YA Wednesday: Hot Valentines
With the scent of roses in the air and the taste of chocolate lingering on my tongue, my thoughts turn to Valentine’s Days of yore. I remember in third grade when everyone was exchanging valentines, I gave one to every…
Category: Craft Discussion
Everyday Expressions of Emotion & Other Wearisome, Well-Worn Words
I’m at that point with my manuscript: banging my head against the wall as I flag and purge repetitive words and replace all those well-worn expressions: he smiles, she grins, he laughs, they frown, she shrugs, he furrows his brow,…
An Interview with Alexander Chee, Author of The Queen of the Night
Alexander Chee’s second novel, The Queen of the Night, has topped nearly every “2016 must-read” list that flooded the Internet in January, and the response to each was ecstatic. Chee is not only a writer’s writer, but a great friend…
Making it Work: 4 Tips for Squeezing Writing between Job, Kids, Life
Some weeks before my artist friend Vicki Paret’s baby arrived, she stretched nine canvases of equal size. She gridded nine rectangles on each canvas. Eighty-one rectangles would form one epic painting. She worked methodically, left to right, top to bottom….
Point of View: Omniscient
“Partway through writing my first novel, I had a terrifying realization: I needed an omniscient narrator.” -Celeste Ng, Dead Darlings post April 7, 2014. Writing a novel is all about making a series of decisions that add up to a…
Six Tips for Building a Fantasy World
Every novelist builds a world, but if you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, worldbuilding is a bigger job—one I’m often tempted to skimp on. It’s great fun to think about magic in a new world—not so fun to figure out…