My agent Courtney says that her clients divide into pantsers (those who write by the seat of their pants) and planners (who ignore pants and plan). I’m a planner. By necessity. If I had to worry about plot at the…
Blog Archives
Prompts for Awakening
I just finished a four-session writing workshop on the theme of awakening with my magnificent poet-friend Linda Parsons Marion. She did two sessions on poetry and I did two on narrative. This being the beginning of spring and all, awakening…
Tagged with: fiction writing, free writes, memoir, memoir writing, writing prompts
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
“Why Men Drink,” p. 22
In research for my next book, I was looking for early 20th C magazines accepting fiction from unknowns. The American Magazine read submissions blind, and published many new writers along with some of the great writers of the day: Sherwood…
“We struck oil!” he gushed.
Preparing for a workshop on dialogue writing (2/28 in Knoxville), I’ve taken a wild detour into Tom Swifties, the fabulously inventive construction used by Dickens and perfected in the Tom Swift book series (1910 and onward) in which dialogue tags…
Hey, here’s a story you should write.
Anyone who writes hears this often: “Hey, I’ve got a story you should write.” And you want to listen and do listen, because 1) why not be polite? and 2) story-sharing is good and also fun, and 3), but a…
Posted in Writing
Not everybody does that?
It can be a shock to think yourself pretty normal in X behavior and discover, well, maybe not. Or maybe it’s a writer thing. Here’s what happened. There I am having wine with a good friend who is also a…
Posted in Writing
Words that should come back
Our Belgian friend Christian, physicist and book collector, gave me a 1901 collection of poetry by Robert Burns (1759-1796) with a glossary of Scottish terms. Amazing treasure! Here are some great words we’ve lost and ought to get back, either…
Novel math
The target word count for my novel in progress is 100,000, which is typical for my genre: literary historical fiction. (You can churn out more without publishers balking with some bulky sales numbers behind you) Which leads me to some…
Posted in Writing
The Six and Twenty Book Club
One of the pleasures of promoting your book is meeting book clubs. Many have remarkable histories. For example, the Six and Twenty Club of Wilmington, Ohio, has been meeting regularly since 1898. Here is a photograph of the club in…
At last! A publication date!
We have a publication date, September 3, 2013 for Swimming in the Moon and a launch date, September 5 at the Laural Theater, Knoxville. Last night I submitted a revised (revised, revised . . . ) draft to HarperCollins. Not…
Posted in Writing
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