Opening Old Boxes
The end of year always puts me in the mood to clean. A new year might be an arbitrary marker of time passing, but finishing up a calendar fills me with the desire to say good-bye to some things, to…
Category: Craft Discussion
An Interview with Emily Ross, Author of Half in Love with Death
Emily Ross’s debut novel, Half in Love with Death (Merit Press – December 18th, 2015), chronicles fifteen-year-old Caroline’s quest to find her recently missing older sister. It seems nobody can help Caroline. Her parents can’t stop blaming each other, her friends…
Writing Dude: How I Did Pandering Wrong
In her recent essay, “On Pandering,” Claire Vaye Watkins records the shock of discovering that she wrote, primarily, for old white men, members of the literati like Franzen, Roth, et al whose approval she sought and to whose tastes and…
Final Draft(s): Preparing Your Novel for Its Open House
How do you know when your novel is finished and ready to ship off to agent-land? Planning for this big move has similarities to selling a house or apartment you’ve lovingly furnished and decorated and made your own over the…
Friday Feast: Conflict, Trouble, Trim Prose, Foodies, and Science Fiction and Fantasy
You’ve had your fun, and your belly is full. Now, it’s time to get back to work, or keep the momentum going from NaNoWriMo. With more holidays on the horizon, it’s easy to slip into languor and laziness. Or you…
Your Research is Showing
Everyone has to do research from time to time. When one reader exclaimed of my early sprawling draft, set in the 1930s and ‘40s: “You sure know a lot about a lot!” I did not take it as a compliment….