Under Pressure
People used to ask, “When is your next book due?” and I would laugh, self-consciously, because I didn’t have deadlines. I wasn’t a writer who had contracts or editors waiting for me to produce anything. In those bygone days, I…
Category: Fiction
World Building: What Time Is It?
From Hogwarts to Whoville every fiction writer constructs a world. It’s an artful business even when the settings are based on real places. The best ones are indelible.
Failing Beautifully
I assigned myself this blog because Life had taken me away from Art and I needed a way back to the page. I thought if I had a deadline I’d produce. And I have produced—many many badly written glib little…
When a Poet Writes a Novel
When a poet writes a novel the moon coils up into a copper-headed snake and hisses secrets. The horizon line bends like a cello string after the sun nods off into the thinning green sea to sleep. When a poet…
Counting Characters: A Lesson in Diversity
My Novel Incubator instructors loved to tell us to kill our characters. Most of us came into class with drafts bloated with characters who served no purpose, so it was sound advice. During revision, I created a giant diagram of all…
What to Do When Words Fail You
I have twenty minutes to write, about anything, anything at all, and therein lies the problem, the problem of too much choice. I like limits. I adore constraints. Now I’ve got 19 minutes and eight seconds. Shit. I suppose I…