When my first creative book, a travelogue called Searching for Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez was published a million years ago, I was already working on the first chapters of the next book—not because I knew it’s good to be in the middle of one new thing to distract yourself from the sales and review outcomes of the […]
Next week, my first suspense novel, The Deepest Lake, will be published. It’s my sixth novel and a big departure from my previous genres of historical fiction and literary fiction. I don’t plan to write only suspense novels from this point, but I’m acutely aware that plunging into this genre has taught me lessons I’ll
Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver Today I want to talk about rabbit holes, both good and bad. Last month, I fell down a bad rabbit hole after reading about a forthcoming book and becoming interested in its author. Long story
In twenty years of submitting novels for publication, I’ve never received an email from an agent or editor saying, “I can’t take this manuscript, the setting wasn’t clear enough.” Or “…the descriptions weren’t vivid enough.” Or “…I wasn’t dazzled by your use of metaphor or simile.” All of those elements are important, and I do
The Top Reason for Novel Rejections by Andromeda Romano-Lax Read More »
What’s your favorite Groundhog Day phrase—the thing you repeat ad nauseum as if expecting life to change when it won’t? Mine is: “Where did the day go?” Or maybe: “I got two-thirds of my goals accomplished today.” But I’d be even more lost if I didn’t track my writing and reading time, something I’ve talked
With the New Year underway, you may be charging ahead with vigor or smelling the first smoky whiffs of resolution burnout. Either way, you may find yourself wondering, “Enough with all the lists and goals. Can’t I just be happy?” Chasing happiness is usually a futile endeavor, experts tend to agree, especially when one is
Many of us have goals that feel so big, they’re almost shame-inducing. Why should a goal cause us shame? Maybe because we don’t want to admit our desires, especially if attainment seems unlikely. Maybe because we know that to achieve a big goal would be expensive or demand a lot of time away from our
Today, I gave in. I admitted that this simply wasn’t going to be a very productive week for many reasons: Worry about the war in Gaza/Israel. I was good at not reading news first thing in the morning for a while, but now, with the moment of a ground offensive upon us, I keep looking
Next month, I’ll be teaching a 49 Writers course about suspense as an element of all compelling writing. But in that course—and in this post—I won’t be excluding the suspense genre altogether. Truth is, many of us are intrigued by the notion of dabbling in this commercially successful category of fiction. Is it just because
Why We Write Suspense (Louisa May Alcott Did. Whaaat?) Read More »
“On the path ahead, stepping out from behind a boulder, a man appears.” So begins Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am. In the next two sentences, we get some precise description, enough to start creating a world and convince us to inhabit it. And then, we get a look at the man again.
Suspense, Regardless of Genre: Tips for Reading and Writing by Andromeda Romano-Lax Read More »
