) and enough twists and turns to keep anyone happy and thinking.  A nice, long winter's read.  But, the plot holes:

The plot turns on wealthy heiress Laura Fairlie's remarkable resemblance to a mentally ill young woman (Anne Catherick), and how, after her marriage, where she becomes Lady Laura Glyde, she is drugged and placed in a mental asylum under Anne's name, while the exceedingly ill Anne dies (or is helped along the way) and is buried under Laura's name.  

First Plot Hole: "The most well known error of chronology is that first described in The Times of 30 October 1860. The plot relies on the fact that Laura’s departure for London took place the day after Anne Catherick had died under Laura’s name. In the book edition the date of that death was 26 July whereas as the reviewer points out ‘…we could easily show that Lady Glyde could not have left Blackwater Park before the 9th or 10th of August. Anybody who reads the story, and who counts the days from the conclusion of Miss Halcombe’s diary, can verify the calculation for himself.’"  (The Wilkie Collins Society)

This was eventually corrected, but not until the fourth edition of the novel - and then the correction interfered with later dates in this tightly woven, complex novel.  Those of us who love the book have learned to live with it, and ignore all, including the second plot hole:

Second Plot Hole:  Long after Lady Laura has been rescued from the mental asylum she and her true love Walter marry, but before her identity as Lady Laura has been confirmed and reinstated by the law.  So what name did she get married under? Was it truly legal?  We are never told.  

There is a similar problem in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend.  Bella Wilfer marries John Rokesmith - however John Rokesmith is actually John Harmon, using an alias, which leads to the obvious question, how could their marriage be legal since he married under a false name, and did they remarry once John Harmon revealed himself?  

All I can say is, just ignore it and keep reading. 

The Big Sleep - the movie, not the book.  The book, of course, was written by Raymond Chandler. The movie was written by Leigh Brackett, William Faulkner, with touch-ups by Jules Furthman and Howard Hawks.  

Plot Hole:  The legendary "who killed the chauffer?" (whose death starts the whole movie and investigation) is unanswerable. None of the writers knew; so Hawks cabled Raymond Chandler, who said later, "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either."  (Wikipedia) 

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie.  

Plot Hole:  Both the book and the movie have a fatal flaw:  why kill the maid?  Yes, the maid is blackmailing the killer, but the killer has money, and they're on a steamer on the Nile.  Why not just pay the maid off, and keep paying the maid off for a few months, and kill her later when everyone's back home and no one will notice if the maid, for example, gets a little blood poisoning from a scratch and dies of it, or just plain disappears?  Obviously, the only reason was that Ms. Christie (whom I revere in many ways) had made such a complex, ironclad plot that it was the only way to make it possible for Hercule Poirot to solve the case.  

And right there is a lesson for us all:  don't make your plot so tight you can't find a way out of it.  Leave room for errors and basic screw-ups, because we humans do that all the time.  

For that matter, leave room in your life for basic screw-ups, because they will happen.

Today in Mystery History: April 2

 

Time for the 14th stop on our tour of the genre's past.

April 2, 1879. Hulbert Footner was born in Ontario.  He explored the northern part of the province (Lake Footner is named in his honor) and then became an actor, traveling across North America in a play called Sherlock Holmes.  He wrote adventure stories and more than 30 detective tales about Madame Rozika Storey who solved crimes with her less-brilliant assistant.  Some of his other crime novels were made into movies.

April 2, 1914.  Alec Guinness was born in London.  He starred in some wonderful films in our genre (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Our Man in Havana, The Lavender Hill Mob) but to me he is immortal for the greatest performance of John LeCarre's master spy, George Smiley, in TV's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.

 

April 2, 1920. Jack Webb was born in Santa Monica, CA.  In 1949 he starred as an unlicensed private eye in the radio show Pat Novak, For Hire. In 1950 he performed in  two classic genre movies: Sunset Boulevard and Dark City. But you know darned well what he is remembered for: he created and starred in the radio show Dragnet (1952-1957) which also played on TV from 1952-1959.  Yes, he played Sgt. Joe Friday on radio and TV at the same time.  He brought the show back to TV from 1967 to 1970.  The highly-stylized police procedural was much quoted, copied, and mocked.

 

 April 2, 1931. The birth date of another Ontario mystery writer.  Howard Engel wrote sixteen novels about Toronto private eye Benny Cooperman. In Memory Book the detective suffers a blow to his head (as have how many other fictional sleuths?) but this one resulted in his inability to read.  This was based on the results of an actual stroke Engel suffered.

 

April 2, 1950. This Week Magazine featured Ellery Queen's short story "The Sound of Murder."

 

April 2, 1974. The Sting won the Oscar for Best picture.  Can you hear "The Entertainer?"

 

April 2, 1980. The Long Good Friday was released.  The wonderful Bob Hoskins as a gang boss  under attack.  "You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday!" 

April 2, 199?. On this date Detective Mike Hoolihan tells us about the case she can't let go of.  Thus begins Kingsley Amis' novel Night Train.

 

April 2, 1999. Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune  was released.  Glenn Close and Julianne Moore starred in a movie about the results of an old woman's death on a small town.  It was nominated for an Edgar.

 

April 2, 2002. Henry Slesar died in New York City, where he was born.  In between he wrote  mysteries and science fiction, but is best remembered for the adaptation of his work to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.  His first novel, The Gray Flannel Shroud, won the Edgar Award. He also won an Emmy as head writer for the only crime-focused soap opera, The Edge of Night.

 

April 2, 2012.  On this day New Jersey mobster Sal Caetano told a gang of Mafiosi that he wanted a screw-up killed.  Thus begins Greenfellas, written by somebody named Lopresti.

And there we draw the veil.

 

BSP

Honest truth. With no horse-trading or calendar engineering whatsoever, my turn to blog falls on the day Severn River Publishing releases my debut novel, The Devil's Kitchen. Stop now if you don't want to read about my unsuppressed joy. 

The road to publication began in 2015. In December, my wife called my bluff. A new district attorney had just been elected in my county. I left the DA's Office without a real plan for what might happen next. On that day, my wife also became a former assistant district attorney. She challenged me to pursue my writing dream. Always the braver and smarter of the two of us, she quickly found traditional employment, the kind that doles out regular paychecks and benefits. 

I started writing short stories. Some of them found homes. (I thank Linda Landrigan, Michael Bracken, Barb Goffman, and others for always making me sound more dexterous in my native tongue than I actually am.) Meanwhile, I began scribbling away at novels. The first didn't sell. Neither did the second nor the third, nor the...You may see a pattern here. 

It was important to me to keep trying. I love writing short stories, and I'm still thrilled when an email arrives informing me that one has been accepted for publication. But to achieve my goals as a writer, I wanted to succeed in both short and long forms. 

Somewhere in this process, I too stumbled back into traditional employment. The regular hours of my magistrate gig were far more conducive to writing than working as an assistant district attorney. I still got to dabble in criminal law without the burden of disrupting and time-consuming trials. 

The new job's schedule allowed me to attend a few mystery conferences. I made friends and learned more about the craft of writing. I'm grateful for the opportunities these gatherings have provided me. 

One of the books I wrote involved a pair of National Park Service investigators who found a dead body at Yellowstone. Clues gleaned from the investigation hinted at a historic conspiracy involving an ancient relic secreted out of France by royalists during the French Revolution. I titled it The Devil's Kitchen. The dual timeline mystery was fun to write, and it allowed me to draw upon hikes I taken visiting Yellowstone with my family. 

Last year, I was sitting on the beach in Galveston, burning some vacation, when my agent emailed me to say that Severn River wanted to talk about the novel. "When could I set that up?" she asked. 

"I'm on vacation," I told her. "I'm available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But that may sound desperate. Tell them that as a magistrate I can move things around and likely be available at their convenience." 

The last few months have been another fabulous adventure. Like Michael and Barb before her, Kate Schomaker has continued to find gentle ways to point out my deviations from the Chicago Manual of Style. I have loved getting emails with possible cover designs and being asked to comment on the options I prefer. (In truth, all I see is my name printed across the bottom.)

And I really, really like the emails where we talk about the next book. Our heroes travel to the Everglades. 

The last decade has been a great journey, one that has only gotten better over the last few months. I'm grateful to many people along the way, especially my family, friends, and fellow writers, who have continued to say, "You can." I hope that I have the opportunity to thank each of you personally. 

I'll see some of you at Malice Domestic in a few weeks. You'll be able to recognize me. I'll be the smiling guy holding the book with the new and shiny cover. 

Until next time. 

What Makes An Anthology The Best?

The SleuthSayers anthology, Murder, Neat, edited by our own Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman, has had the distinction of being named one of the finalists for the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology in an impressive field of 2024 short crime fiction anthologies.

I've edited two anthologies and contributed stories to almost a dozen including my own. I've also had a story included as an "Other Distinguished Story" in a volume of Best American Mystery Stories—an honor that means the notoriously critical series editor picked it as one of fifty out of a field of several thousand, but that year's guest editor failed to select it as one of the twenty to include in the anthology.

So I feel qualified at what seems a good moment to talk about some of the elements of excellence in an anthology.

Any anthology needs focus. This may be provided by a theme, restriction of the setting or authorship to a certain region, or limitation of submissions to a particular group or organization. All the contributors to Murder, Neat are current or former SleuthSayers. The theme, some aspect of alcohol, bars, and drinking, was chosen after much lively discussion among the blogfellas.

 The highly regarded Noir anthology series from Akashic Books was fresh when it began with Brooklyn Noir. It now runs to more than a hundred books. I've heard that the publisher is deeply committed to publishing stories on a variety of aspects of the chosen location as well as a genuine noir flavor. On the other hand, the concept of the "anthology noir" has been a runaway success far beyond the original publisher's series. I wrote a story for Jewish Noir II (2022). The stories ranged from Biblical to paranormal to historical to modern, the genres from noir to comic to speculative, the settings spanned the globe. Submissions were by invitation only, but not all of the contributors were Jewish.

Some editors choose to engage potential readers through a mix of beloved authors and fresh voices. Those are the anthologies in which half the stories are by invitation, the other half by open call. I've never made it into one of those. I tried to seed my own anthology, Me Too Short Stories, with a few well-known authors along with open submissions in hopes of attracting a better publishing contract. As it happened, a political issue was raging at the time, and the more courted authors were the first to abandon ship. I persisted and ended up with a book of wonderful stories that failed to get the attention it deserved.

Apart from market considerations, the best anthology is one in which every story is a winner. I got that in the end with Me Too Short Stories. All the stories adhered to the theme, but each of them did it in a different way. None of the writers was famous, but all were terrific at working cooperatively and appreciated a strong editor. Even when fifteen or twenty or two dozen stories are all about bars or all about Jewishness or all about crimes against women, they can be as different as each writer's voice and way of building a unique structure on the three-cornered foundation of plot, character, and writing or storytelling.

Once the editor or editors have selected the stories, they must put them in the best possible order. This is a creative act, akin to putting together a single-author collection of short stories or poetry, and I assure you it produces endorphins. A well arranged anthology starts with a pie in the face—a first story that grabs the your attention (especially in the library or bookstore or in the Amazon sample) and makes you want to read on. The second and third stories must also make you want to read on, and they must be entirely different from the first and from each other—dark and light, tragedy and humor, horror and cozy, snappy dialogue and brooding narrative. And one of the very best must be saved for last, so you close the book with a smile or a sigh of satisfaction.

Rat Paradise

You’ve heard and read a lot of doom and gloom asserting the population is declining thus leading to social and economic collapse. This is a follow-up to Eve’s article earlier this month, ‘What Nature Does Best’.

Growth is good, proselytizes the Chamber of Commerce. Growth is great, sayeth city fathers. No such thing as too much, blabs Peter Thiel, who likes to think he’s scary smart and who advocates for a global population of 1 trillion, a staggering 12,077% jump from 8.212 billion.

A surprising number of people don’t realize population isn’t declining but rather its rate of growth is leveling off. In other words, we’re easing off the accelerator but the bus is still picking up speed (differential calculus to you readers who snack on maths before breakfast). Even Elon Musk got it wrong in possibly a careless slip of the tongue.

Sexology 101

That’s subject to change about fifty years from now when predicted growth trends whisper to a halt and theoretically may start to rewind. Blame men. Worldwide male fertility has declined for decades. Researchers are convinced chemical air and water pollution is affecting male hormones.

In a climate change world of microplastics where wildlife and plant varieties are disappearing, that is worrisome. For the past three-quarters of a century, America’s Breadbasket, its farms and fields and groves, have been replanted with condos and strip malls. Our oceans are slowly turning to waste. A series of aerial photographs over Caracas illustrate the great jungles drying and dying.

Observers muse the planet is fighting back. Is Earth exerting a form of human pest control?

Inevitably, a question arises of men shunning sex: self-described incels, male separatist MGTOW, and that ilk, a phenomenon observed in many developed countries. I had surmised they represent an insignificant (apologies for the unfortunate word choice) percentage of the population, but I was wrong. Researcher Miriam Lindner estimates 39% of men choose to be single or celibate. However, she claims a staggering 62% of women are eschewing relationships with men. Can we spell WGTOW?

Sociology 201

As mentioned above, city fathers and urban mothers have long and loudly claimed ‘Growth is Good’ when promoting pet projects, which have a peculiar way of enriching those urban mothers and fathers. A balance can be good too, a robust, inflation-free economy can be a very good thing, especially when linked to discovery, technology development, and innovation. Those economic ideals are rare because of population growth. As we hatch new people, we need resources to feed them and places to put them.

Sections of New York University’s ‘soft science’ courses dealt with over-population, and a significant portion of related sociology and psychology delved into ‘prisonization’, the socialization process that occurs when individuals mold to the culture of the prison environment. Prison is an extremely hazardous and unnatural environment, a world of fear, a population of discards, an environment without the opposite sex, a large population day after day, decade after decade jammed within cold concrete walls with little mental stimulation. Professionals draw parallels with population imbalances in our world, where too many people who crunch into tight quarters exhibit extreme behaviors– psychological disorders, rape, loneliness, death, fear, disproportionate homosexuality, hopelessness, and in some jails, vile, moldy food despite federal requirements for nutrition and prohibitions against using food or lack thereof as punishment.

I can report on this only through study and research. Our true first-line heroine and expert is Eve Fisher, who lives and observes firsthand what I can only write about. The main point is that prisons offer a peek into ‘Stand of Zanzibar’ effects of overpopulation.

Rat Paradise 25.0

Eve’s description of John Calhoun’s work slightly differs in details from my long-ago reading, likely because Calhoun’s lab ran numerous population experiments with rats and mice. Mostly I refer to Universe 25, forty to fifty-some rodents in a 4⅓×3m enclosure. The gist remains the same: a rodent utopia in which creatures are provided with every conceivable comfort and protection. They were given a predator-free, temperature controlled enclosures with nesting a cornucopia of materials, nourishing foods, optional treats, and willing, fecund sex partners.

In this abundant environment, the critters fornicated like bunnies, gorged on food, and relished their perpetual vacation. As the population grew, aberrant behaviors broke out– violence, rape (eventually including same-sex assault), lack of mothering, signs of mental instability. At some point, rat residents lost interest in sex, socializing, even eating. They isolated until the colony died out. Poof! Gone, incels in the end.

A number of conclusions might be drawn beyond overpopulation. One might consider human’s need adversity to survive, goals to strive for. Progressives and conservatives (not necessarily left and right) might both be right in different ways, we need to advance but we need roots. We require wholesome, challenging work for our own well-being.

Am I suggesting a link between male and female incels, and a wind-down of population growth? No. Yes. Perhaps. Maybe. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t rule it out.

Wall-E © Disney

Behavioral Sink

The opening minutes of Disney’s 2008 Wall-E suggest Earth was devastated by an environmental disaster. However, as the movie transitions, the rest of the story reveals the underlying crisis, a storybook depiction of Calhoun’s mouse utopia.

Seriously? A couple of friends believe adult animation is intellectually demeaning for grownups, but I love a good story in any form. Apparently viewers and critics agree with a 95% approval. I highly recommend Wall-E for thought-provoking exercise and entertainment, with or without nourishing popcorn.

---

Inspired by Barry and Stephen

 

We've talked before about the fact that more short-story anthologies seem to be published these days than in the past. Especially short mystery/crime anthologies and--again especially--crime anthologies based on singers and songs.

Two of these music-themed anthologies were published since I last posted here, two weeks ago, and I was fortunate enough to have stories in them.

A Fanilow of Manilow

The first of those was A Killing at the Copa: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Barry Manilow. Published by White City Press and edited by old friend Jay Hartman, this anthology contains thirteen stories and was released on March 18. My story there is called "Lonely Together," which is also the title of the song that inspired it, from the 1980 Manilow album Barry. (I suspect the reason I'm a fanilow is that so many of his songs bring back good memories.)

My story involves a man and woman who meet by chance at the bar of a Moscow nightclub. One is American and one's Russian and both are single, a situation that seemed to me to fit both the title while offering lots of chances for mystery and deceit and a twisty plot--in fact, there are several complete reversals in the storyline during the course of the tale. The whole thing is written almost entirely in dialogue between these two people, and since I love writing dialogue, that made it even more fun for me. At 2000 words it's fairly short, and includes only two scenes.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Computer

The second music-themed anthology was Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim, published by Level Short and edited by writer/editor/globetrotter Josh Pachter. (This is the fifth of Josh's music-based anthology projects that I've been involved with--each one has been great fun and interesting, and I think I'm more excited about this particular story of mine than I've been about any of the others.) Every Day a Little Death features twenty writers, many of whom (except me) were chosen because they're extremely familiar with, and active in, the world of the theatre. It was released on March 22.

My anthology story, "I Love to Travel," is once again based on a song with the same title, this one from the Sondheim musical Frogs. This wasn't my favorite of his songs (my faves are probably "Send in the Clowns" and some of the tunes from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), but this one was fun to spin a story around. My story, about 3800 words, includes two hicks from the South Louisiana swamps who decide to rob the eccentric CEO of a chain of Walmart-like retail stores. These idiots put together a gang of misfits who travel to Florida to pull the heist, which--surprise, surprise!--doesn't go as planned. Now that I think of it, this probably was a case of sending in the clowns . . .

Questions

How do you, as a writer and/or a reader, feel about these "inspired-by-the-music-of" anthologies? Do you find them enjoyable to write stories for? To read? How does that compare to other themes? Do you tend to play the song that's represented by a certain story while you're writing it?--I know some folks do. Does it have to be music by an artist you like, for you to enjoy the anthology? Does it make no difference, so long as the stories are good? Which one(s) of these projects--there have been many--have you most enjoyed? Which have you contributed a story to? Do you have any suggestions for music on which future themed-anthologies should be based? NOTE: I'll be traveling today and might not be able to reply right away, but your thoughts and comments are always appreciated.

In closing, I hope that, wherever you are, spring has sprung. (Begone from me, coats, gloves, and longjohns.) Dust off the pollen, keep reading those anthology stories, and keep writing!

How Do You Prepare to Write?

Last year, I had a difficult time writing. Even the stuck list I discussed in a previous guest post wasn’t working for me. With deadlines approaching and no creative gas in the tank, I started to worry and reached out to a friend. 

She asked me a simple question. “How do you prepare to write?”

I told her about my perfectly fine-tuned scheduled, how I juggled writing between other commitments and my lengthy to-do list. When I had a window of time, I sat behind my desktop, laptop, cellphone (whatever electronic device I had at my disposal), and that’s when I would write.

She laughed (in a kind way) and said, “Maybe that's your problem.” 

She suggested I try meditation. It was my turn to laugh. I had tried meditation and thoughts bounced around my head like Tigger in the Hundred Acre Wood. She suggested journaling. (I didn’t laugh this time because it would have been rude.) I never liked journaling. It felt like an excuse not to put “real words” on the page. I thanked her, filed her recommendations away, and returned to my Barnum and Bailey’s approach to life, determined to do “all the things,” without success. Until one blessed morning I had a mental break through. 

Maybe it happened because it was still early. Maybe it happened because I was in the shower, and it was quiet. I was standing under the water, going through my mental checklist for the day (maximizing my time, and winning, right?), when it hit me, the note behind my friend’s advice. My problem was mental clutter.

Mental Clutter

I love the way Amarie writes about this idea in her article on Medium: “Imagine the mind is like a web browser. Each thought, task, and worry is an open tab screaming for your attention. Some tabs may be for work, others for personal stuff, and others may be random anxieties. When too many tabs are open, everything slows down, and it’s hard to get anything done.” 

My friend was right. My perfectly optimized schedule wasn’t optimized at all. My life had turned into a game of whack-a-mole. The fifteen minute windows I had taken so much pride in leveraging were opening more tabs, draining my focus, and slowing me down. More than that, it was suffocating my creativity because I didn’t have space to think, imagine, or let my mind wander.

I talked to Michael Bracken about the challenges I’d been experiencing, and he pointed me to Cal Newport’s book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.

Deep Work

Cal Newport defines deep work as “focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.” Context shifts (interruptions, checking email, social media) degrade your cognitive effectiveness. He explains that deep work is important because deep efforts are what move the needle, especially in knowledge work like creative writing. 

To perform at an optimal level, he recommends the following: engage in deep work, embrace boredom, abandon social media, and eliminate unnecessary tasks. (He talks about this more on his YouTube Channel.) Armed with Cal Newport’s insights and recommendations from my friend, I decided my approach to writing in 2025 would be different. 

Time Blocking

In the evenings I mapped out my schedule for the following day, rearranging tasks, creating longer blocks of time to write, taking a mindful approach to deep work tasks and measuring their outcome. I discovered this focused approach helped reduce the chaos I felt in the past and helped me focus during writing windows. 

Strategically Check Email, Social Media, & the News

I also blocked time in my schedule for checking email, social media, and reading the news—trying my best to do these activities after deep work sessions knowing they would trigger “open tab, open tab moments” and weigh me down. I also blocked email and social media during writing windows and left my phone on a table outside my office door, close enough to hear if the school called but far enough away so I couldn’t reach for it reflexively.

Know My Why

Roni Loren, an amazing performance coach, reminded me that when I say “yes” to something, I say “no” to my writing. It was sobering, and it has stayed with me. I have tried to look at new opportunities and consider them with this outcome in mind.

Prepare to Write

In order to take advantage of deep work blocks of time, I started journaling—morning pages to clear away the noise. I will start a bigger project soon. As an experiment, I have decided to try evening pages—brainstorming scenes I intend to write the following morning to prepare. I also made reading a priority again. It had fallen to the wayside when things were soul-crushingly busy, and I needed to read in order to write. I tried meditation again, two minutes each morning before I started writing. I focused on my breathing, and the difference it made was remarkable.

White Space

I started prioritizing white space on my calendar. I took the dog for a walk in the woods, no headphones, no recording device. I went for a run. Some of the best ideas I’ve had this year came during moments when I left my productivity expectations behind.

How do you prepare to write? Have you tried deep work? What productivity tips do you have for writers? 

***

My story “Mary Poppins Didn’t Have Tattoos” is now featured on Rabia Chaudry's acclaimed podcast, The Mystery Hour. At the end of the reading, Rabia skillfully connects elements of the story to real-life true crime events. I'm delighted with the final result. I hope you feel the same. Check it out on your favorite podcast app.

Crime Scene Comix Case 2024-03-028, Control Top Cop

Once again we highlight our criminally favorite cartoonist, Future Thought channel of YouTube. We love the sausage-shaped Shifty, a Minion gone bad.

Yikes! In this Crime Time episode, only one outcome is possible.

 

 

 

 

© www.FutureThought.tv

 

That’s today’s crime cinema. Hope you enjoyed the show. Be sure to visit Future Thought YouTube channel.

l'Art du Crime

The Art of Crime is another show I’ve discovered, streaming on MHz, and I like it, but…

It’s funny what pulls you in, and what waves you off.

Very often, you find a book series, or TV, to be an acquired taste. I wasn’t drawn in right away, for example, by Jackie Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs books. I loved her memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing, but it took me a couple of books to warm up to Maisie. (Once I was sold, I was sold.)

I’ve tried to read James Benn’s Billy Boyle series – I read two start to finish, and cracked the spine on a couple more, hoping my first impression was wrong – but I’m sorry, they leave me cold as a mackerel. (This is a private opinion, obviously; your math may differ.) 

A show it took me the entire first season to even tolerate was Brokenwood, and well you might ask why I bothered, but something kept pulling me back, and I’m glad it did: I think I had to get over my aggravation with DI Mike Shepherd, who just seemed like one of those guys you’d go out of your way to avoid in the workplace.

 A classic example of this is Death in Paradise, which is hands down the most annoying show on television. They had the inimitable Ben Miller for the first season, and he’s the reason I watched Primeval (along with Doug Henshall), but then they cast the utterly execrable Kris Marshall, and almost killed the show. Seriously, if not for the supporting characters and the Caribbean landscapes, I would have given up.

Speaking of, although I’m nuts about Deadly Tropics (which is a terrible and uninviting title), but like the cast more than the scripts, I’m crazy about the local scenery of Martinique. Here’s another one. I was on the fence about Signora Volpe, even if the hot ex-spy and her hot Italian love interest give it romantic appeal, what convinced me were the fabulous Umbrian backdrops. Which, circling back, is a big selling point of The Art of Crime.

It’s shot in Paris. Ça suffit. Some of the surrounding countryside ain’t too shabby, either. But mostly, it’s in the city itself, and often some unrecognizable alley, off the beaten path. It’s not always the Champs Elysées, although you get a lot of I.M. Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre. I think they shoot inside the Louvre, too, but staircases and hallways, not the galleries, apparently. I’m not actually sure. They obviously got permission to shoot interiors at the Musée d’Orsay, once famously a train station, serving the southwest of France. And certainly other locations I don’t recognize. This is a big plus for me,

I have to admit, and not just in this show. I love the genuinely terrible Armin Mueller-Stahl policier variously titled Midnight Cop, or Killing Blue, because they shot it in Berlin and never showed a single familiar landmark, like the Brandenburg Gate or the Memorial Church. The Art of Crime opened an episode at the Temple de la Sybille, an architectural folly on top of an artificial waterfall in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, sixty-one acres of manicured grounds in the Nineteenth that I’m embarrassed to say I never heard of, or visited. And it’s clearly as famous to Parisians as the Bois de Boulogne. That’s exactly my point. When somebody who knows a place intimately uses the landscape as character, you see it with a fresh eye.

I don’t mean to damn The Art of Crime with faint praise. It’s got a cool premise, not necessarily art theft, but art adjacent crime. This is the French OCBC, not a fictional crew, that investigates cultural property trafficking – smuggling, counterfeits, money laundering – and our entrée is to team a streetwise plainclothes cop with an artwise academic. They expend a little too much nervous energy at the beginning, rubbing each other the wrong way, but you let it go. (It’s like Jonathan Frakes; you don’t take Riker seriously until he grows his beard.)

 The obligatory exasperated senior officer, on the other hand, is a much better character in this show, not a wet blanket but a full narrative partner. There’s also the trope where the art expert explains herself to her psychiatrist, not to mention explaining herself to imaginary artists, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hieronymus Bosch, da Vinci. The only superfluous character is the art expert’s dad, an unnecessary aggravation.

I should be clear, that I in fact find it quite charming, in spite of the occasional too-cutesiness.

You realize they established certain dynamics, but after the shakedown cruise, they didn’t throw the excess cargo overboard. Somebody on the team was too proprietary. Be that as it may. I’ve finished Season Three (out of an existing eight, but only two episodes a season), and I’ll finish them.

I think, as I’ve said before, that there’s a different rhythm to European cop shows. It’s an enlivening change of pace.

Literary Relationships

When we first have enough confidence in our writing—whether justified or not—to begin submitting our short stories, our goal is to find one editor—any editor—who likes our work well enough to publish it. Some of us achieve our first publication early and some of us grind for years before we break through.

If we’re lucky, we find an editor who likes our work well enough that it leads to multiple acceptances, and it may even lead to additional opportunities when that editor puts together invitation-only anthologies. This is a good thing.

Sort of.

Initially, it is wonderful to realize you have developed a strong working relationship with an editor and are confident that you have, through that relationship, a reliable home for your work. It’s a form of literary monogamy.

Me? I try to avoid literary monogamy because it can lead to heartbreak.

FEAR OF MISSING OUT

First, there’s the fear of missing out. There’s the fear that, had I tried harder, I might have developed a better relationship.

For example, if you review your list of published stories and discover that most of them have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, with only the occasional dalliance with other publications, you probably aren’t missing out on much.

However, if most of your stories have appeared in Jim Bob’s Magazine of Mystery, you probably are missing out. It’s time to make a concerted effort to step up to the next level. Don’t abandon Jim Bob yet, but don’t make his publication the first place you submit a new story. Send that story to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine or Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine first or to the publications that aren’t quite at their level but fall somewhere on the scale below them and above JBMoM.

Once you step up to the next level, and can do so consistently, it may be—to torture the metaphor a bit—time to practice literary serial monogamy. Leave Jim Bob behind. Devote your time and attention to your new, improved literary relationship.

I SPY A WANDERING EYE

Some of us—especially those who might be considered prolific—need to develop more than one literary relationship.

If you review your list of published stories and find that most have appeared in one or the other of two publications, you’re already on your way to literary polyamory. You have established that you can satisfy the needs of at least two editors, so it may be time to put some effort into developing a third relationship.

By diversifying your attention, you can alleviate the inevitable disappointments that come from investing too heavily in your relationship with a single editor. Editors, die, retire, and change jobs. Publications die or change focus. Publishers cut back or eliminate anthologies from their list.

If you don’t already have relationships with other editors, your writing career might come to a screeching halt.

I’ve experienced this several times during the many years I’ve been writing.

Magazine editors who liked my work were replaced by editors who didn’t. Editors who included my work in their anthologies stopped editing. Magazines and anthology lines ceased publication. All of which left me scrambling for new markets because I had not developed enough relationships.

Worst of all was when entire genres collapsed. Even though I developed multiple literary relationships within several genres, each time one of them imploded I lost every relationship in that genre at essentially the same time.

LITERARY MONOGAMY OR LITERARY POLYAMORY

As an editor, I enjoy relationships with several writers I count on to provide stories I want to publish, who deliver on time and on theme, and who are easy to work with through the editing process. I never ask if they think we have a monogamous relationship or polyamorous relationship.

Whether your goal is to be a literary serial monogamist, regularly stepping up to better and better markets, or your goal is to be a literary polyamorist, the path is essentially the same:

Keep your current editorial relationship(s) solid, but always, always, always, keep your eyes open for the next opportunity. Strive to improve your work. Diversify the genres (or subgenres) you write. Then submit, submit, submit.

And never take actual relationship advice from me.

---

Reminder: Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology (Level Short), which I coedited with Barb Goffman, is currently nominated for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology. There’s still time to order and read a copy before voting begins.

---

“Writers are people who write.”

This quote is universally attributed to Ernest Hemingway, and there is no evidence that he actually said it.  But no one cares, because it’s exactly the kind of thing he would say, and we do know that’s what he believed. 

On this matter, he was correct.  If you spend an hour a day messing around on the guitar, you’re a guitar player.  If you go to the driving range every weekend, you’re a golfer.  If you write all the time, because you‘re compelled to do so, you’re a writer.  Before I was published, I didn’t feel this way, which I regret.  It wasn’t fair to my unpublished self, because I sure as hell worked like a son-of-a-bitch to remedy the situation. 

            I have a young friend, unpublished, who’s been working on a book for many years, putting in the hours of writing and rewriting, casting about for help and advice, cramming in writing time around a demanding job and busy toddler, feeling buoyed and desperate in equal measure, and generally going through the paces of apprenticeship.  To me, he’s a writer, because he’s always working at it, no matter what. 

            The thing is, writing is rarely easy.  There are moments when we all feel as if some supernatural power has taken hold of us, directing our hands to tap away effortlessly, composing as easily as breathing or strolling down the street.  We’ll also agree that this hardly ever happens.  Instead, it’s not unlike digging a ditch.  You have to put the shovel in, push down with your foot, and haul the stuff out of the ground.  This is hard work, and you know how hard it is with every word and shovelful. 

      Pausing with your hands over the keyboard while staring into the void is something our life partners have often witnessed.  They think we’ve slipped into a trance, but we know we’re only trying to come up with the next word, phrase, analogy, simile, descriptive sentence, or clever tie-up to the end of a chapter.  You feel like your mind is now trapped in concrete, and not another thought will ever occur to you.  But it always comes anyway, you just have to wait for it. 

            Some people don’t feel well unless they run a few miles a day.  Some of them are friends of mine, and in their 70s have sleek, toned bodies and the glow of clear heads and arteries.  I’m not one of them.  I think a car is a much better way to travel from point A to point B, and will never run unless being pursued by a wild animal, which is a distinct possibility where I live in New England.  But I understand their addiction.  I’m the same way about writing.  If I don’t write something, anything, at least once during the day, I feel like I’ve not slept or eaten.  I get jumpier than an addict, which I guess I am, sort of.  I know it’s a mental problem, but I’ve heard of worse. 

            Though as noted above, running for a few hours or crunching through a narrative is difficult, even if you can’t help yourself.  It usually starts smoothly, but there’s always that point when you start to fatigue and mild regret sets in.  Your breath shallows or your hands begin to get sore.  Your brain starts to wonder why you launched this effort in the first place, when you could be on the couch watching NFL Highlights or Antiques Roadshow. 

            But then, endurance kicks in, and you keep going, because why not. You’re already out on the road or at the keyboard and it seems better to just push through.  You start to think of new things to write, new connections and old ideas that can be pulled out of the dusty attic of your tired brain.  You tell yourself: this isn’t that hard. You just have to keep going, and if it sucks, you can always erase it all and start over again tomorrow.  There will aways be other ideas, other notions, other turns of phrase, something else you can put down on the page, because this is what writers do.

            They write. 

The Future Ain't What It Used To Be

I've obviously dedicated most of my writing career to crime and mystery fiction, and as you might expect I read a great deal of work in that field growing up.  I also had a deep love for science fiction, though, and while I've read relatively little new work in the genre in the last few decades, as a kid I delighted in the classics by the giants of the field--Asimov, LeGuin, Silverberg, and so on.  Recently, going through a box of books from my childhood home, I came across an interesting artifact by another of those giants, Arthur C. Clarke, probably best remembered today as the author of 2001.  I thought it worth looking at, both as an example of the perils of writers imagining the future and as a lens on the world writers are working in today.

In 1986, Clarke published a book titled July 20, 2019.  The date, of course, is the 50^th anniversary of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, and the book is a series of essays in which Clarke predicts what the world would look like in that then far-off year.  I bought and read the book when it came out.  I don't remember what I thought of it then, but reading it now, almost six years beyond the date Clarke chose for his prophecy, was certainly eye-opening.

So how did Clarke do with his predictions?

Well, there are a few hits.  He thought that the field I work in, distance education, would be huge, though he assumed it would operate via teleconferencing rather than being online (more on this later) and largely text-based.  He said that cars would still be much the same and still mostly gas-powered, though he thought they'd get 100 miles per gallon.  He thought entertainment would reflect an increasingly fragmented culture with more books, movies, music and so on aimed at specialized audiences, and he predicted the boom in self-publishing as part of that.  He was right about shortened hospital stays and the fact that medicine would still be largely controlled by corporations, though he didn't seem to give much thought to the social implications of the rich having care most people can't afford.

There are, however, far more misses, some amusing, some depressing.  Examples:

SPACE.  Clarke believed that by 2019 there would be a permanent manned outpost on the moon with perhaps as many as 1000 inhabitants.  There would be several manned orbiting space stations as well, and we would be routinely mining asteroids and preparing the first manned mission to Mars, with an eye to exploring the outer solar system.  He discussed in detail several conceptual engine ideas then being theorized which could cut the voyage to the red planet from months to a few weeks.  It's interesting to contemplate how much of this might have happened if NASA had gotten, say, a third of what the US has spent on the military since 1986.  Incidentally, earthbound transportation in Clarke's 2019 is similarly advanced, with magnetic trains and advanced hovercraft linking cities and jets that go from Shanghai to Los Angeles in two hours.

A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies

SPORTS.  Clarke predicted that steroids, hormones and other chemical enhancements would be made so safe that there would no longer be any reason to ban them from competition.  In addition, many athletes would have cybernetic parts, or even nerves cloned from legendary competitors to improve reaction time.  Elite athletes would be identified through genetic testing by the age of five and spend much of the rest of their lives being rigorously trained, using computers designed to enforce the most efficient way to perform any motion.  In baseball, for example, batters using boron bats would routinely hit home runs, though the fences had been moved to 500 feet from home plate.  They would do this facing pitchers who could throw 125 mph and pitch every other day.  The NBA would have to raise its hoops to 12 feet and make them smaller, since the average player would be over eight feet tall.

Offered without comment

THE MIND.  Clarke had little patience for the idea of therapy.  He thought that, by 2019, genetic mapping and brain imaging would make it possible to produce a vaccine preventing schizophrenia, drugs to prevent highly specific phobias and complexes, and compounds that would induce any desired mood.  For example, there would be a drug whose only effect is to enhance music appreciation, which would be routinely taken before attending any concert.

OK, maybe there's something to that one

ROBOTS.  Clarke would have been stunned to know there are still people making their living as coal miners today.  One of his most confident predictions was that virtually every job involving elements of danger or drudgery would have been taken over by robots well before 2019.  He honestly didn't think there would any longer be people working in factories, aside from very occasional repairs and inspections.  He also thought that most homes would have robots to handle routine domestic chores, and he dedicates considerable thought to how home design would emphasize simplicity and reduce clutter to make it easier for the robots to get around.  Clarke is very clearly NOT thinking of computers, but of humanoid robots.  He honestly thought they would be everywhere.  On the other hand . . . 

Rest easy, humans

COMPUTERS.  Clarke vastly overestimated the importance of the individual computer, and vastly underestimated the importance of computer networks.  He correctly assumed computers would be everywhere, in every home and every workplace, by 2019.  But while he occasionally mentions computers communicating with each other to share information for specific purposes, he still thought of every computer as an essentially distinct unit that learns to master the skills and demands of its particular job and function.  The idea that the computer would be connected to others essentially all the time, and that it would be useful only to the extent this is true, simply never occurs to him.  Thus he could not predict anything resembling Facebook, or Google, or Twitter, or Wikipedia, or Amazon, or the internet itself as it has come to exist.  Nor does he ever imagine anything resembling a smartphone--which might seem odd, from the man who, shortly after WWII, correctly predicted the creation of communication satellites.  This one oversight is so fundamental that it touches nearly everything else in the book, making it much less accurate than it might have been.  There's simply no way to understand almost anything actually happening in 2019 (or 2025) without taking account of the web.

Clearly, he did know there were dangers

GEOPOLITICS.  Again, Clarke was oddly short-sighted here.  He assumed the fundamental structure of world politics in 2019 would still be based on a Soviet-led Warsaw Pact contending with a US/UK-led NATO, with the front lines in a still-divided Germany.  There is virtually no mention in the book of Asia, Africa, or South America, let alone any notion that nations like China and India would be emerging superpowers that would shape much of the 21st century.  Weirdly, despite his ambitious claims for robots elsewhere, he envisions war still being conducted by human operators in planes and tanks; drones are another invention he did not foresee.  Something else he didn't mention, though it will dominate our lives for the foreseeable future: climate change.  Scientists by 1986 were well aware of this coming crisis, but Clarke never mentions it.  Perhaps he assumed the problem would have been solved, given his surprising degree of faith in  …

Not pictured: ice

 HUMAN NATURE.  It's hard to fault Clarke for this: he assumed that humanity, as a whole, would make decisions which might be self-interested, but which would be basically rational and fact-based.  He'd be dismayed to know that, more than fifty years after the first moonwalk, there are a substantial number of people who simply refuse to believe it ever happened because our teaching of science, math and critical thinking has become woefully inadequate.  He didn't foresee the resurgence of religious fundamentalism, the rise in racism and xenophobia, the spread of terrorism, or the willful embrace of ignorance that defines so much of our politics.  I truly wish that as a species we had lived up to the potential he saw in us.

Arthur C. Clarke