Originality Begins with You by Paula Munier

 “What is originality? It is being oneself, and reporting accurately what we see and are.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

LUCY BURDETTE: A few weeks ago I took a Sisters in Crime workshop online from Paula Munier on the subject of plotting. (I'm always looking for help on that subject!) I enjoyed it so much that I persuaded Paula to share some of her 'secrets' with you!

PAULA MUNIER: Be yourself. Advice we hear from the day we’re born from everyone from our mothers and teachers to our ancient philosophers and present-day Ted Talk pundits. It’s good advice for artists, too—and now that getting paid for making art is more difficult than ever and AI and other forms of copyright infringement abound, being ourselves might be the only thing that can save us. 

Whether you paint or sculpt, craft or compose or choreograph, design or dance, or write, as I do, originality is now our best weapon in the war against human creativity. As someone once said (maybe Oscar Wilde, maybe Thomas Merton, maybe someone else altogether), “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.” I was reminded of this by the one and only Matt Weiner, writer and producer and creator of Mad Men. I recently took a class from him on ideas and the imagination through the Los Angeles Review of Books, and in that class, he encouraged us to note the things what we liked, and to write them down in a notebook. 

Of course, I’m doing it—I’m doing everything Matt told us to do—and was reassured by his advice because I do something similar every time I need to jump-start my imagination. When I don’t know what to write, I remember My Writing Rule of Three: 

1) Write what you know.

2) Write what you love.

3) Write what you’d love to know.

Taking that rule further, I use a bubble chart I created while writing Plot Perfect. It’s a list-making exercise, basically, a brainstorming strategy for artists regardless of medium. Here it is:

 

When you don’t know what to write or paint or sculpt or craft or compose or choreograph, do the bubble chart. The lists serve as a kind of X-ray of your likes and dislikes, your beliefs and your values, your past, present, and future selves. In short: What makes you, you.

From Bubble Chart Lists to the Bestseller Lists

I have the bubble chart to thank for my Mercy Carr mysteries. I’d always wanted to write mysteries, ever since reading the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes as a kid. I had several unfinished manuscripts in the proverbial drawer. Meanwhile, I’d published a lot of nonfiction, and acquired a lot of nonfiction and fiction projects as an acquisitions editor and as an agent. But my dream of writing a mystery series eluded me.

Then Phil Sexton asked me to write a book called The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings for Writer’s Digest Books. I needed a first chapter that I could use to illustrate certain fictional techniques and revision strategies. I couldn’t use anyone else’s first chapter for that purpose, so I wrote an opening chapter of a mystery—and I threw in everything I knew and loved and would love to know, working straight from my bubble chart’s lists. I grew up in a military family, so I made my heroine, Mercy Carr, a former MP who’d served in Afghanistan. I love dogs, so I gave her a canine companion named Elvis. I love the woods of northern New England, so I set the story in Vermont’s Green Mountains. I love stories about foundlings—from the Bible’s Moses to Anita Shreve’s Light on Snow to Julia Spencer-Fleming’s In the Bleak Midwinter—so I opened the story with Mercy and Elvis finding a baby abandoned in the forest. I even threw in a little Shakespeare because the bard is, well, The Bard.

Long story short: My agent read The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and said: “That’s a good opening chapter. You should write that mystery and I’ll sell it.” Armed with my bubble chart lists, I finished A Borrowing of Bones, the first book in my Mercy Carr series—and it made the USA TODAY Bestseller List. The first chapter of that novel is the first chapter that appeared in the writing book, with very few changes. The seventh book, The Snow Lies Deep, comes out in December. I’m working on Book #8 as we speak.

It’s All About You

As human beings, we can’t help but admire and appreciate originality, especially in our artists. Look upon a Matisse, and we admire and appreciate his unique mastery of color. Listen to Bob Dylan, and we admire and appreciate his personal yet profound lyrics. Read Alice Hoffman, and we admire and appreciate her particular illumination of the mystical and magical and mysterious aspects of life. These individual qualities inform these artists’ work and make their work special. 

The good news is: We are all originals. We owe it to ourselves and our art and the world at large to make the most of that originality. So, go ahead: Be yourself.

LUCY: Thanks Paula! And now it's your turn Reds, what would be on your bubble chart?

PAULA MUNIER is the Senior Agent and Director of Storytelling for Talcott Notch Literary and the  USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search also won a Dogwise Award. The Hiding Place and The Wedding Plot both appeared on several “Best Of” lists. Home at Night was named Library Journal’s Mystery Pick of the Month. The Night Woods, the sixth book in the series, debuted in October 2024, earning a starred Library Journal review among other acclaim. THE SNOW LIES DEEP debuts in December. Along with her love of nature, Paula credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep affection for New England as her series’ major influences. She’s also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Happier Every Day and the memoir Fixing Freddie: The True Story of a Boy, a Mom, and a Very, Very Bad Beagle. She lives in New England with her family and four rescue dogs and Ursula The Cat, a rescue torbie tabby who does not think much of the dogs. For more, check out www.paulamunier.com. 

Comfort Reading and Watching by Lucy Burdette

 

LUCY BURDETTE: I’ve said this before, and I’m sure it’s tiresome, but these are difficult wearying times we live in. I have often found myself looking for something familiar and comfortable to read or watch--something in a series so I know the characters. Sometimes a good murder mystery/police drama will do, like the many episodes of NYPD Blue. I love these people! John and I often say to each other, are we going to spend some time with our friends tonight? I watched an episode last week where the detectives were called to the scene of a dead man with his head in his lap. How can that possibly feel like comfort watching, but it does. I think it’s because of the lovable, wonderful, quirky and endlessly surprising characters in that police precinct. You always know that even if their world is filled with bad guys and violence, the good guys will always win in the end.

 I was also obsessed this winter with reading Jenny Colgan‘s series set in northern Scotland. You might guess because we live in Key West half the year now that I don’t like winter. But I like the idea of it, because it lends itself to coziness. Winter on Colgan‘s fictional isle of Mure is absolutely wicked, cold and windy, plus dark for many many hours in a day. Yet by the time she’s finished describing it, I can’t wait to get there because of the bustling pubs and the crackling fires and the sips of special Scottish whiskey. Each of her books in this series highlights a different character so you get to see the family and the community from a different point of view. Lots of bad things happen, people die, people are refugees from Syria, families are difficult. But Jenny makes them all palatable, maybe because community and good food trumps all ills?

Do you find yourself reaching for comfort books and television or movies? (Now this is making me wonder if this applies to food as well…)

RHYS BOWEN: I’m a great one for comfort reads and watches. I have all of Agatha Christie’s books. I stare at the shelf and see which one I might not quite remember then read it again. Usually I’m halfway through when I realize i do know whodunit. But it’s still quite calming. 

The same for television. Thank God for Britbox. I can watch Poirot, Marple, Sister Boniface, Rosemary and Thyme etc ad nauseam.

I can also re-watch the Vicar of Dibley, Miranda or any of the silly comedies when I really need cheering up.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Hmm, I don't really read books again. But I can always always watch My Cousin Vinny, or any Alfred HItchcock movie, or The Devil Wears Prada, or Say Yes to the Dress, or Chopped. I used to love What Not To Wear–is that still on? I love makeover shows. I can always watch Born Yesterday, or the Die Hard that’s at the airport, or absolutely any Tracy and Hepburn.The Philadelphia Story, and High Society. Any Fred Astaire. And oh, That’s Entertainment. I think if I sing along, I’m fine.

HALLIE EPHRON: oh, cousin Vinny!! Or Singin’ in the Rain. Or ET. Comfort watches rather than “reads” for me, too. I was just re-watching Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple series. And New Tricks hold up over and over.

JENN McKINLAY: I almost never reread or rewatch anything because so many books and shows, so little time. However, I did recently watch the K-Drama Crash Landing on You and much to my surprise, I watched it again. A South Korean woman crash lands into North Korea and is found by a Captain and his soldiers and it’s just soooo good. So, I guess that’s been my comfort watch. Now I’m looking for my next. As for a comfort read, I can’t think of any book that I’ve gone back to repeatedly but I am always on the hunt for a series to fall into. The most recent being The Shepherd King duology by Rachel Gillig, it’s a two volume series that reads like a fairy tale. Loved it.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, I am tickled by your “comfort” choices including Alfred Hitchcock and Die Hard! I might go with Die Hard–we all want to see the bad guy get his due–but not Hitchcock.

Lucy, I do get detective series being comfort watches, but medical dramas work for me, too. How that is possible with blood and gore and people’s lives in danger, I don’t know, but somehow it does. We just finished The Pitt, Noah Wyle’s new series set in a Pittsburg ER, which is astonishingly good. I had to check afterwards, and yes, all 19 seasons of ER are streaming, so if we run out of things to watch and want to check out baby Noah… That said, I don’t actually tend to re-watch a lot of stuff.

My reading has definitely been skewing towards the comforting lately. Here’s a recent find that I absolutely loved: MRS. QUINN’S RISE TO FAME by Olivia Ford, about a woman in her late 70s who applies for the fictional equivalent of Great British Bake Off. Also, Jenn’s I CAN’T EVEN, which I adored and it still has me thinking about the characters and wondering how they’re doing:-)

LUCY: John loved the Pitt too–the students annoyed me so much that I quit watching. Loved Mrs. Quinn, and have Jenn’s book on order! I meant to say Jenny Colgan and NYPD Blue aren’t reruns for me, I was just far behind the rest of the world!

DEBS: Lucy, I wish you’d stuck with The Pitt! The students get better! But here’s a fun TV crossover. If anyone is watching LUDWIG on Acorn (so fun and not really as silly as you think at first–there are undercurrents) the actor who plays Whittacker, the student from Nebraska in The Pitt, is actually Welsh, and is Detective Constable Simon Evans in Ludwig. His American accent was flawless–I would never have guessed he was British!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My daughter and her wife are DEEP into The Pitt, so I suppose I'll have to try it.

My comfort rereads? The Murderbot series by Martha Wells (which is coming to Apple TV in May and will get me to re-up my subscription!) Eva Ibbotson's novels for adults (marketed at YA, but that's not how she intended them.) Lucy's Key West series (just such a NICE world to live in.)

Weirdly, my comfort watches are disaster movies. Just last night I re-watched CONTAGION. For some reason, seeing the world fall apart always cheers me up. 

Jenn, if you loved CRASH LANDING ON YOU, I highly recommend DESCENDANTS OF THE SUN, which you can stream on Viki Rakuten for free, with ads, or on Amazon with a trial subscription to Kocowa. I was glued to the screen.

Red readers, how about you?

Happy Easter

 RHYS BOWEN:  It's Easter Sunday so I'm keeping this brief today as I'm sure many of you are going to brunch or church or to relatives. In England we nevre made a big thing of Easter. We were bought a couple of chocolate eggs. We went to church. One thing I remember is that we always dressed nicely in summery outfits only to find the inside of the church was frigid. 

But when I was growing up there was no Easter Bunny, no Easter egg hunt. One Easter I was staying with my parents when my older children were 2 and 4. I gave them an Easter egg hunt on the back lawn. I remember the neighbors staring out of their window as flung eggs all over the garden. I thought I'd gone mad. 

The one tradition I created with my own kids was to give each of them an Easter basket and to hide them. Each child got a trail of clues to lead them to their basket. Each clue was a rhyming couplet:

Where birds make nests look up and see

A clue awaits you in a ....."

Tree, they'd shout and off they'd run. I had four kids, about six clues each. That's twenty four rhyming couplets to be written and hidden around the house before six on Easter morning. The interesting thing is that the tradition has continued to my grand kids. Lizzie and Meghan wanted their baskets with clues until they were in college! I wonder if it will go on to the next generation?

So what Easter traditions do you have? And for my Jewish friends I hope you've had a blessed Passover.