How To Write When Your Father Is Dying
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…
Category: Novel Incubator
The Fear and Freedom of Facing the Blank Page
Whenever the topic of rewriting comes up, it seems to always be met with a communal groan and mumblings of, “Oh, god.” You know the feeling I’m talking about. You just finished a draft of your novel. You’ve spent months…
Homegrown Books: Reading from my Local Literature Shed
My high school best friend, Jen, and I were discussing books recently. She started telling me, with great enthusiasm, about a novel she had just read that she thought I would like. But she stopped mid-sentence and said, “Oh, never…
All-Points Bulletin: Finding the Missing Scene
The crime is elusive. Despite the clues — a character transformation not quite earned, too hasty of a consequence — most of us are quick to dismiss the evidence. A writer is often the last person to realize that a…
Novel Incubator: We’ll Double the Offer!
This post first appeared four years ago, when the Novel Incubator was only a toddler. Now, with Class 7 more than halfway through their year, we decided once again to take a break from our typical posts to give you…
What NOT to Say When You Get “The Call”
As writers, we expect rejection. We are told we should embrace it, that we aren’t really writers until someone slams a door in our face. Rejection seasons us, toughens our skin. I think I may have internalized this advice a…