Writer 911: What’s Your Emergency?
This past week I’ve heard from a lot of writer friends who are having a tough time, mostly with their writing. As one friend put it, “hard to write with all this treason.” It got me to imagining a 911-type…
Category: The Writing Life
Interview with Madeline Miller, Author of Circe
Madeline Miller is the author of The Song of Achilles (Ecco, 2012), a novel that won the Orange Prize for Fiction and had me hooked from page one. On the surface it was a retelling of the famous warrior’s life,…
11 Writing Tips for Poor People
I appreciate writing tips from fellow writers. I love seeing how other people function and how they hope their successful patterns might be successful for someone else. But while the bulk of the advice out there is helpful, meaningful, and…
How the Pied Piper of Tucson Led Me to My Story
When I started my YA thriller Half in Love with Death, I’d already abandoned two novels about a young girl who falls in love with a man who may be a murderer. Every time I tried to write it I…
Time, Time, Time: What Have I Done?
In real life, I am generally good with time. I meet deadlines. I show up Canadian punctual (ten minutes early) to events. And I am usually aware of the date and time thanks to that job I have at MIT,…
What You Can Take With You
When you move cross-country, the last box you will pack is your writing box, because it is both the easiest and the hardest to do. It is the only box you clearly label on all sides, just the one word,…