Tag Archive for ‘writing a novel’
Inside the Skin
“The older we get, the more … you realize there’s a whole range of things you will never do, of things and people you will never be. As life becomes more and more limiting, there is something wonderful about being able to get inside the skin of people unlike yourself.” — Lee Smith Lee Smith is the author, most recently, of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger
Bi-Curious about Writing Fiction
This was never the way she planned — not her intention. But journalist Cindy Schweich Handler wrote some fiction. And she liked it. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. And since I was an avid reader of fiction as a kid, that meant being a novelist. I was in fourth grade when I wrote the vaguely titled “Castle of Things,” a blatant rip-off of “Alice in Wonderland.” A year later, I followed this [...]
Writing Tip #11: Don't Listen to Hackneyed Advice
Write what you know? On second thought … “Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words ‘Write what you know’ is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don’t. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?” – P. J. O’Rourke “It still comes as a shock to realize that I don’t write about what I know; I write [...]
If Two Books Don't Sell, Write a Third
The novelist and creative-writing teacher Susan Breen offers consolation, hope, and advice for anyone trying to get published: I’ve come to think that publishing stories are like birth stories. There’s usually a lot of pain, but once you hold that bundle in your hands you forget all about it. Then you say, Let’s do it again! My own story, if I can hang on to this image a little longer, was like a very delayed labor. In fact, I’d come [...]
“You Have to Make It Excruciating Somehow”: More on James Cameron
Last week I posted James Cameron’s answer to the question “What’s the most important thing you know about storytelling?” Discussing Cameron’s ideas with the writer Bonnie Friedman – with whom I have an ongoing, percolating conversation about craft and creativity (as regular readers of this blog well know) –, I mentioned that I particularly liked his idea that “you have to take [your characters] on a journey – and then you have to make it excruciating somehow.” Excruciating – such an [...]
Let’s Talk About Dialogue
Last month I received an early copy of Dawn Raffel’s new story collection, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, which officially debuts this week. Reading it — a slim, spare set of 21 stories in just over 100 pages that Publishers Weekly calls “a model of economy and grace” — I was struck by how well Raffel writes dialogue. So I asked her to articulate how she does what she does. And here’s what she said: Before I was a [...]
Letting Go
Katharine Davis just finished writing a novel. Now comes the hard part: Writing a novel is a long journey. From the simple physical endurance of turning out all those pages to the emotional ups and downs of the creative act—it’s an enormous endeavor, consuming one’s life for years at a time. Writers often talk about the difficulty of getting started. How do you find the voice, where to begin, which point of view, the time frame, the setting? There are [...]
Why Do I Even Want to Write a Novel?
With a challenging, fulfilling job and a satisfying personal life, Anne Burt questions her desire to write a novel – and finds the answer in an unexpected place: Motivation has always been as cruel to me as it has been – well – motivating. I’ve been motivated to write because: I imagine glory when the world reads my masterpiece; I need to act out some childhood revenge fantasy about surpassing my father; I have a contorted sense that immortality is [...]
The Egg in My Pocket
As a project for school, my 13-year-old son, Will, spent several days carrying an egg around. His task was simple: all he had to do was keep the egg from breaking. The experiment was intended to show what it’s like to have a baby, to approximate the feeling of constant vigilance that never leaves you once you have a child. Ultimately, of course, it was supposed to make hormone-addled adolescents think twice before doing something stupid. As a mother of [...]
Writing Past the Blind Spot
Last week Bonnie Friedman found out something big … As soon as I finished writing my guest post for this blog last week about how “people don’t do such things,” I put the computer in “sleep” mode, stood up, and the answer to the question I was secretly asking washed through me. Why couldn’t I really believe that people in the world do mean and otherwise outrageous things (things that, if I could believe in them, I could let my characters [...]
