JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I don't really need to introduce friend-of-the-Reds and everyone's fave, E.J. Copperman, do I? His mysteries have been making us laugh and think and root for his often benighted New Jersey residents (living and un-) for years. He's no novice. He has a track record. He has many, many bibliographic entries in libraries around the country!
So what does a long-term, career author think about on the publication of his 26th book - the first in a new series, and not set in the Garden State? Well, he's looking at some other dynamite authors. And wondering, how do you know when you've written your best?
Just
recently I watched Mank, the movie that is supposedly about the
writing of the Citizen Kane screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz, who you
probably know as the grandfather of the nice guy on Turner Classic Movies but
who I know as the guy who produced the best three Marx Brothers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup. But that, as
people who say nonsensical things say, is neither here nor there (it’s
someplace but nobody ever seems to look for it).
Anyway, I’m not offering a movie review here, but one moment (actually, two moments) in the movie struck me in an unexpected way. At one point, Herman’s brother Joe (who would go on to write and direct All About Eve, among other things), in trying to dissuade Mank from going ahead with the Kane script (here called American), says, “It’s the best thing you’ve ever written,” which is fairly poor salesmanship if you’re sincerely trying to get a guy not to submit his screenplay.
Later,
when Orson Welles shows up and Mank starts arguing with him over screen credit
for the screenplay, our “hero” says to Welles, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever
written.” And that’s when my solar plexus felt a little punched.
I’ve been writing a long time, and writing mystery novels for a decent portion of that long time. I’d never considered the question before: What’s the best thing I ever wrote?
How would I know?
I mean, my 26th novel, Inherit the Shoes, was just published, and people seem to like it well. (Very few people other than reviewers will tell an author they hate the book to the author’s face, a societal convention I applaud wholeheartedly.) It starts a new series that I hope will last for a long time, dealing with a New Jersey criminal prosecutor who tires of the whole putting-people-in-jail thing and decides to move to Los Angeles when she’s offered a job as a family attorney, which is a polite way of saying a divorce lawyer. And that’s all I’ll tell you for now because we’re trying to decide what the best thing I’ve ever written might be. Or had you forgotten?
It might be Inherit the Shoes. It might not. Could be it’s a book you haven’t had the chance to see yet. Maybe it’s one of the many (many) screenplays I wrote before turning to the long form, none of which was ever produced. It’s entirely possible it was a newspaper article I wrote back in the day, a journal entry from my college days or a blog post on the late, somewhat lamented Hey, There’s A Dead Guy in the Living Room. For all I know it’s a grocery list I wrote back when we used to go to grocery stores.
To be fair, it’s also a distinct possibility that I’ll write something better my next time out. That’s what keeps this writer going, the prospect of writing something amazing. Hey, it’s possible. Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote Citizen Kane, after all.
But
as of now? The best thing? I honestly can’t say. I know I have favorites for
sentimental reasons but I can’t say objectively that one is better than all the
others. There are readers who love my Haunted Guesthouse series and have no
time for any of the rest. That’s fair; you’re entitled to like what you like.
Others believe that the stuff I wrote back when I had another name was the best
material I’ve produced. Sure, it could be.
The writer is too close to the work to know. It’s why Mank has to hear it from his brother before he believes it of the Kane screenplay. We were there the whole time we were writing it and we know we compromised in places for lack of a killer idea in that small passage or that chapter or that plot point. So that can’t be best, can it?
Maybe it can. Maybe everybody gets to decide for themselves.
As for me, I’m hoping nobody ever asks me what the best thing I’ve ever written might be because I honestly couldn’t give a definitive honest answer. On the other hand, if you want to tell me what the best thing I’ve ever written has been for you, I’ll never not want to hear it. Because that means that something I wrote got to you, and what’s not to like about that?
Wow. This might not be the best thing I’ve ever written, but it certainly the most self-obsessed.
JULIA: Okay, dear readers, can you name "the best thing" any of your favorite authors have written? Can you point to a moment when you can say, "This was my best?"
E.J.Copperman is the author of 26 published mystery novels including INHERIT THE SHOES, the first Jersey Girl Legal Mystery, which as it turns out is available now. The other 25 books are also still available. As far as Copperman knows. On the other hand, Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote Citizen Kane, ostensibly with Orson Welles, and that was, in everybody’s opinion, the best thing he ever wrote.
