Editor’s Note: Author Caroline Van Hemert is our special guest at Winter Words 2020, the 49 Writers annual fundraiser happening Sunday, February 23, 2020. Tickets is limited, but there are still some available. “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” – Ernest […]
Caroline Van Hemert | Try again. And again. Read More »
If you don’t have enough time to write—who does?—read this. Do you have a “portable process?” That’s what prolific author Julianna Baggott — twenty books published under three names — calls it. Her advice resonates with something I’ve done on and off for years but underutilized until I made the process more deliberate. “Portable process” doesn’t mean
I’ve warned you before—I’m obsessed with gardening. Especially this year, when after thirty-six years in Alaska, I moved to the Oregon Coast, where people informed me that everything would grow bigger and faster than I ever expected. It does. For the connections with writing, I blame Natalie Goldberg, whose wisdom I shared most recently when talking
Deb Vanasse | Dirty Secrets of Revision and Editing Read More »
I am STILL working on the Alcan book, the one that I started about two and a quarter years ago. Part of me keeps thinking, Aren’t you done with that book yet? This is taking forever! But the other part of me keeps at it because I want to make this the best novel I
Guest post by Lynn Lovegreen: Response-Revise-Repeat Read More »
“Knowing what scenes are required in a novel is at the heart of the fictional art. The author has to write the obligatory scenes so that nothing of importance happens offstage. She must write the pivotal scenes and make quick expository moves from scene to scene. We can’t have three paragraphs to get the character
Andromeda: Making A Scene Read More »
Flying to the first residency of my MFA program five years ago, I was still having second doubts. The first class I entered—8 a.m., everyone bumping and muttering with Styrofoam coffee cups in hand—was standing-room only. The topic: punctuation. That’s right, not something sexier, like “truth” in creative nonfiction or how to publish your first
Andromeda: “Just” Punctuation Read More »
Just When You Think You’re on Vacation, It’s Time to Revise Again Almost exactly one year ago,I wrote about how many times I’d already revised a certain novel-in-progress and how I could no longer see clearly enough to keep rewriting it. I was sending it off into the publishing world, fingers crossed. One year passed:
Andromeda: The Never-Ending Story of Revision Read More »
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it,” wrote Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, and this week’s biggest literary story, based on the announcement by her publisher that the 88-year-old author long dismissed
This week, I re-read the novel manuscript I’ve been working on for two years in what is my final significant revision before I send it out (fingers crossed) into the publishing world. I’ll probably sweep through it for typos and discontinuities, again, but I’ve gotten to the point where I’m equally blind to many of
Andromeda: Why Reading and Revising Our Own Book Manuscripts Is So Hard, Part I Read More »
Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~Colette I love revising. Really. But it’s hard, and harder still to teach. If you don’t believe me, plant yourself
Deb: Getting the Distance Read More »
