Most of us could not hack the lives of fictional protagonists because everything they do and everywhere they turn, events are designed to shriek denials, thwart desire, and erect roadblocks. Plots and scenes are built on forces and characters that stand in their way, blocking something they desperately wants or needs, delaying gratification. The results […]
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What Now?
I’ll spare you my opinions on the election, but there is a deep thundering within me. Sorrow wants to swallow me whole and hold me in grief’s endless prison. And the world is simply a atilt, dizzying, and bewildering. A planet galactic and empty and cold. However, I just want to say this to writers, […]
Read the rest of this entry »First paragraph: Happiness Falls: A Novel by Angie Kim
Chapter One Lock, Bach, and K-pop We didn’t call the police right away. Later, I would blame myself, wonder if things would have turned out differently if I hadn’t shrugged it off, insisted Dad wasn’t missing but was just delayed probably still in the woods looking for Eugene, thinking he’d run off somewhere. Mom says it […]
Read the rest of this entry »Writing a Story No one has Read Before
I listen to a range of podcasts, but keep coming back to two fiction series from The New Yorker. These podcasts feature readings of short stories and include conversations with the fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. In one podcast an author, but not the author of the story, chooses and reads a story from their archives […]
Read the rest of this entry »Take care with minor characters
If you’re going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he’d better be real enough that you can smell his breath. ~ Ford Maddox Ford Minor characters are too often faceless walk-ons in fiction. But that means the writer has missed a chance to create reality and complexity. […]
Read the rest of this entry »Always noticing
“I would tell aspiring writers to observe. They already know it’s vital to read and write whenever possible, but often people forget to watch what is going on every day in their surroundings. That is where your ideas come from. Keep one eye on your computer screen and your other eye on the world around […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bitter Truth: Writing cannot save you from yourself.
Sure it can heal some old wounds and that vast emptiness inside you that was once your marriage or your best friend who dumped you for no good reason. It can make you proud and even make your never-lavish-with-praise mother proud. It can fill you with joy and feel like the best kind of fever […]
Read the rest of this entry »2016 Beckons us Forward: Notes to Writers
Around here the sun has made a welcome appearance and 2015 zipped past at a blazing pace. If I was the pinching-myself type, I’d have been pinching myself these past few months. Where did all the hours and days and weeks fly away to? Some mornings I woke feeling robbed by time’s velocity, but then […]
Read the rest of this entry »NaNoWriMo Hacks & a Bit of Tough Love
Thirty days has November and for thousands of writers around the globe, that means NaNoWriMo or National Writing Month, a giddy, exhausting yet exhilarating, marathon and communal activity where writers jam on the page, producing a 50,000-word novel in a month. It teaches writers discipline, commitment, and how to survive on not much sleep. A […]
Read the rest of this entry »What do your dreams say about writing?
writing sorts through the gnawing grief, the pains of being human.
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