HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s almost like Joanna Schaffhausen appeared, fully formed and blazingly successful, in the Sisters in Crime firmament. Doesn’t it? I’m not sure I had ever heard of her, forgive me Joanna, until THE VANISHING SEASON came out in 2017. And wow, it hit like a burst of champagne and confetti. Highly acclaimed, highly beloved, superbly reviewed--and her Ellery Hathaway and Reed Markham books became instant must-reads! Not to mention the adorable Bump, the basset hound who has become everybody’s favorite sidekick pooch. (You know Joanna has Winston at home, and we think…maybe…he might have inspired his fictional counterpart.)
Joanna has become a dear friend, and a treasured writing advisor and buddy, and has generously shared her time and talent with all of us through Sisters in Crime. She’s hilarious, brave, brilliant, supportive and hard-working. Her current book, NO MERCY was dubbed “Outstanding” by the AP. Her newest book—coming soon!—is ALL THE BEST LIES. And that’s why she’s in the spotlight today!
HANK: Do you remember the very first time you thought: I’m going to write a book, and I can do it? What was that moment?
JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN: I wanted to be a writer since I first understood it was a job that someone could have. Books didn’t appear by magic—someone created them! I wrote my first novel in high school. It was a romantic suspense story about dueling lawyers in a murder case.
HANK: Did that first book sell?
JOANNA: It did not! But it was strong enough to attract a literary agent on my first try, which was endlessly encouraging. He liked my second book better (I’d already written that one) and we decided to shop it instead of my first novel. While I was spit-shining it, however, he determined that he did not want to be a literary agent anymore and quit the business. I was too busy with college and then grad school to think much about professional publishing for a long while.
HANK: How many of your books have been published since then? What do you think about that?
JOANNA: I have two released, three more written but not yet released, and two not written but under contract, for a total of seven. I think it’s amazing and I can’t believe I am living my dream life!
HANK: Gotta know, got to ask. Do you outline? Has your method changed over the years?
JOANNA: Nope. If I outline, I won’t write the book because there are no surprises left for me. Nothing to discover. But, I have to know who did it and why, and what the character arc for my protagonist will be. These two elements also cement the primary theme.
HANK: Is your first draft always terrible? Has it always been?
JOANNA: I write fairly clean first drafts. There are always bits to clean up, of course, but mostly, the story works right out of the gate.
HANK: What is the hardest part of the book for you?
JOANNA: Ugh, the editing. As above, when all the surprise is gone, I am left with no story to tell and I find it utterly depressing. The book is just words on the page, and the longer I look at them, the more they all seem wrong. The story starts to feel flat, the dialogue predictable. I pretty much loath my books by the time I hand them into the editor. Luckily, with some distance, I get the joy back by the end.
HANK: Was there ever a time when you thought you would give up writing?
JOANNA: I wrote nothing at all during my pregnancy with my daughter and for three years afterward. This, after producing twenty novel-length stories and a bunch of shorter works over the previous seven years. I didn’t read much during this time, either. I think, in hindsight, I was just exhausted, even though my daughter was preternaturally well behaved and a good sleeper. The energy it took to care for a young child while holding down a full-time job of my own left me with nothing else at the end of the day. I was so tired I didn’t even miss writing. Until one day, I did. Words started pouring out of me again, and I have not looked back since.
HANK: Yay! And give Eleanor a hug from all of us. How often in your process do you have doubts about what you’re doing?
JOANNA: Approximately 2,394,082 times per day. Is that right? No, it seems off. Wait, make that 2,394,083…
HANK: I’m with ya, sister. What do you tell yourself during those moments of writing fear?
JOANNA: Just keep going*. It helps that I’ve now written enough books that I know I will love them at the start and hate them at the finish. I know the editing is worth it to make the book stronger. I trust I will eventually love the results, even if I hate the process.
*Except when a scene just isn’t working. If I’ve tried to fix it a bunch of different ways and it still feels wrong, that usually means I have to back up the book to the spot that was working. It’s always heartbreaking to start a writing day by erasing 2000 words or what have you, but it’s better than sitting with a stalled-out scene for ages on end.
HANK: Yikes. See? I said you were brave. But cutting a bad chunk of book actually feels pretty good. Do you have a writing quirk you have to watch out for?
JOANNA: I spend a lot of time thinking about names for my main characters, but for minor characters like previous victims who don’t even show up “on screen” I will use a name generator. Then I forget what I’ve named them and give them a second name. Or sometimes a third one.
Beyond this, I sometimes repeat myself almost verbatim. I think, oh, this is a good line! Or I must make a key point. Only upon editing I discover I had already used the line or made the point earlier. This is why editing is so important, even if I hate it.
HANK: Yes yes, I JUST had that happen! I thought--oh, I am SO clever. Then discovered I had already been clever.
But what’s one writing thing you always do—write every day? Never stop at the end of a chapter? Write first thing in the morning?
JOANNA: I am a linear writer. I do not write scenes out of order. This is the only way I can work without a detailed outline, because I can keep in my head what’s come before and use it to shape what is coming.
I do not write every day. In fact, most days I write nothing. But when I am actively working on a book, I write non-stop until the draft is done. That takes about 60 days for a 100,000-word book. Then I let it rest for a few weeks at least so that I can do the editing with fresh eyes.
HANK: How do you know when your book is finished?
JOANNA: Ha! The date on the contract tells me so. ;)
There are always pieces that feel undone or that could be improved by yet another round. Although, by the time a book goes to print, I’ve been through it at least a dozen times. If I get to the point where I am just changing my changes, I know I need to stop.
HANK: What’s the biggest mistake you see in people’s manuscripts?
JOANNA: Not enough tension on the page. The main character is doing things, but their actions have no impact. Crime writers tend to think as long as there is a murder or other nefarious incident, there is necessarily tension, but this is not so. The sleuth has to face obstacles when hunting the solution. Wandering from scene to scene asking questions is not enough.
HANK: Do you think anyone can be taught to be a better writer?
JOANNA: Gosh, I sure hope so, because that means there’s hope for me! Yes, I think everyone can get better. The best ways to improve are to a) read excellent writers and think about how they ply their trade; and b) practice your own writing.
HANK: You have been so successful, why do you think that is? What secret of yours can we bottle up and rely on?
JOANNA: I wish I had a secret because then I could tell it to myself! I think I am commercially friendly in that the kind of stories I love to write are those that a lot of people like to read.
As I’ve mentioned before, I spent a bunch of years honing my craft by writing X-Files fanfiction (stories set in the X-Files universe with those characters). In the XF world, you could choose to write almost any kind of story you wanted. You could make it heavy on the aliens and sci-fi. You could write a dark, noir-ish piece. You could take a lighter touch and go with romantic comedy. There were successful writers in all subgenres. But me? I stuck pretty close to what we saw on screen. My stories were kind of like, “What did Mulder and Scully get up to during the summer hiatus?” The upshot to this is that, if you liked the show, you probably liked my stories, too. Since we were all in the fanfiction world because we liked original flavor of the show, this gave my stories a very broad potential reader base. The market, as we say, was there.
That said, I watched writers in XF fanfiction try to “write to market” when their hearts weren’t in it, and these stories were almost universally failures. Similarly, out-of-the-box weird stories sometimes hit big because they were fresh and exciting. You gotta be you, no matter what form that takes.
HANK: You gotta be you is the most valuable thing! And you also gotta be you—while sitting at the computer writing. Give us one piece of writing advice!
JOANNA: My favorite gold-star advice is the “but then” or “because” rule. All your scenes should be joined by “because” or “but then.” Not “and.”
NO: Lucy gets up AND then goes to work AND then finds her co-worker Miriam dead in the coffee room AND then answers the detective’s questions…
YES: Lucy is hungover and she’s running late for a big presentation at work, one she is supposed to give with the hateful, back-stabbing Miriam. BECAUSE she’s hungover, she ducks in for a last giant mug of coffee and finds Miriam dead in the break room. She decides to stuff the body in the closet and do the presentation all by herself, BUT THEN the boss walks in just as Lucy is kicking Miriam’s foot into the closet…
Scenes joined with “and” are a series of events. Scenes joined by “because” or “but then” form a story.
HANK: You’ve seen so much change in the publishing industry, what do you think new writers need to know about that?
JOANNA: There will always be change. New technologies, publishers launching and publishers closing. Your agent quits. Your editor moves to a different house. You wrote a vampire novel just as the market moves to werewolves instead, etc. So much of the change is out of your control. In fact, nearly all of it is. The only thing the writer controls is the story, so you have to focus on that. Tell the story you want to tell and do it to the best of your ability.
If you want to have a career as a writer, the key is really persistence. It’s hard, I know it is. There is so much “no” built in, and even when you succeed, it can feel like you’re running up the side of a cliff just to fall off the edge at the top. The ones who last are those who get back up and start running again.
HANK: How do you feel about…stuff? Writing swag handouts giveaways that kind of thing. Do you think it matters? Do you have it?
JOANNA: Swag is fun! I’ve had some in the past, and I’ll likely do some more in the future. I do not think it helps sell books. Not one whit.
HANK: Ah ha! What book are you are reading right now?
JOANNA: I am reading Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha. It’s terrific! A moving story about dark secrets and race relations in Los Angeles after the 1992 riots.
HANK: What are you working on right how?
JOANNA: I am editing (gah!) a book called GONE FOR GOOD that is due out in 2021. It’s about a female detective dealing with the death of an amateur sleuth who’d been trying to find a serial killer. The serial murder case went cold twenty years ago, but now the amateur sleuth is murdered in the same way as the earlier victims. The detective has to figure out if the woman unearthed a murderer or if someone in her life used her weird hobby to get rid of her.
HANK: Wow. Fabulous idea. And we cannot wait to read it. (And I love editing. It means the first draft is there, and there’s something , at least, instead of nothing. So bon reading voyage!)
How about you, sisters? are you happy writing the first draft—and loathe to edit? Or do you crawl your way through the first draft, and delight in the fixes?
Joanna Schaffhausen has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain―how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. All the Best Lies is her third novel featuring police officer Ellery Hathaway and FBI agent Reed Markham. Her debut, The Vanishing Season, won the Mystery Writers of America/St. Martin’s Minotaur First Crime Novel Award. She lives in the Boston area with her family and a boisterous basset hound puppy named Winston.
All the Best Lies
When he was a baby, FBI agent Reed Markham’s mother was brutally stabbed to death while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department has given up hope of solving the case. But a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother, and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Now Reed has to wonder if his mother's killer is uncomfortably close to home.
Unable to trust his family with the details of his personal investigation, Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. Reed and Ellery discover his mother had snared the attention of several dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good. They begin tracing his twisted family history, knowing the path leads back to a vicious killer—one who has been hiding in plain sight for forty years and isn't about to give up now.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston's WHDH-TV, winning 34 EMMYs and 14 Edward R. Murrow Awards. A nationally bestselling author of 11 mysteries, Ryan's also won five Agathas, three Anthonys, two Macavitys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her novels are Library Journal's Best of 2014, 2015 and 2016. Hank’s 2018 book is TRUST ME, an Agatha Nominee, and a Best of the Year from The New York Post, BOOK BUB, Real Simple Magazine, PopSugar, and CrimeReads. Her newest psychological thriller is THE MURDER LIST, coming in August 2019. Find her at http://www.HankPhillippiRyan.com