As happens often, I found another parallel between training a dog and writing a novel. This time it had to do with arousal states in dogs and writing zones for writers. Essentially, there is an optimum state for a dog…
If there’s one constant in publishing and reader habits, it’s that taste is subjective and there are many layers to what leads one book to the drawer and one to a bookstore. What’s an author to do? Write another novel,…
Helen Phillips is the author of the novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat (Henry Holt, August 2015). Her collection And Yet They Were Happy (Leapfrog Press, 2011) was named a notable collection by The Story Prize. She wrote the children’s adventure book Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green (Delacorte…
When I write this, it is five weeks, two days and twelve and a quarter hours before my novel, Idyll Threats, is published. But who’s counting? Me. I am counting. I am also making to do lists. So many to…
There’s nothing like a first draft — whether it’s your 1st first draft or your 10th — to make you feel like an amateur, or a diner at a restaurant that consistently receives one-star reviews on Yelp. It’s easy to…
I completed the GrubStreet Novel Incubator Program this April and when I look back at that yearlong whirlwind, I still struggle to catch my breath. Most daunting was not learning so many (new to me) literary terms. Nor was it…