When to Let That Novel Go
I recently returned from my annual writing retreat with my fabulous writing group, the Salt + Radish Writers. We go every year and spend four days in a rambling, old Maine house on the beach. We have a schedule, stick…
Category: Novel Incubator
Friday Feast: Debunking the 10,000-Hours Rule, Scorched Earth Novels, the Importance of Sensitivity Reading, How to Promote Your Book Without Being Annoying, and an “Embarrassingly Inefficient (but Surprisingly Effective) Writing Process”
Back when I had time to take kung fu and tai chi classes, I hung on to the hope of the 10k hour myth because I wanted to believe that all that time spent in class would turn me into some…
Craft on Draft: Writing Fiction from Real Life
At last month’s Craft on Draft event Michelle Hoover, Emily Ross, and Dawn Tripp shared how truth inspired their fiction. In addition to reading excerpts from their novels and revealing what was influenced by fact, the authors selected the event’s…
Dig Deeper and You Might Find What You’re Looking For
At this year’s Muse and The Marketplace I will be peddling (presenting? offering? begging acceptance for?) my YA historical novel, Big Shot. This will be my second time at Muse with this novel, though its first as a Young Adult…
Crushed by the Crucible
So I did that thing, the very depressing one, where I pulled an old manuscript out of the files with the intention of fixing it. I was confident I knew the problem: it had to be the stakes. The reader…
An Interview with Michelle Hoover, Author of Bottomland
Building on her critically acclaimed debut novel The Quickening, Michelle Hoover’s gripping, brilliantly crafted new release, Bottomland, follows the Hess family’s struggle to stay together on the Iowa plains following the mysterious disappearance of two family members during the years…