Pencil Sharpeners, Dreamy Beaches, and Life Advice from Denzel Washington

Meet the Kopp Sisters
Audiobook Narrator!

September 7 is the official publication date for the seventh Kopp Sisters novel, Miss Kopp Investigates. I hope you'll stop into your favorite local bookstore to pick up a copy, or order from Bookshop.org, which benefits independent bookstores.

The big party for the book happens a week later, and I'm so excited about it because it involves my amazing audiobook narrator, Christina Moore! Chris has been the voice of the Kopp sisters for every single novel, and she does an amazing job voicing those characters. You'll get to watch her in action, doing what audiobook narrators do, in our live virtual event on September 16.

Go here to register.  Invite your friends! I would love to see you there.

I Just Walk Around Listening to Birds Now.

Last month I downloaded the Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It listens to birdsongs and (sometimes) identifies the birds. On the first day I took it for a walk in Forest Park, near my house,it found a brown creeper, a song sparrow, and a Pacific-slope flycatcher. 

Imagine my excitement! All those anonymous bird sounds from the treetops finally had a name and a face! 

I'm told by more experienced birders that the app sometimes gets it wrong, but what do I know? If Merlin thinks the varied thrush is singing, that's good enough for me.

I have twenty-two birds on my list so far. I think I've plateaued for my neighborhood, and I'm going to have to venture further afield if I want to keep adding birds at this rate. Anyway, it's fun to go out looking for birds, and of course I'm painting their pictures, too.

Don't Write the Tedious Thing

Here's a nice bit of advice for writers: Don't write the tedious thing. If you're feeling stuck because you have to write this long boring part before you can write the next interesting part...maybe just skip the long boring part.

Or, as Elmore Leonard said, "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."

Experts tend to want to include everything they know, in order to make sure the reader knows what an expert they are, but also to make sure their colleagues can't come back later and point out all the many salient bits that were omitted. 

But here's the thing, experts: You can trust your audience to go find out the rest. You can just give them a bit about astronomy, or Middle Eastern history, and save the rest for another day.

And even us non-experts tend to want to put in long boring bits because we researched it, damnit, and all that research can't go to waste! 

But nothing is ever wasted. Just set that boring bit aside, very gently, maybe copy it into another document called Boring Bits or Compost Pile or whatever you'd like to call it, and write what's actually fun to write. Because that will be fun to read.

Also, this advice makes me think of the story Lin-Manuel Miranda tells about when he was thinking of making a musical from an 800-page biography of Alexander Hamilton: He called Stephen Sondheim and said he was overwhelmed by the task of turning 800 pages of names, facts, and dates into a musical. Sondheim told him to write the moments in Hamilton's story that he, Miranda, was personally drawn to. The shape of the story would come from those moments.

So...if it bores you, skip it. Let the shape of the story come from the moments that actually interest you.

Can We Please Get Rid of
Personal Brands?

I'm in a little online group with some other writers and artists -- or I was, until someone posted a question asking everyone to describe their personal brands in three words.

That's a quick way to get me to leave a group! I don't even know how anyone responded, I left so fast.

You know what a brand is, really, in modern business-speak? It's a group of products made by a company that shares a common identity. Procter & Gamble is a company, and they have a brand called Crest. There are a lot of different but related products sold under the brand name Crest.

What could that possibly have to do with you and me?  Who but a business consultant would ever come up with the idea that a human being--a lumpy, imperfect, soft-hearted human being--should describe themselves using the same language global corporations use to sell toothpaste?

(A brand is also a piece of hot metal used to sear a mark into the hide of an animal to indicate its owner, in case you needed yet another reason to loathe the phrase "personal branding.")

Shortly after I bailed on my little online group and its discussion of personal brands, I saw this funny and fabulous conversation between Denzel Washington and Jamie Foxx, in which Denzel says, "Branding, for an actor, is being good, not being known. Your brand is...whatever you did, is it any good? Not how many likes you got."

I queued up that segment of the interview for you, above. (or watch the whole thing, it's great.) But if you ever find yourself trapped in a conversation about personal branding, you now have my permission--and Denzel's--to walk out.

Just go be good. Get better at your thing. Be like Denzel.

Stop the Presses, I Have Discovered the Best Pencil Sharpener

Yes, I made a video about a pencil sharpener.

If you draw with colored pencils or any kind of artsy pencil, you have probably spent some portion of your limited time on this planet thinking, "Why can't I get a sharp point on this pencil? Didn't pencil sharpeners used to work? What happened?"

Well, I don't know what happened, actually. I don't know why it is that when I put my nice fancy new watercolor pencil in any number of perfectly functional-looking sharpeners, nothing happens. Oh, sure, the wood gets peeled away into little shavings that have to get emptied into a wastebasket. More of the pencil disappears every time I sharpen it. But why isn't the point any pointer?

Or, worse, how is it possible that the point went from "not sharp" to "broken off  halfway down the inside of the pencil" when all I did was to operate the pencil sharpener in what is, after all, the one and only way it can be operated?

I don't know. I really don't.

Electric sharpeners are no better, in case you were going to suggest that. Apparently real artists use razor blades, x-acto knives, and sanding pads to sharpen their pencils. 

Really? When pencil sharpeners exist? I'm supposed to use knives and sanding paper? Am I a woodworker now?

So the nice people at the art supply store told me that I absolutely must buy this Blackwing sharpener which had two holes: one for sharpening the wood, and the other for taking the wood-sharpened pencil and actually sharpening the newly-exposed lead to a long, fine point.

Didn't work. Not ever, not once, not on any brand of pencil I owned.

So I went back and bought this Prismacolor sharpener, which also has two holes, one for a short point and one for a long point. AND IT WORKS. The pencils come out SHARP, which is surely the one and only standard of excellence for a pencil sharpener. 

Sorry, that was a long build-up for a pencil sharpener review. I haven't left the house much lately, I don't know how to talk to people anymore. Just buy the Prismacolor one. It works.

Are you a writer? Do you want to talk about anything and everything writing-related? That's what these free Zoom events are for. Every month, the group decides what we're going to talk about next. In September our topic will be a bit of a mash-up. We'll talk about getting feedback or finding a way to connect with other writers to get feedback. And we'll talk about staying motivated and productive. They're sort of related, I think. It's happening Sept 28 and you can register here.

(Also, although I'm only posting this invitation to my newsletter, you are welcome to share the invitation with friends.)

The next live painting demo is, by popular request, BEACHES! We're going to paint this beach scene with watercolor or gouache, plus some markers or colored pencils if you've got them. These free live painting sessions are fun and relaxed and I would love to see you there. It's happening on September 30, and you can register right here.

Here's a Cool Event I'm Doing
with Lori Rader-Day

I have an event coming up on October 14 with Murder by the Book in Houston if you'd like to put that on your calendar now. Go here for details. Lori Rader-Day is the author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. You can see more about her and her books on her website. Should be a great conversation.

New Paintings!

San Francisco! Alaska! If you'd like to hang a piece of original art on your wall, I hope you'll drop by my shop and take a look around. It makes me very happy to pack up paintings and send them out into the world.

I Was on a Podcast

Yes, an actual podcast! I did an interview about art and staying true to your artist self on the Make More Art podcast. You can also listen online or on YouTube. All the links are here.

Virtual Events? I'm Available!

If you run a lecture series or any sort of event series and you need a virtual speaker, you can go here to see the types of virtual events I'm doing now. Feel free to pass this on if you know someone who's putting on these types of events right now.

I Can Send (Some) Signed Books to You

Would you like a signed Kopp novel? I have small quantities of a few titles...or rather, my husband does. Supplies are limited, so get them while they last, and thank you sincerely for your patronage. Go here to browse and order.

What Are You Reading?

This was kind of a weird book. It's a biography of David Hockney, but it's a novel. It's a novel, but it doesn't really contain a lot of actual scenes or dialogue. It's a weird hybrid, but it did give me what I wanted, which was a general overview of Hockney's life and process without the tedious bits that biographies tend to contain (see Don't Write the Tedious Thing, above). It was a quick read, so if you're a Hockney fan, why not?