How a Book Is Born, Part 12
In which I decide to kill off a character. And then rescind the decision.
In which I decide to kill off a character. And then rescind the decision.
“No horizon perceived by human eyes is ever the shore, because beyond that horizon is another.” —Flaubert If you’re like me, you’re accustomed to setting goals and achieving them, and you know all the rules, that your goals have to be Specific, and Measurable, and Achievable, and Relevant, and Timed, or some iteration of that,…
I hate being uncertain, as you can probably tell by how sure I am that I am always right and how convinced I am that I know everything, or at least that I know everything I need to know and can find out the rest. But life kicks everyone’s ass, even those of us who…
I’m usually a pretty patient reader, willing to give a writer the benefit of the doubt, but occasionally I come across a writer whose verbal mannerisms take me out of the story repeatedly, and then I stop being so patient. Recently I picked up a novel by a much-loved author (loved by other people; I hadn’t…
In my previous post, I gave some thoughts about being an agent accepting pitches at a recent conference, and what I learned about pitching from it. Here’s Part 2: Because of the informal nature of the program and because a lot of the writers involved are colleagues, people I’ve known a long time, I…
This blog post over at The Renegade Writer blog on the joys of journalism even during tough times got me thinking about the joys of pursuing a writing career (whether it’s journalism or not) no matter what the economy is doing. Some days, even when nothing is selling, I still can’t quite believe how much…
I’ve noticed that writers and editors run out of things to talk about so they invent ridiculous rules that don’t exist outside their own heads, or they apply them like a toddler with a hammer. “Don’t use adverbs!” they say. You know, adverbs can be terrific. Writing is never about 1 + 1 = 2….