Posts Tagged ‘fiction writing’
Will the juice come?
As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come. -Ernest Hemingway I love this quote from the American author Ernest Hemingway, and I find it very useful. I was recently speaking to a friend who is mapping out all of her ideas. She seems excited about her project and endlessly…
Read MoreWhat’s the ‘crossroads’ novel?
Once on a long hike, I told my older son the story of Stephen King’s novel The Shining. It terrified him, but also kept him going on a pretty exhausting 12 km trek. I read some novels out loud to my children, and my oldest son asked me if I would read this to him.…
Read MoreBeyond the idea…
“But the truth is, it’s not the idea, it’s never the idea, it’s always what you do with it.” Neil Gaiman I recently read (and loved) this quote from author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman, whose work spans such a wide range of genres and age categories, surely knows a thing or two about how to…
Read MoreThe devil’s in the details
“Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work … Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything. Or a broken billboard. Or weeds growing in the cracks of a library’s steps. … The details are always the starting place in…
Read MoreIt’s National Short Story Week 2015!
It’s that time of year again. 16-22 November this year marks National Short Story Week. Readers, writers and listeners of short stories are asked to focus attention on this important literary form. Take a look at the whole range of events and resources here. For those of us who love short stories, we often have…
Read MoreThe importance of backstory in your fiction
Over at the excellent Writers in the Storm blog, author Kathryn Craft has an excellent post entitled Backstory matters. Backstory is one of those controversial issues today. While you certainly don’t want to dump all of a character’s backstory into the opening chapter (since it tends to slow down the pace), you do need to…
Read MoreMaking room for your writing
This helpful article was in the last issue of Writer’s Digest. Its author is the women’s fiction novelist Amy Sue Nathan, who also hosts the popular Women’s Fiction Writers blog. Nathan offers some helpful insight into how to carving out time and space for your writing, even in the midst of the overwhelming demands of…
Read MoreWhat are your writing projects this summer?
I don’t know about you, but summer can often be one of my slower writing periods. Roman summers are hot, the days are long and there are lots of distractions to keep me from buckling down behind my computer. I find it an ideal time to day dream, and plot out story lines and characters…
Read MoreBest websites for writers
Writer’s Digest came out with their annual list of the best web sites for writers. Many of my favorites made the list. Others I didn’t know of, but will have to explore. Here are some of the sites I enjoy that made this year’s list, and hope other writers will find useful: Nathan Bransford :…
Read MoreWork-in-progress wants YOUR opinion
I was thrilled when my blogging buddy, the talented YA author Evelyne Holingue, tagged me for the Work-in-progress challenge. Through her blog post, I discovered that Evelyne is not only a prolific YA author, but she also writes essays on her experiences as a French woman living, working, and raising her children in her adoptive…
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