Tag: POV

Rise and Shine with the 7am Novelist

We’re over halfway through the 7am Novelist’s 50-day writing challenge, which means we should all be halfway through our books! I’m kidding, of course. If you’re like me, you’re still on the dark side of the mountain, waiting to reach…

Looking the Sphinx in the Eyes

The first page of Jenny Erpenbeck’s amazing 2014 novel The End of Days (Aller Tage Abend in German, available in English from New Directions) has to rank among the most agonizingly beautiful—and thematically apt—novel openings ever written: “The Lord gave,…

Point of View: Omniscient

“Partway through writing my first novel, I had a terrifying realization: I needed an omniscient narrator.” -Celeste Ng, Dead Darlings post April 7, 2014. Writing a novel is all about making a series of decisions that add up to a…

Simplify: Novel, Dogs, Job

As I got older, I thought life would get simpler. I’d go to work. I’d come home. I’d read away the hours. In my thirties, I discovered writing (well, rediscovered it after a particularly unhelpful, James Joyce-loving professor told me…