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…
Category: Women Writers
Fact or Fiction in Historical Fiction
“Writing a novel is to fabricate an elaborate lie. The end game is not to recreate reality.” -Craig Larsen in On Historical Fiction, True Stories, and not Recreating Reality on LitHub, October 7, 2016 I grew up in a small…
In Pursuit of the Perfect Logline
LOGLINE: A novelist must distill her story into a one-sentence logline, or she will fail to sell her book and will end up alone in a padded room. Anyone pitching a book can relate to the angst of writing a…
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…
An Interview with Kelly J. Ford, Author of Cottonmouths
Kelly J. Ford’s gripping debut novel, Cottonmouths, recounts protagonist Emily Skinner’s return to her small hometown in the Ozarks. Emily’s irresistible attraction to her former best friend and childhood crush Jody Monroe leads to danger – a meth lab on Jody’s…
Literary Landscaping
I was weeding around the shrubs in my yard this weekend, which gave me a lot of time to reflect on what matters. My answer: Nothing. That’s right. Nothing matters. Let me explain. Maybe you need a better idea of…