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…
Category: Rewriting
Writing the Murky Middle: How Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat Can Help
I was floundering in the Murky Middle of my novel. You know that place—the one that happens after you’ve sent your hero off to find her heart’s desire, but before she actually gets it. Right, that place—the big, awful middle…
The Importance of a Style Guide and Log
Here’s a comment my copyeditor, Jade Z. Scibilia, made about my last manuscript: “I laughed when you had Lynch mention the number of Johns in the police force (I recall we had to work on that in Idyll Threats). Buuuuut, we have…
Ditch the Heavy Metal
Twenty years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by the novelist Robert Cormier. That night he said, “The reader doesn’t care what you were trying to write. The reader only cares about what’s on the page.” In…
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
I am not a Buddhist (although I have researched Buddhism in the service of one of my novels), but I’ve spent time pondering in relation to my writing a variant of the famous Buddhist kōan*: You can hear the sound…
Interview with Lisa Borders, Novel Teacher Extraordinaire
If you’ve taken a novel-related class at Boston’s Grub Street, it’s likely you’ve crossed paths with Lisa Borders. Author of The Fifty-First State and Cloud Cuckoo Land, Lisa developed Grub Street’s Novel in Progress classes, founded the Novel Generator, and…