This from Writer’s Digest: “How To Start a Novel Right.” (June 6, 2013) Including backstory in the opening pages is the same as saying to the reader, “Wait a minute—hold on. Before I tell you the story, first there’s something…
Mmm, urgh, enm. So many goodies out there on the interwebs this week, friends. Feast upon some of our favorite links for the week! Book Rating Categories That Should Exist (Because Star Ratings Can Be Useless) by Natalie Meyer. My 5-star book…
In one of my (as yet unpublished) novels, two best friends in their middle years set out to write their own novel to solve their respective problems. Aside from a general agreement that the end product will be a work…
When I first started taking writing classes, my friends would ask what they were like. I would explain in a lighthearted voice that the classes were centered around the discussion of someone’s work – the good, the bad, the indifferent….
When I last left you, I’d imparted some good advice: always have a back up title for your novel. So when your publisher wants to change it, you have more than a sense of desperation at your disposal. When I…
All my favorite books come from a “deep place of junior high trauma.”* From Harriet the Spy to The Outsiders, right on up through Rick Moody’s Purple America and Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. Picture Olive at eleven. She has huge feet….