Sometimes when I’m working through a revision, I realize I haven’t given an event or a character proper consideration. The book suffers because I’ve buried in ‘telling’ certain events and characters who should have been ‘shown’ in scene. These are…
As the result of a glitch in the new privacy settings on my email account, I inadvertently discovered a portal through which I can email my past and future selves. It turns out I am my own best therapist. Who…
Being done with Grub Street’s Novel Incubator is a strange place to be. It’s kind of like being done with law school–sure, you graduated, but you aren’t a lawyer yet, and there’s that whole bar exam thing that is going…
Not too long ago, my good friend Julie Carrick Dalton sent me this comic from Chuck Draws Things:
One of my very favorite books is The Writer’s Desk by Jill Krementz (Random House, 1996). In it, there are black and white photographs of famous writers at their desks. I have never been the kind of writer – to…
By the time you read this post, I’ll have visited my protagonist’s hometown, Leipzig, Germany. I expect the city will be strange to both of us—I’ve never been there and he, Viktor, left home in 1942 to join Hitler’s army….