My first three books recounted the European immigrant experience. These photographs taken by an Ellis Island clerk show the incredible diversity of people who braved the journey and the soul of the country that received them. You will be stopped…
Blog Archives
Rome airport, behind security
Some years ago, when I was living in Naples, I drove to the aiport in Rome to pick up my father, who had come for a visit. Parkinsons had already dimished his strength and he walked with a cane, but…
Peeking Behind the Myth
Here’s one of the 10-minute exercises from a writing workshop I just did for the Knoxville Writers Guild on using real people in fiction or memoir. In this exercise, we looked at making a more rounded vision of a historical…
Tagged with: Fiction exercises, Knoxville Writers Guild, Real people in fiction, writing prompts
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
Can you blame Helen (of Troy)?
It’s good thing for this country that the Puritans never quite figured out how to combine a theology of predestination with an ethical system. And it’s a very good thing for novelists. Free will makes plots much more interesting than…
Tagged with: creating characters, Free Will, Helen of Troy, Margaret George, Oedipus, plotting novels
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
Carrot Soup, Blue Sky
I made carrot and ginger soup last night for my book club which was reading Under the Same Blue Sky. In theme with the book, I’d challenged myself to a brightly colored, light, vegetarian German summer menu. A 6-year old…
Invitation to Time Travel
I was recently asked for an interview with the Pittsburgh Examiner. This turned out to be questions about History in general, with an invitation to time travel. Here are my answers. You can imagine yours. http://www.examiner.com/article/10-questions-with-historical-fiction-author-pamela-schoenewaldt (I’m traveling without much…
Life gives writing prompt
The other day I was crossing the parking lot of the Knoxville Museum of Art when a young man got out of a dusty van wearing a full length tie-dyed robe. Time warp to the Sixties? He seemed to be…
Too much audience involvement
When I was about 11, my parents took me to a Broadway production of All the Way Home which nearly ended badly from an excess of dramatic involvement. Based on Agee’s Death in the Family, a young father dies in…
Terror of hired hands
Years ago there was a children’s book, Flossie and Bossie, about two Bantam hens, the good, drab one, Flossie, and the mean, beautiful, vain Bossie. And their transforming friendship. I remember it as pretty gripping. However there was a spook…
Tagged with: children's books, Eva Le Gallienne, Flossie and Bossie, Garth Williams
Posted in Just life
Posted in Just life
What’s your excuse?
“Writer’s block” adds a lovely sense of entitlement and specialness to the malaise. After all, nobody sanctions “pediatrician’s block” or “fireman’s block,” as in: “You know, I just don’t feel like taking care of your kid, or putting out your…
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