Waiting. Publishing your writing is so full of waiting to hear from an agent or editor that medieval torture begins to seem like a diversion to inflict on yourself while enduring the greater agony. I’m at another waiting stage with my novel-in-progress, The Renaissance Club. I’ve been working on this for so long that I can’t look at it right now without guidance. I need an agent or editor to hold my hand and tell…
It’s official. History made. Glass ceiling — well, not if shattered, a network of cracks so numerous and widespread you know whose head is going through it soon. America may well have — at last — our first female president. So how has literature responded to the new world that presidential campaigns seem to indicate is approaching, a world of equality for women? Last year, complex and unlikeable but interesting female characters led the NYT…
I post this advice from author Neil Gaiman with some trepidation, having just spent a solid twelve months fixing words that were relatively easy to draft. But it’s true, if you let your inner critic sit in your lap while you type, you’re going to get your hands and words bitten all over until there are almost no words left and no hands willing to make them appear. So in the words of Anne Lamott,…
To help us all tilt our pens forward and launch them into a vibrant and productive 2016, I thought I’d share some bad news and some good news about writing. First the bad news. Kristen Lamb’s blog entry today sums up the bad news about publishing, for the writer. Never mind if book sales are up over Kindle sales, and don’t bother with the debate about Amazon vs. Indie bookstores. You’re almost never going to…
Unless your main character has OCD, s/he has somewhere she habitually leaves messy. A MC’s mess can point to her attitude in life. Kitchen? Living room? Bedroom? Mine is my desk. Where I can pile books and file folders, defining me as someone always looking forward rather than paying attention to details. Your protagonist’s way of making a mess may be an important trait. It may even involve magic. In magical realism in women’s fiction…
If you’re an aspiring novelist who has put in the good work on learning your craft, and now wants to proceed to the getting publishing part, I hope you, too, read scores of books, articles, and blogs about the publishing industry. (The MUST-READ on this topic: The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published from The Book Doctors, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry.) After giving myself a basic pub-biz education, hiring my editor, Arielle…
Scientific studies have confirmed what avid readers know: reading novels makes you a more warm-hearted person, more likely to understand your fellow human beings, and quicker to empathize with them. And not just ONE study, but several scientific studies, have identified activity in the brain that leads to this result. And not only fiction, but specifically literary fiction, was determined to have this salubrious effect on the human heart-mind. As a reader of novels, and…
I’m coming down the home stretch (= two-thirds through) of what I sincerely hope is the final revision of my time travel novel, The Renaissance Club. I’m past fallen-in-love with Gianlorenzo Bernini — I’m in the forming-a-fan-club stage. If only for this sculpture of Apollo and Daphne, made early in his magnificent career as a sculptor. He was also the official architect of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome under two popes. When I say buried…
Gianlorenzo Bernini Sculpting in Clay I’m writing a story about a 17th century artist and a 21st century art historian meeting, and the big question is, what does he have to say to her, and what does she have to say to him? My main character has done her Master’s thesis on the sculptor/architect and meets him in person in St. Peter’s basilica, thanks to a magic time-shifting gold pen. Is she kind of his…
I’ve returned to working on my novel about Italy. Took a wonderful webinar from The Book Doctors, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, and it was so full of great tips for editing your novel, that I was itching to open the last draft. Their book, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, really is a must-have. It’s on my Kindle. And the BEST PART: if you buy a copy, The Book Doctors will…