On Stealing Homer and Having No Snappy Answers
RECENTLY, I SAT DOWN to speak with Professor S. G. Grant to chat with him about his new book, Stealing Homer, under the pseudonym Geoffrey Scott. It is available for preorder on Amazon and will be in stores on May 1st.
It was a gray, rainy day. My friend and I sloshed across campus, soaking our shoes, to get to his office in the basement of Academic Building B. His office felt much like a mini library: it had a wall with built in shelves filled with books—his desk was against this wall. The other three walls were painted a dark, purple-red color. It was cozy, made even cozier due to the music playing softly from his computer’s speakers and the sofas and chairs that somehow fit into the small space.
After starting my phone’s recording app, we started talking about his job and his favorite book. Professor Grant teaches Elementary and High School teachers how to teach and has been for 25 years. Before that, he worked at the University of Buffalo as a part-time Dean, and as a High School Social Studies teacher. While he enjoyed these past two jobs, he left them because he wanted to study what makes a good teacher.
His favorite book—or the book he’s read the most—is called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. It was turned down by 121 publishers until one finally decided to take it. The briefest description of the book is that it’s about a man and his son on a motorcycle trip. It’s interesting because, Grant said, “you’re reading along and you’re agreeing with everything he says and all of the sudden you find out—god, the guys in a room, with cigarettes burning his hands, and he’s clinically insane. And you think: Wait a second—wait a second! It just really puts in my mind that the way that we think about things really matters.”
Another reason he likes it so much is because, even now he can reread it and get new meaning out of it. I remarked that this means it’s a very good, well written book. He thought for a moment before responding, “Well, [with] almost any good book, you can read at later points of your life and get new meanings out of [it] and that’s one of them for me.”
Here we moved on to favorite genres in general. I was wondering if he enjoyed reading these types of philosophical books all the time or if he read a wide array of books from different genres—although I probably could have inferred due to the genre that the book he wrote belongs to. Career wise he likes “reading deep stories about what teachers do in the classroom with kids and how learning is complicated but doable.” When he first started out in the department he now works in “there weren’t many people who were writing about teachers—deeply describing their practices, and I’m kind of proud that I was one of the first wave who started doing that,” he said, smiling. “On the personal side, I’m a big mystery guy—I love reading mysteries.” He continued, “I think books have just been a really important part of my life. I think a lot of people in university life are like that. We’re probably better with books than we are with people sometimes.” At this, we laughed. I knew exactly what he was talking about and told him so, confessing that I sometime wished that life was a book because then I wouldn’t have to worry about what to do or say.
After taking a second to consider what I had just said, he said something that I really liked and still really like now, as I’m writing this blog post: “It turns out it’s no easier to write fiction than it is to live your life. Because there’s still a million things you could have your character say or do. It’s hard to figure life out so writing about it is still hard.” Honestly, after he said this, I didn’t really know what to say. This hit me as really insightful, and also made me realize why writing can be so difficult. So, all I said was, “...That’s true…” before moving along with my interview questions.
“I’ve been thinking about you coming to talk to me,” he said after I asked him about where the idea for his book came from, “and I’ve been thinking: “God you really gotta come up with some snappy answers”—y’know, something that makes you sound really thoughtful?”
I remember laughing. “They don’t even have to be snappy, they just have to be truthful,” I said.
“I’m glad you said that because I have no snappy answers.”
We laughed again. A lot of laughing occurred during this interview which made my worries about being a bad interviewer all but disappear completely.
He started writing Stealing Homer because he was feeling bad about watching too much TV. He thought about going upstairs to do something arty, but said that felt like too much of a hassle. “I thought, ‘Why don’t you just start writing something?’ And then the first line of the book just came to me, so I wrote it down, and I laughed, and thought ‘Well, hell. As long as I just keep writing to entertain myself, no pressure there.’ I didn’t know if anybody would see it, and I didn’t care. I was amusing myself.” He finished with, “That’s the big story: I started because I was feeling badly about watching too much tv and I wanted to entertain myself.”
I found this really interesting because it reminded me of when I started my own book. I explained how I started it after fourth grade. Immediately, his first question was: “Did you finish it?” I said yes. “I suspect that’s what most people never do,” he responded. I nodded. He said how there’s so many people who might have great lines or ideas; they may write them down, they may not. He then explained something he’d learned about himself: “I have a really short attention span and I work literally in 5-10 minute blocks and then I play solitaire or then I walk or get a cup of coffee.” He said this is good because working in little bursts means he can “write a novel. I just keep coming back: it’s all about being persistent.”
When I asked what the publishing process was like for him, he said, initially he didn’t know if he even wanted to publish it. “It took me a long time to decide if I was going to do it,” he said. It took him almost six months to write Stealing Homer and he liked it so he started a second one. It wasn’t until he was half way through this one that he decided to publish Stealing Homer.
“So I just read a bunch of stuff online about how do you publish a book and I learned that a lot of writers get an agent but those who don’t just write directly to publishers so I decided to try both.” He asked a friend who has published novels before for help. His friend showed him how to make a spreadsheet so he looked up the information of agents and publishers. He “came up with a list of probably 50 or 60 agents who said they were interested in mysteries, put their contact info in the spreadsheet” and started contacting them.
“They all want something different,” he told me, sounding excited but also a little annoyed. “Some of them want the whole manuscript. Some of them want a query letter. Some of the them want a query letter and a prospectus. Some want a query [letter], a prospectus and the first chapter. …So I put all my notes in a spreadsheet and I sent off stuff to about 30 or 40 agents and then 10 or so smaller publishers because big publishers won’t support you if you don’t have an agent.”
“I was expected to be flooded with answers.” He chuckled thinking about this. “Like, “Oh, please let us represent you!” But that was not the case.”
As it turned out, none of the agents were interested—but they said nice things though, so at least there’s that.
Two of the three publishers, he told me, were the types of publishers that “would publish [your book] if you give them 1000 or 2000 bucks.” The third was a publisher from North Carolina who wrote Grant saying they would publish his book. “and I kept reading for the “yeah but we’re gonna charge you.” Then he sent the contract and I read it and I had my wife read it and I was thinking, ‘where’s the catch here?’ finally I just wrote to him and said, “Look, I’m interested in working with you but what’s the catch?” And he said, ‘There isn’t any catch. We’re a long-tail publisher which means we work with you from the beginning all the way through the end and that’s what we do.’” That was about a year ago.
Now with it only being days away (and, when I was talking to him, only being weeks away), I asked him if he was excited. He told me that by the time the book comes out, you’re on to other things, describing it as “a little anticlimactic.”
That answer made me feel a bit disheartened so, to finish, I decided to ask him about writer’s block—that wonderful, terrible feeling of doom that you will never, ever be able to write again and that all that you have written or will ever write is complete trash (even if you know that’s not true).
“Um...no…” he said.
“Uh...how????” I thought.
Because he writes in short bursts, he’s able to write continuously. “I get up early in the morning, and after I’ve answered emails and played a bunch of solitaire, I have 20 minutes before I go exercise so that’s when I write. And some days I might literally write one sentence in that 20 minutes. Other days I might write a page. I don’t ever feel like I’m blocked but I do get stuck a bunch.”
To stop himself from getting stuck, “Usually what I do is write a big outline of where I think everything is going to go. And I only start writing when I think I’ve got it worked out but that still leaves lots of places for you to get goofed up.”
When he does get stuck, he has some things that work. “Walks, and solitaire, and coffee, and sometimes scotch but not in the morning—not in the morning too much. But in the evenings, yeah.” He laughed before saying, “…I wasn’t supposed to be honest was I?”
In all seriousness, though, he would read the last chapter to try to see where he went wrong. Other times he goes back to the big outline he’d created to figure out if it was something there that went wrong. But, “Sometimes it’s just figuring out that the characters would do something different than what you thought they would do. I know these people in my book but they still surprise me… which sounds really weird to say since they’re all coming out of my brain.”
Finally, after all of these snappy non-snappy answers, I asked him if he had any tips for people wanting to start writing, people who are writing, people who want to get published.
“I guess I honestly believe that if you want to do it you will do it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much time you have or don’t have, or whether you have kids or no kids, or whatever. If you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it. And you will make the time to do it. You gotta be in it—you gotta be in it for the long haul if you’re gonna do it.
“I play solitaire—that’s my tip.”
Summary: "A widowed college professor adapting to a new life, a young man struggling with his future and his sexual identity, a small Maine seaport seething with petty intrigues, and a newly found—and newly stolen—Winslow Homer painting. Stealing Homer is an art-flavored mystery that traces the connections and interconnections between people and the compelling, tragic, and humorous lives they lead."
Professor S. G. Grant’s book, Stealing Homer, is available for preorder on Amazon and will be in stores on May 1st.
Below, you will find a link to Geoffrey Scott's (S. G. Grant) author website where you can preorder the book and read the first chapter! Also check out his Facebook Page.