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Christina Baker Kline

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November 1, 2009 By bakerkline

Quick Link: The Picture that Inspired 80,000 Words

BIH inspiration“The newspaper clipping is in tatters.  Folded, yellowed, curling at the edges and mended in places with clear tape, it was tacked to the bulletin board in my office for eight years….”  So begins a guest post I wrote this week for In This Light, a blog about the influence of images on writers and writing.   Instinctively I knew that this image would help me access the core motivations of my characters in Bird in Hand, who act in comparably indiscreet and scandalous ways …

You can read the rest here.

Filed Under: Bird in Hand, Quick Links Tagged With: beginning, Bird in Hand, character, Christina Baker Kline, creative process, Dory Adams, fiction writing, In This Light, Inspiration, Paris, writing a novel

October 15, 2009 By bakerkline

Quick Link: A Tale of Two Book Clubs

book club girlWhen Book Club Girl, a site “dedicated to sharing great books, news and tips with book club girls everywhere,” asked me to write a guest post, I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about.  For over a decade I’ve belonged to a wonderful group of book lovers in Montclair, NJ, where I live, and several years ago I became part of very different reading group of writers in New York.  As I write in the post, “My two book clubs serve entirely different purposes.  The Montclair group provides a way to stay in touch with a circle of friends and read current books … And the writers’ group is equivalent to a welders’ convention – a place to exchange ideas about our trade.”  And they’re equally useful to me as a writer and reader.  You can read the rest of the post here.

Filed Under: Quick Links, Real Life Tagged With: book club, book club girl, Montclair, NJ

October 7, 2009 By bakerkline

Quick Link: “Women on Writing” Q&A

WOW awardWomen on Writing – or WOW! – is a buzzing hive of activity for, by, and about women writers and readers.  In a freewheeling interview with Margo Dill, a WOW columnist and contributing editor, I talk about why I keep a blog, why I write first drafts on a legal pad with an old-fashioned micro-point Uniball pen, why I get bored when authors simply read their work aloud, why I don’t feel guilty about not being a morning person, and what I know is true (to paraphrase Oprah, and why not?) about being a writer.  You can find the interview here.

Filed Under: Quick Links, The Creative Process Tagged With: Christina Baker Kline, creative process, fiction writing, Inspiration, Margo Dill, Oprah, the writing life, Thoughts, Uniball pen, Women on Writing, WOW!, writing a novel

October 6, 2009 By bakerkline

Quick Link: Coffee With a Canine

Lucy09Recently I did an interview with Marshal Zeringue, a screenwriter who somehow manages to find the time to maintain three healthy blogs: The Campaign for the American Reader (“An Independent Initiative to Encourage More Readers to Read More Books”), Coffee with a Canine, and The Page 69 Test, which astute readers of this blog will recognize from an earlier posting.  An excerpt of my recent conversation with Marshal – which includes earth-shattering revelations about how I write, where I work, my English Springer Spaniel, Lucy, and my favorite brand of coffee – is here, and if you can stand the cuteness, the entire interview is here.  Woof!

Filed Under: Quick Links, Real Life Tagged With: Coffee With a Canine, English Springer Spaniel, fiction writing, Inspiration, interview, Irving Farm, Marshal Zeringue, The Campaign for the American Reader, writing a novel

September 18, 2009 By bakerkline

Quick Link: The Page 69 Test

69 signThe “test” is simple:  is page 69 of Bird in Hand representative of the rest of the book?  Would a reader skimming that page be inclined to read on?  These were the questions posed to me by Marshal Zeringue, who edits book blogs including CftAR, The Page 69 Test, and Writers Read.

A fun idea, I thought – if perhaps a little gimmicky.  And then, to my surprise, I discovered that page 69 is a turning point in my novel.  Read more here.

Filed Under: Bird in Hand, Quick Links Tagged With: Bird in Hand, Page 69 Test, turning point

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COMING MAY 2026: THE FOURSOME

A literary historical novel set in Civil War-era North Carolina, based on a true family story and told from the perspective of Sarah Bunker, one of two sisters who married Chang and Eng, the famous conjoined twins…learn more

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