Someone in one of my writing groups asked what makes a great first page. It’s an excellent question, and no two answers will be alike, despite what the bestseller lists and books on writing “the breakout novel” tell us. Character always draws me into a book. I don’t read many thrillers or fast-paced stories. Someone reported the advice that a first line of a novel should make you nervous. I think that works well for…
I finished my 10-day Do-It-Yourself At Home Writing Retreat, and I learned some new things about my creative process . I got a lot done: Edited the first third of my novel manuscript Wrote three new poems Prepared ideas for cover art for my forthcoming novel Wrote a couple of blog posts and some tweets Finished the script for a musical Had some fun days in nature and in town It was an experiment, as…
What’s so great about Italy, and why did I spend many years of my life writing about it, culiminating in my novel The Renaissance Club, which features Italian sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini? Good questions. What I keep coming up with is that Italy is Bernini, and Bernini, Italy. I mean the place is full of gorgeous, sumptuous, emotionally moving art. It’s a place so full of art you start to take it for granted that you’ll…
In the spirit of the holidays now upon us, I’d like to offer some fodder for those quiet times you find amid the activities and social life. Reading for me leads to writing, so I often start my writing day by either progressing in a novel or reading several poems. Sometimes digging into a craft book. So here are some recommendations for feeding your head. Story Genius by Lisa Cron. This is the one fiction…
We’ve been doing it since before Jane Austen. Girls writing fiction. So in the 2016 National Novel Writing Month, I’m going to guess that a majority of the more than 400,000 participants this year are women. And many will go on to publish their books. Some NYT bestsellers by women that began as NaNoWriMo exercises: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill[32] The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, published…
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,…
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” – Henry David Thoreau. When I #amwriting either prose or poetry, I first write long and thin. By that I mean a lot of words to say not as much as I will wind up with, compressed. Having just finished what I hope is the final revision of a 400-page novel, I know the meaning of short…
It’s almost like time travel exists! As it does in my new WIP, THE RENAISSANCE CLUB. We now have a new masterpiece by the inventor of the Baroque, seventeenth century artist Gianlorenzo Bernini (and one of my novel’s main characters). According to the New York Times’ article, the Getty Museum just came upon one of the rarest of finds, a new work by Bernini, one that was thought long ago lost. The minute you look…
Clearly writing this novel, THE RENAISSANCE CLUB, has wiped the floor with me. I haven’t worked on my new poetry manuscript, thoughtfully blogged, wittily tweeted, or amusingly updated in … let’s just say furlongs of seasons. I’m trying to pick myself up off the floor of a rigid and focused writing routine that produced a 416-page, carefully revised manuscript over a period of years. I’m trying to remember the carefree writer who could take a…
Long absence from blogging because … a novel, a play, many grant proposals, a poetry manuscript, and I have words coming out of my ears, dangling over my head as I sleep, raining into my bedroom, puffing out of my puppy’s nostrils. (Can you see that one? I do!) Really, novels take too much time to write. I love reading them and writing them. I hope I’ve learned enough to write faster the next time.…