Why it’s so difficult to pitch perfect
Think of your favorite movie. Perhaps it is hard for you to narrow down the list. But chances are when you try to think of the best film you’ve ever seen in your life, a few things happen. You remember…
Homegrown Books: Reading from my Local Literature Shed
My high school best friend, Jen, and I were discussing books recently. She started telling me, with great enthusiasm, about a novel she had just read that she thought I would like. But she stopped mid-sentence and said, “Oh, never…
Intensity: Choosing Between the Past and Present Tenses
“Why isn’t this in the past tense?” Was the question. “By definition, all stories occur in the past.” I was stumped. There I was sitting in my writing workshop, years into a novel about which I had thought of absolutely…
Potluck Advice: The Search for an Agent
On a recent winter night—dark but not stormy—a dozen writers at various points in their novels gathered over chicken pot pie, roasted vegetables, spinach salad with grapefruit, and chocolate cookies to swap stories and advice about finding a good agent….
It’s Okay to Not Write Sometimes, or How I Spent the Last Two Weeks
It is a fact that this author, upon completing a book, faced with the challenge of writing another book in short order, will stare into the abyss and say, “Not today, Satan.” There are always these moments of resistance, of…
Good Times, Bad Times
An inauspicious anniversary recently passed; it’s been a full year since I signed a contract with a literary agent to represent my novel. The day marked twelve months of suspense, frustration, and heartbreak at rejection emails worded with such tact…