The Novelist as Plate Spinner
Don’t you hate it when you are deep into reading a novel, and the author refers to something you can’t remember? You come across a line like, “Of course, Bob never would have divorced Jill if it weren’t for what…
Don’t you hate it when you are deep into reading a novel, and the author refers to something you can’t remember? You come across a line like, “Of course, Bob never would have divorced Jill if it weren’t for what…
The question I get the most about my novel-in-progress is, “Why is it set in an alternative world?” My story takes place in the country of Silmara, not to be found on any map except ones I’ve drawn (alas, cartography…
You will sit down to write on a Sunday morning. Your final manuscript is due to your Incubator class in 22 days. The phone will ring. Your heart will sink at the Maine area code. It will be your father’s…
Writers think about word counts the way dieters think about calories. By the time I finished my YA novel, Half in Love with Death, I’d reduced it from 97,000 to 90,000 words, and I thought it was pretty slim and…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that one when becomes a writer paid (minimally, but paid!) for writing, one chucks all of one’s precious notions about craft and art and motivation out the window that has needed replacing for three…
Six years ago, I was finishing a first draft of my still-in-progress novel and got stuck at the final scene. My heroine needed to thwart an elaborate ATM scam run by her charismatic captors. How exactly had they pulled off…