Author Archive

One Year In—Writing The Novel: Julia Fierro

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance, I turned to published novelists, whose interviews are presented in the One Year In: Writing the Novel series.

One Year In—Writing the Novel: Celeste Ng

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Celeste Ng After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance, I turned to published novelists, whose interviews are presented in the One Year In: Writing

One Year In—Writing the Novel: Dean Bakopoulos

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance, I turned to published novelists, whose interviews are presented in One Year In: Writing the Novel. Today’s novelist is Dean

One Year In—Writing the Novel: Allison Lynn

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance, I turned to published novelists, whose interviews are presented in One Year In: Writing the Novel. Today’s novelist is Allison

One Year In—Writing The Novel

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
After one year of writing my novel, I took stock of what I’d accomplished—which seemed like very little. Would writing always feel like flailing? How do novelists find their way through? For guidance, I turned to published novelists, whose interviews are presented in the One Year In: Writing the

Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
 “Oh, I get it. ‘Pete’ is the name of the boy who falls off the log. ‘Repeat’ is the name of the other boy, but when you say his name, you’re also asking me to say the joke again.” My daughter says this a week after she’s been told

“Dear Lucky One”: The Westing Game Invites Us to Play

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
Thirty-five years after the publication of Ellen Raskin’s novel The Westing Game, readers still rave about it. As one literary agent tweeted recently, “if I could find the new Ellen Raskin, I would be the happiest agent ever.” Bestselling novelist Gillian Flynn ventures that in Gone Girl, she maybe,

Mother-Reader

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
In retrospect, I did everything wrong when I opened Emma Donoghue’s excellent story collection Astray. I didn’t check the author notes explaining the origins of each piece. I didn’t note the time: midnight. It didn’t occur to me that in a collection chronicling historical moments, there might be violence,

Beach Writing

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
I was elbow-deep in my first novel when my second novel arrived. Since Novel 2 concerns premature babies, its timing seemed appropriate. For a week, I pacified Novel 2 with light research and a thousand words of writing. There, I told it. Wait. I headed back to the hard,

Do Characters Dream of Left-Justified Sheep? (Part Two)

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
How can you avoid bad dream-writing? Part One of this post appeared on Monday. All right, let’s talk about the good things dreams can do for your writing process. Let’s have some nice dreams. Real-ize Your Dream  Have you ever used a dream as inspiration for writing? George Saunders did this