When I created Shira, the heroine who narrated my novel, The Fruit of Her Hands, I found myself wrestling with a fairly common problem for storytellers – how to make scenes that my narrator could not witness as vivid and dramatic as if she’d been…
TWC instructor and Young Adult novelist, Jennifer Walkup, shares some honest and instructive thoughts on the struggle of a first draft and the value of non-writing: After a good writing weekend – in which I got very little official writing done, I can say I’m…
I have been pondering the pace at which I write my novels. I’d thought that I’d been working on this latest book for five years now, until I realized just today that in fact it’s edging past six, since Memorial Day half a dozen years…
Yesterday, in my Wednesday Evening Adult Writers Circle, I used the first line from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 as a tribute to the now late, always great science fiction author. Anna Cunningham wrote such a moving piece to the prompt (in 15 minutes, no less),…
Stephanie Cowell is a very old friend. For those of you who’ve been in my classes before, she’s the “Stephanie” I mention enviously (in the most generous of ways) when she got her first book contract so many years ago. She’s a novelist of inestimable…
I’ve been kind of quiet lately on the blog that I began, but there’s a reason. With everything growing on steroids here at TWC, I’ve been stealing what little free time I have to DO MY OWN WRITING! Yes, I have not given up and…
A conversation with Judith Lindbergh and Michelle Cameron In anticipation of our upcoming workshop, “Reading Your Writing for an Audience”, Michelle and I thought we should discuss why we thought such a program was really relevant to writers. Below is the result of an interesting…
As I noted in our last post, Kathy Lynn Harris and I go way back. But I think it’s how we kept ourselves moving forward that really mattered; encouraging one another through the good times of our individual writing careers and — regrettably — the…
Kathy Lynn Harris and I go way back – all the way to the first writing conference I ever attended, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, some 15 odd years ago. The conference, in addition to solidifying my ambitions to become a published author, also gave me…
Every time I begin with a new class of young students, I sit them in a circle on the floor and ask them to imagine that they’re sitting around a campfire long ago. “In the ancient days, the storyteller was the keeper of all the…
Book people have always been a fascinating lot, interested in social issues, human issues, the doings of societies, freedom of speech, education and more. A good work begun by one of our community, TWC’s good friend and former Thursday night regular Lois Cantwell: As a…
I recently wrote a friend saying that my writing “suddenly caught a gust of momentum and is flying along.” Her response: “fly that wind!” made me smile. It also made me contemplate something that writers struggle with – how do you keep up your enthusiasm…
