Project Manage Your Novel to Done
I recently had the good fortune (trying to keep it positive) to find myself without a job. After the shock of being unemployed was over, I became grateful for the time off. I decided to take the summer and work…
Category: Novels
Friday Feast: Publisher P&Ls, Depressing Graphs, Big Book List, and Literary Hotspots of America
What do you mean editors don’t think they can sell the epic, decade-spanning horror slash literary mashup of the painting my Grandma found in Albuquerque that carried the soul of a young girl who died in a fire and haunted…
Here’s the Beef on Stakes
“What’s at stake here?” Sooner or later every fiction writer fields this question. Often the challenge appears as a single word – STAKES? – scrawled on a novel chapter or short story draft, plus or minus a coffee cup ring,…
Friday Feast: Books For a Long Holiday Weekend
For five seconds, I thought I’d do something a bit more interesting than providing a list of books to read (again). But then I thought, nah. It’s a holiday weekend in both the U.S. and Canada and quite possibly in…
My Adventures in Photo Realism
For Valentine’s Day in 2009 my husband and I got tickets to a New Yorker event called “Love Is Strange” where Jeffrey Eugenides was going to speak about love and literature. That February, I was finishing my dissertation that included…
That Name Rings a Bell
Like a lot of writers, I have a little notebook where I jot down stuff that pops into my head. Sometimes it’s an idea or phrase. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a single word. For instance, the last note I…