Word Problems for Writers
1. You have 20 minutes to write before your child wakes up, or you have to go to work, or your cat finally chews through your computer’s power cord. You turn on your computer and see that you have 5…
Category: Books
What NOT to Say When You Get “The Call”
As writers, we expect rejection. We are told we should embrace it, that we aren’t really writers until someone slams a door in our face. Rejection seasons us, toughens our skin. I think I may have internalized this advice a…
World Building: Where Are We? Part II
So you have a strategy or two for locating the reader in time. You know whether and why you’re setting your surreal, speculative or dystopian novel in the past, present or future. And you’ve pinpointed the era, the decade, maybe…
Lessons learned when writing under strict time constraints, or NaNoWriMo!
I’m a writer who loves a constraint. It is much easier to write when given a limiting factor than to write “anything, anything at all!” This year, I need to write 50,000 words by the end of the month. Wait,…
Writing Who You Know
The novel discussed in this October, 2017, post was recently selected by Golden Antelope Press for publication this October, 2019. Instead of writing what you know, have you ever written who you know? My as yet unpublished novel, You Can…
Five Grubbies (Plus One) Tell All About Their Debut Novels
Is it me or does it seem like debut novelists get asked the same questions over and over? Not that there’s anything wrong with that—but I thought I’d mix it up and ask some of our own Grub Street/Novel…