Perhaps it was a mistake to read James Patterson Inc. back to back with Michael Cunningham’s A Writer Should Always Feel Like He’s In Over His Head. For James Patterson, writing doesn’t seem very hard. Of course, I wouldn’t dare disparage him. Honestly, I’m impressed.…
So often I dwell on the unavoidable truth that writing is hard. Every day as I face the blank or unrevised page, I feel the dread that I won’t be able to fill or fix it, that somehow the difficult work is simply beyond me.…
You may have noticed that I don’t often blog about technique. For me, this forum is more about sharing the experience of writing. The truth about craft is that it’s all in the doing. We each confront the blank page or screen time and again.…
Sometimes hope is an elusive prospect in the face of the daunting task of writing. The work can seem a chore, endless, lonely, unforgiving, even pointless when one considers the perhaps bigger chore of finding a publisher and an audience. Those hours spent, those days…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it forever, there’s no right way to write a book. I had it comfirmed for me many years ago with my oft’ repeated story of my dear friend Stephanie Cowell (whose new novel, Claude and Camille about Claude…
I walked rather blindly into writing historical fiction. Or perhaps it walked into me. For example, I was ignorant to its stigma as a genre, kindred to those other literary stepchildren, science fiction and fantasy. I had never read what Hilary Mantel, winner of this…
From the start of The Writers Circle, I made it my weekly habit to share interesting readings about writing, publishing and the writing life. The very first one, I recall, was Francine Prose’s Atlantic Monthly article “Close Reading” which introduced the core topics of her…
I’m pleased and honored to be this week’s guest blogger on Christina Baker Kline‘s terrific blog, A Writing Year. Check out my piece about researching a historical novel: Judith Lindbergh on Raising the Dead. And also be sure to check out Christina’s latest novel, Bird…
In Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood, he writes “Childhood is a branch of cartography.” Chabon muses about the long passages of time when, as a child, he was able to roam free, inventing his own reality as much as exploring it,…
Poetry can feel, at times, as rarified as air, precious for its purity, its essentialness, its glittering, fluid, whimsical magnificence. It gives weight to simplicity and simplicity to weight, nourishing on levels more ephemeral and yet more visceral than prose. As I write my novels,…
As an inverse response to my June 16 post, “Beginnings”, Chris Harder just sent me the 2009 winners in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to write the worst opening sentence. Sometimes writing badly can be just as hard as writing well. (Well, let’s hope so,…
Congratulations to Christopher Harder, who joined our Writers Circle this past winter, on the publication of his essay Renovation in Lisa Belkin’s New York Times column, Motherlode. I’m very happy and proud of Chris, who has continued his work with me in my Tuesday morning…
